James Delingpole

Have you heard of James Delingpole? He is a right-wing journalist, author and blogger who specialises in denying man-made global warming and defending the charitable status of private schools. He is in many ways the archetypal absolute cunt; an aristo-fetishistic dickhead and slithery sassenach poster boy for Scottish independence.

But before deriding him in this way, it would be well for me to remember that I am the same me who had watched the TV version of Brideshead Revisited three times by the age of nineteen and who spent my first year at a redbrick university holed up in my room with another slightly posh boy, a bottle of port and cigars as if we were the country's last Old Etonians awaiting the bayonets of the Revolutionary Guard.

Why do I bring up this Delingpole? Well, it is because I have been reading some of his columns along with the columns of his pal Daniel Hannan (the Conservative MEP who caused a stir a few months ago by criticising the NHS on Fox News) and some other Telegraph stuff in order to toughen up my political opinions. It was my hope that by putting my political opinions through a mangle of palatable, broadsheet, centre-right opinion my political opinions would emerge a man.

My political opinions have survived this onslaught of comment quite unscathed but this has nothing to do with their robustness. Were my political opinions founded on rational thought then they might be susceptible to argument. But they aren't; they are founded on a sort of socio-aesthetic taste and are immune to argument. By that wilfully obfuscating, stupid word 'socio-aesthetic', I mean that these are opinions that appeal to me because of their position in society, the other people that hold them, their history and their stylishness. This exposure to the almost reasonable face of conservatism has not changed my beliefs but has caused me to think about how facile those beliefs are and suspect that everyone else's are just as shallow.

It seems to me to be somewhat arrogant to think that you hold your political opinions because you are sufficiently brainy do have divined the best and most fair mode of government. Whatever you think and whoever you are there are probably millions of other, smarter people than you who think something else.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera suggests that political opinions are usually based on a kind of kitsch. What we get passionate about is the particular flavour and associations of our political opinions; their superficial accoutrements.

On further self-examination I think that I barely even hold these superficial opinions. Mainly, I don't give a shit about anything at all. Having spent most of their lives in leafy, cosseted childhood, exposed to the real world my wispy, effete opinions might easily be devoured by that dark spectre of downward social mobility.

It is fitting therefore that my conclusion on Delingpole (who elsewhere has been dealt pure vitriol and been dubbed a twat) is utterly trivial. He appeared recently on a remarkable documentary called When Boris Met Dave talking about his Oxford days; days he seems to be having trouble getting over. He was roundly mocked as a Sebastian Flyte wannabe and he accepted all this with good humour and oh-so-British self-deprecation.

I am not above warming to a bit of self-deprecation and, as I explained above, I have some understanding of the potent effect of Brideshead on a certain kind of teenage brain. So my trivial conclusion is that he is a ponce with something other than bien pensant liberal views but basically clubbable.

And I have learned that I have no opinions worth talking about (notwithstanding Foulsist Robotarianism). So fuck.

Glenn Beck ain't so bad

A few months ago we all get very excited when Charlie Brooker used his programme Newswipe to bring to our attention Fox News' Glenn Beck and his foaming-at-the-mouth ways. Prior to that I had been aware of Bill O'Reilly but Brooker opened the door to a rich and varied world of right-wing, polemical, broadcast-maniacism. Here's a video of it - the Beck bit starts at 3.25:



Since then I've come across Beck on YouTube a few times and often he did seem every bit as nutty as he was on Newswipe. But (this is my big scoop, by the way) I think that Brooker (very slightly) misrepresented him. Beck has a sense of humour. In July, the Emmy award-winning, former Saturday Night Live writer and performer Al Franken became a senator - here is Beck's reaction:



"You don't want me as a senator!" Check it out! He knows what he is, he knows he's a crazed, current affairs jester.

Here he is talking to Telegraph blogger and libertarian conservative journalist James Delingpole (skip to 1.19):



Look at those two carrying on; having a rare time, so they are. I think it might be fair to say that each take neither themselves nor each other very seriously, or, at least, they don't take themselves seriously all the time. Comedy was captured by the left in the eighties; to go on telly and display humour even in the merest way must be very gratifying for someone on the right.

Beck is not a comedian but there is a undercurrent to his show and his presentation style that is knowingly frivolous. I doubt that he would be at all surprised at what your average European leftie would make of him.

Don't get me wrong – how dare you even think of getting me wrong! - he is reasonably crazy and doubtless he'll poison a few minds but really he is a distraction. Probably, we should be more concerned about the fact that Rupert Murdoch, by dint of having money, has been able to pollute much of the world's media with his Palpatinite agenda.

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Bonus features

Here is a video of Al Franken (the senator/comedian I mentioned earlier) talking universal healthcare or, as Rich Fulcher put it, "This is Al Franken doing what a Senator should do: kick raw ass and take raw names!"



And because the Fouls Tribune is Fair and Balanced why not read Christopher Hitchens being critical of him, in an article I haven't fully read, here.