Peter Hitchens has got into a bit of a right old ding dong with Matthew Parris over him apparently misrepresenting his views on homosexuality on some debate they had. He has used his blog and column to continually call on Parris to apologise to him in a very public manner. It has the ring of a bit of a creepy spurned lover [on Hitchens part] being a bit weird and obsessive to their former partner. I half expect Matthew Parris to write to Peter telling him to back off and get over it. Something like:
Dear Peter
I know you got hurt and all, nut please man get some perspective. I also know that you have been breaking into my house when I am at work at the Times, I know that you are upset and all but please stop rifling through my draws and trying on all my underpants. That's crossing the line old boy. Take a holiday, Fallaraki is cracking this time of year. Eric Pickles got so pissed last year he tried to have a fight with a fruit machine and then fell asleep on the main road, pissed himself as well, it was proper funny! You'd love it you old rum cove!
Kind Regards my old mucker
Matt.
To be fair having what you said being misrepresented is not nice. I could see how he would be put out by it. So I'm sure that Britain's most supreme arbitrator of right and wrong in the entire world would never misrepresent the views of someone else, after he was peeved that it may have happened to him?
Er no:
Hitchens is cheesed off at Bob Ainsworth for calling for the legalisation of drugs. Now on its own that isn't exactly a big shock, Hitchens is very anti drugs legalisation of any kind. Now that in itself isn't a crime. Drugs is a hot political potato, as a polemic columnist he has the right to proclaim his view on how drugs should be handled, indeed he wouldn't be dong his job otherwise. It is how he attacks Bob Ainsworth that I feel is unfair:
"But they will earn him the curses of parents whose children’s lives have been – or are yet to be – ruined by drugs, and of a society which will find out too late what it is like to live in a state where pleasure and self-stupefaction have driven out self-discipline and the work ethic.
What, you may wonder, leads a middle-aged white-collar trade unionist into the wacky world of drug legalisation?
(You're a fucking journalist, find out by reading what he said then.)
I have no idea. Was it something they discussed during those meetings of the International Marxist Group that Mr Ainsworth once attended? Or is the moustache a giveaway?
Like so many of his age group, did Mr Ainsworth see the 1967 release of Sergeant Pepper – and the druggies’ anthem A Day In The Life – as a seminal moment in the cultural revolution?
Does he imagine himself sitting among the Fab Four, suspended above reality atop a sweet-smelling cloud? It would explain a lot."
In light of what is said by this article, and that saying a mans moustache means he must be an evil communist usurper is the most stupid thing ever committed to a blog in history - this seems like an unfair assessment of Ainsworths comments and why he supports legalisation. When you hear about the appalling violence in Mexico that is down to fighting the war on drugs, and the successes in Portugal which has taken a much more liberal approach to policing drugs, then he is absolutely bang on to put the case for liberalising the drugs laws (aren't politicians accused of all sounding alike anyway?). Hitchens wants to portray the pro legalisation lobby as a bunch of selfish hedonists who want to legalise drugs so they can sit on a beach spliffed up at 4 in the morning, discovering the most profound existential answers by staring for a long time at a deck chair. Might some people actually come round to thinking that prohibition is actually causing more harm than the drugs they are supposed to stop? Saying that Ainsworth wants either a stupefied population, or wants to legalise them to smoke pot and pretend to smoking a spliff with the Beatles on cloud is dare I say it;- misrepresenting what he actually said. And we all know that is bad, especially if you are demanding an apology from someone you said did just that to you.
Dear Peter
I know you got hurt and all, nut please man get some perspective. I also know that you have been breaking into my house when I am at work at the Times, I know that you are upset and all but please stop rifling through my draws and trying on all my underpants. That's crossing the line old boy. Take a holiday, Fallaraki is cracking this time of year. Eric Pickles got so pissed last year he tried to have a fight with a fruit machine and then fell asleep on the main road, pissed himself as well, it was proper funny! You'd love it you old rum cove!
Kind Regards my old mucker
Matt.
To be fair having what you said being misrepresented is not nice. I could see how he would be put out by it. So I'm sure that Britain's most supreme arbitrator of right and wrong in the entire world would never misrepresent the views of someone else, after he was peeved that it may have happened to him?
Er no:
Hitchens is cheesed off at Bob Ainsworth for calling for the legalisation of drugs. Now on its own that isn't exactly a big shock, Hitchens is very anti drugs legalisation of any kind. Now that in itself isn't a crime. Drugs is a hot political potato, as a polemic columnist he has the right to proclaim his view on how drugs should be handled, indeed he wouldn't be dong his job otherwise. It is how he attacks Bob Ainsworth that I feel is unfair:
"But they will earn him the curses of parents whose children’s lives have been – or are yet to be – ruined by drugs, and of a society which will find out too late what it is like to live in a state where pleasure and self-stupefaction have driven out self-discipline and the work ethic.
What, you may wonder, leads a middle-aged white-collar trade unionist into the wacky world of drug legalisation?
(You're a fucking journalist, find out by reading what he said then.)
I have no idea. Was it something they discussed during those meetings of the International Marxist Group that Mr Ainsworth once attended? Or is the moustache a giveaway?
Like so many of his age group, did Mr Ainsworth see the 1967 release of Sergeant Pepper – and the druggies’ anthem A Day In The Life – as a seminal moment in the cultural revolution?
Does he imagine himself sitting among the Fab Four, suspended above reality atop a sweet-smelling cloud? It would explain a lot."
In light of what is said by this article, and that saying a mans moustache means he must be an evil communist usurper is the most stupid thing ever committed to a blog in history - this seems like an unfair assessment of Ainsworths comments and why he supports legalisation. When you hear about the appalling violence in Mexico that is down to fighting the war on drugs, and the successes in Portugal which has taken a much more liberal approach to policing drugs, then he is absolutely bang on to put the case for liberalising the drugs laws (aren't politicians accused of all sounding alike anyway?). Hitchens wants to portray the pro legalisation lobby as a bunch of selfish hedonists who want to legalise drugs so they can sit on a beach spliffed up at 4 in the morning, discovering the most profound existential answers by staring for a long time at a deck chair. Might some people actually come round to thinking that prohibition is actually causing more harm than the drugs they are supposed to stop? Saying that Ainsworth wants either a stupefied population, or wants to legalise them to smoke pot and pretend to smoking a spliff with the Beatles on cloud is dare I say it;- misrepresenting what he actually said. And we all know that is bad, especially if you are demanding an apology from someone you said did just that to you.
Ainsworth wants to deal with the world as it is.
ReplyDeleteHitchens wishes we could return to a world that never ever existed.