James Macintyre gets himself in hot water
There is an old epigram
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
(thank God) the British journalist
But seeing what the man will do,
unbribed, there's no occasion to.
When Humbert Wolfe wrote that poem, he must have been thinking of a journalist like the Political Editor of the New Statesman, James Macintyre.
It's a free country, and Mr Macintyre has every right to express his opinions even when I find them ludicrous.
Postscript - as originally written this post contained a link giving an example by reference to an page on the "Working Class Tory" blog which systematically demolished a particularly silly article. Since I posted this the "Working Class Tory" blog has been limited o an invited audience, but if you happen to be one of those who are able to read it the link I originally included is here.)
What I find less acceptable is when Macintyre plays the race card and uses "guilt by association" tactics to make false accusations of racism.
A few months ago Mr Mackintyre wrote this disgraceful article in the New Statesman in which he accused the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, Michel Kaminski, of being anti-semitic. Kaminski rebutted those smears from Macintyre and others here.
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, was among those who were not impressed by the attacks on Kaminski, which he described as "Anti-Semitic mudslinging of the worst kind." As I blogged at the time, Pollard's comments on these attacks included the following:
“There are few things more despicable than anti-Semitism, but here’s one of them: using a false charge of anti-Semitism for political gain. Yet it seems there are few depths to which some will not sink in their desperation to damage David Cameron.”
On Michal Kaminski's comments about whether Poland should issue an official apology for a terrible atrocity, Stephen Pollard wrote ...
“The intention is clear: to accuse Mr Kaminski of sympathising with the murderers. But this is a grotesque distortion. Mr Kaminski’s argument was that apologising for the collective guilt of Poles let the individual murderers off the hook. Far from trying to cover up the massacre, he was using the president’s apology to make a wider point: that the massacre was not committed by “the Poles” against “the Jews”, but was a vile crime committed by specific individuals against their fellow nationals.”
Well, Mr Macintyre has been at it again this week with a post on the New Statesman blog titled Tory racism: crystal clear which accused the Conservative party of being "institutionally racist." Again he was using guilt by association, this time to attack David Cameron because of some comments by Dan Hannan MEP, and to make this argument work Macintyre had to pretend that DC is "close" to Dan Hannan.
Now anyone who is supposed to be the political correspondent for a major political magazine and says that DC and Dan Hannan are "close" at the moment is either far too incompetent to be in that job, or being very much less than honest. I am reliably informed that David Cameron was exasperated by Hannan's off-message comments about the NHS, and this is what DC had to say about them:
"I don't agree with Dan Hannan.
"He does have some quite eccentric views about some things, and political parties always include some people who don’t toe the party line on one issue or another issue."
Interestingly enough, the article wasn't up for very long before it completely disappeared from the New Stateman's website. Did the NS lawyers take fright by any chance, I wonder? If so, unfortunately for them, before the offending article disappeared from the cache, certain enterprising bloggers managed to get a screen shot of it.
Now this sort of poison has to be tackled head on. Every time some Labour supporter like James Macintyre makes a false accusation of racism it damages British politics in two ways. Firstly because the fear of being falsely accused of racism can make people afraid to confront difficult issues, which in turn leads to a perception by some voters that mainstream politicians are ignoring those issues. And secondly, just as the boy who falsely cried "Wolf" ensured that his warning was ignored when the wolf really appeared, every time false accusations of racism are thrown around, it makes accurate charges of racism less effective against those who actually deserve the description.
The last word on Mr Macintyre should belong to Stephen Pollard who has a very amusing post on the Jewish Chronicle site here, which includes the following:
"The New Statesman has a very annoying blogger, James Macintyre - annoying because he is entirely partisan and so never says anything interesting. Anything or anyone Conservative is racist, evil, blah blah blah and any member of the Labour Cabinet is sagacious, decent, etc.
"Macintyre annoys me because he is the very antithesis of good political blogging.
"But today he has a post which is so hilariously, full-on, smash it out of the park, beyond all reason that I sort of feel sorry for him."
Quite.
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
(thank God) the British journalist
But seeing what the man will do,
unbribed, there's no occasion to.
When Humbert Wolfe wrote that poem, he must have been thinking of a journalist like the Political Editor of the New Statesman, James Macintyre.
It's a free country, and Mr Macintyre has every right to express his opinions even when I find them ludicrous.
Postscript - as originally written this post contained a link giving an example by reference to an page on the "Working Class Tory" blog which systematically demolished a particularly silly article. Since I posted this the "Working Class Tory" blog has been limited o an invited audience, but if you happen to be one of those who are able to read it the link I originally included is here.)
What I find less acceptable is when Macintyre plays the race card and uses "guilt by association" tactics to make false accusations of racism.
A few months ago Mr Mackintyre wrote this disgraceful article in the New Statesman in which he accused the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, Michel Kaminski, of being anti-semitic. Kaminski rebutted those smears from Macintyre and others here.
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, was among those who were not impressed by the attacks on Kaminski, which he described as "Anti-Semitic mudslinging of the worst kind." As I blogged at the time, Pollard's comments on these attacks included the following:
“There are few things more despicable than anti-Semitism, but here’s one of them: using a false charge of anti-Semitism for political gain. Yet it seems there are few depths to which some will not sink in their desperation to damage David Cameron.”
On Michal Kaminski's comments about whether Poland should issue an official apology for a terrible atrocity, Stephen Pollard wrote ...
“The intention is clear: to accuse Mr Kaminski of sympathising with the murderers. But this is a grotesque distortion. Mr Kaminski’s argument was that apologising for the collective guilt of Poles let the individual murderers off the hook. Far from trying to cover up the massacre, he was using the president’s apology to make a wider point: that the massacre was not committed by “the Poles” against “the Jews”, but was a vile crime committed by specific individuals against their fellow nationals.”
Well, Mr Macintyre has been at it again this week with a post on the New Statesman blog titled Tory racism: crystal clear which accused the Conservative party of being "institutionally racist." Again he was using guilt by association, this time to attack David Cameron because of some comments by Dan Hannan MEP, and to make this argument work Macintyre had to pretend that DC is "close" to Dan Hannan.
Now anyone who is supposed to be the political correspondent for a major political magazine and says that DC and Dan Hannan are "close" at the moment is either far too incompetent to be in that job, or being very much less than honest. I am reliably informed that David Cameron was exasperated by Hannan's off-message comments about the NHS, and this is what DC had to say about them:
"I don't agree with Dan Hannan.
"He does have some quite eccentric views about some things, and political parties always include some people who don’t toe the party line on one issue or another issue."
Interestingly enough, the article wasn't up for very long before it completely disappeared from the New Stateman's website. Did the NS lawyers take fright by any chance, I wonder? If so, unfortunately for them, before the offending article disappeared from the cache, certain enterprising bloggers managed to get a screen shot of it.
Now this sort of poison has to be tackled head on. Every time some Labour supporter like James Macintyre makes a false accusation of racism it damages British politics in two ways. Firstly because the fear of being falsely accused of racism can make people afraid to confront difficult issues, which in turn leads to a perception by some voters that mainstream politicians are ignoring those issues. And secondly, just as the boy who falsely cried "Wolf" ensured that his warning was ignored when the wolf really appeared, every time false accusations of racism are thrown around, it makes accurate charges of racism less effective against those who actually deserve the description.
The last word on Mr Macintyre should belong to Stephen Pollard who has a very amusing post on the Jewish Chronicle site here, which includes the following:
"The New Statesman has a very annoying blogger, James Macintyre - annoying because he is entirely partisan and so never says anything interesting. Anything or anyone Conservative is racist, evil, blah blah blah and any member of the Labour Cabinet is sagacious, decent, etc.
"Macintyre annoys me because he is the very antithesis of good political blogging.
"But today he has a post which is so hilariously, full-on, smash it out of the park, beyond all reason that I sort of feel sorry for him."
Quite.
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