What do I think? Well, if you have a dog, lock it up before you play the interview. It might want to join in otherwise.

Have at it.

In what one aide described as an effort to ‘show what a Brown premiership will look like’, the Chancellor told The Observer yesterday of his vision for an ‘ X-Factor’ Britain. He said the reality TV music programme, as well as shows like Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice, promoted ‘aspiration, how anyone can achieve things’ – key to the agenda he hoped to bring to Number 10.

You know and I know, reader, that these shows don’t promote aspiration – instead we like to see craven, cupidinous, idiot yuppies cut down. In the last series of The Apprentice, Paul didn’t know the difference between pounds and kilos; Jo got up everyone’s nose (which may have been cruel editing), and the arrogant Asian guy whose name I’ve managed to forget once ordered 100 chickens for 100 chicken pizzas. If Gordon Brown really thinks these prats are aspirational rather than merely over-reaching and greedy, you can see why his whelk stall empire never got off the ground.
I won’t deny that we need entrepreneurs – but as part of the social mix. Personally, I think the Saatchi Brothers are admirable and clever; but their best work was done in the grey 1970s; I look up to Alan Sugar – but whatever they say, the lesson from people like that is that government encouragement does nothing for them; their skills can’t be formally taught. Alan Sugar has a personal fortune in the 100s of millions if not billions. That’s more than he and his kids can spend in their lifetimes; honestly, I’m not fussed if he loses some of that to extra income tax, he works for sport and he more or less says so.
Most people don’t achieve very much in Brown’s sense. The big things are getting married and having kids for the most part, not discovering Penicillin. Society works, as Alan Sugar knows, through everyone doing a small bit. But if discovering boy bands is what New New Labour thinks we should all do more of, I’ll take a pass. The thing about talent shows is – heh – talent shows, it just takes work. I was remined in the Saturday Torygraph that even Take That spend years on the circuit, playing under 18 discos and gay clubs, learning what moved audiences. The Beatles toured Germany as unknowns before they became the chart-topping band they were. An awful lot of big acts started at school like Elton John, who played piano where he could, or met at school – REM, Radiohead, the Stones, the Who, U2. After they broke up, Take That didn’t do much, which is where manufactured bands differ from the real thing. After the Beatles, John Lennon recorded unlistenable arty albums, George Harrison recorded unlistenable spiritual touchy-feely albums, and Paul McCartney recorded unlistenable commercial stuff. Ringo Starr mainly got drunk, so good for him.
The great Sam Leith pretty much agrees with me here. But Brown is worse than that. (And I used to be a member of the People’s Party; I even voted for Brown/Beckett once.) Chris Dillow (also great, and recommended) calls Blair a philistine. Brown, in some game of their own devising, tops him.

On Thursday, Brown will launch an educational scheme called ‘Great Britons Learning’, designed to ensure that children are taught about leading figures in UK history.

Isn’t ‘to learn’ a transitive verb? So, the Carlyle (will he be taught?) ‘Great Man theory of history’ prevails over Marxism and (my personal prefence) ‘one damn thing after another with some people stealing the limelight’. I don’t know about GB, but I was taught a mostly Marx-inspired history of my country. The short version: “We invented everything, from philosophy (Hume), economics (Smith) to television (Logie Baird). The English bastards stole everything.” So, Gordon, imagine you’re Prime Minister. You’re doing the Tony thing, meeting young future voters in their schools. Your aides have arranged a trip to Northern Ireland (peace at last, thanks to New Labour!), and they’ve even got a class learning history your way. Today’s great man: Oliver Cromwell. Over to you, son.

Now Reid had this to say:

Mr Reid was at the meeting to ask parents to search for signs that their children are being recruited by fanatics who will brainwash them and convince them to serve as suicide bombers.

So one might think that he hoped to address parents who were, in the cant phrase of the moment, moderates. Funnily enough, he was heckled

He was interrupted by activist Abu Izzadeen, who said he was furious about “state terrorism by British police”. …
The protester, also known as Omar Brooks, denies being a member of the banned al-Ghurabaa group.
He accused the minister of being an enemy of Islam before he was led from the building by police and stewards.

The astute reader will have noticed a few things. Mr Izzadeen appears not to be a moderate. He may even be a member of a banned group. He was also very quickly identified by the press. One might almost suspect the hacks in attendance were briefed, Watch this guy, this could be fun.
The Telegraph has more.

During a speech in east London he was shouted down by Abu Izzadeen, a well-known fundamentalist who has been linked to a now banned organisation and who praised the martyrdom of suicide bombers after the July 7 attacks in London last year.

Not a nice guy, one thinks.

“I am furious. I am absolutely furious – John Reid should not come to a Muslim area. We do not want to see him. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him.”

Er, so he came, he saw, and he shouted. But unless I’ve misunderstood the meaning of an audience of specially-invited Muslims in Leytonstone, he was asked to attend. His age is given as 30 by the Telegraph. He could be a parent of a teenager, but he seems a little young. And if he is, he doesn’t sound the sort who would discourage his son from becoming a terrorist just because John Reid asked him to.
So why was he invited? Could it be so we have headlines like: ‘Martyrdom is praiseworthy’, Reid’s message to Muslims is drowned out by radicals, and John Reid shouted down at Muslim meeting.
Mr Izzadeen’s politics seem somewhat cartoonish to me. He’s a convert, and converts can be extremists. They can also be infiltrators.
Would it be really paranoid of me to suspect dirty tricks at work here? Now Muslims look bad and unreasonable.
Update: I’m grateful to Andrew Brown in the comments for pointing that I was (possibly) wrong. I say possibly only in part because I am a sore loser. The evidence for Andrew’s correction comes from tehgrauniad which I no longer find reliable. Andrew quoted the first sentence of the final paragraph. This is the whole thing:

The Home Office said the audience had been invited by the council and it was an open community meeting which others could attend. There had been no security threat. Mr Reid heard complaints about discriminatory stop and search, the effect of foreign policy, the Pope’s remarks about Islam, and the danger of racial profiling. He responded by saying that in his communist youth, the US would not allow him a visa to move outside any airport.

I find that very unsatisfactory. It feels like it has been typed up from near illegible notes. There is no flow. Dr Reid’s answer (to what? racial profiling? but he was profiled – correctly – as a member of an organisation hostile to the United States: we choose our political affiliations; we do not choose our ethnicity) is an opaque non-sequitur.
Since I insist on being paranoid, my surprise at the universal recognition of Mr Izzadeen by the press pack is undiminished.
David Tate asks in the comments, cui bono? I don’t know what he thinks the answer is, but I’m sure it’s John Reid. He won favourable headlines in all the broadsheets. Reid under fire, comes out well is how I would precis all of them. (I don’t believe I have to say this but I will: John Reid’s answer to Mr Izzadeen – that as Home Secretary he can go where he damn well pleases (as can all of us, I hope) – is of course right.)
I am aware that I’m open to the charge of liberal Pollyannaism or whatever you want to call it. I think everyone is, more or less, a rational agent, and Mr Izzadeen’s outburst was immature and silly. (It may have, to address David T’s point, impressed teenagers.) I can’t take it seriously.
BTW, I think John Reid was utterly wrong to give this speech. Many of my friends have teenagers. They [the parents] report that they [the teenagers] are truculent, mercurial, rude, oversensitive, and on occasion, certifiably insane. They [again the parents, the teenagers don’t notice] remain concerned about their children’s happiness, well-being, relationships, health, and all the rest of that stuff. This is what good (ie normal) parents do. I don’t (being, roughly, a liberal humanist and universalist) think that Muslim parents are likely to be any different. Of course they’ll be concerned if young Abdul decides that the fitting conclusion of the past sixteen years of their love and care is for him to rip himself apart with some homemade explosive. Even if they believe in jihad they’ll find themselves saying something like Yes, the West is full of decadent infadels, but that doesn’t mean you have to be on the front line. Can’t you be a doctor or something useful? Shorter me: parents John Reid would recognise as moderate don’t need to be told to be concerned: they already are – and much much more than the State can ever be.
My faith that this was a set-up has been shaken by Andrew’s comment. But not destroyed. I find tehgrauniad’s reporting lazy, often blatantly cribbing government handouts rather than checking everything. The Home Office said … yada yada yada, but you didn’t find out, did you? Spin Doctor: The NHS Trust failed to meet its targets because velociraptors ran amuck in the wards. This was, of course, an unpredictable contingency, and velociraptor proof fences are being built around all hospitals by Haliburton. Grauniad hack: How are you spelling velociraptor, sir? John Reid gains by this: he looks good, Muslims in Leytonstone look bad.
John Reid was asked about the Pope. Apposite for someone who denied he wanted the top job in British politics. Readers who have read about the very first holder of Benedict’s office will know that Dr Reid has two more denials to go.

Englishmen don’t form picket lines outside movie theaters when “stereotyped,” but still.

Which is just as well if they want to see any cinematic performances at all. Perhaps the greatest innovation in Hollywood in recent years was Die Hard which used an English actor in radically different role: playing a, wait for it, German bad guy! Roll out that accent, Herr Rickman! (And I suppose Peter Cushing, Don Henderson and co in Star Wars are technically aliens, but still.) English actors are stereotyped as bad guys in US movies, unless they’re Hugh Grant, who is stereotyped an unspeakable excrescence. But that may be typecasting.

Many conservative Jews, from David Horowitz to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, stuck up for Gibson as a man who defended family values against secular nihilism.

I never understood that. He talked a lot (‘talk’ and ‘action’ are horribly confused in David Horowitz’s brain, but so is everything else), but ‘defended family values’? — against whom? or what? One of the pleasures of being something of an aged blogger is that you can look up old posts. I was clearly quite moved by the whole ‘Passion’ thing and posted on it more than once.

Jesus himself is explicit: his message is not “do what I say”, it’s “do what I do” and it’s the doing — being charitable and forgiving — that counts, not nationality, nor denominational or temporal affiliation, nor who your parents are or what they did.

Mel Gibson looks bigger on ‘do as I say’ than ‘do as I do.’
Related fun: Artist’s reenactment of the arrest.
Now, I don’t think Gibson is guilty of a hate crime (anyway, drunk driving and speeding at nearly twice the legal limit — which he was: “87 miles per hour in a 45 miles per hour zone” — are far more of a hazard than name-calling). But it’s useful to know this sort of thing about a person so one can avoid him and his films in future. Not that I’ve seen much of his output outside of ‘Lethal Weapon’ so he won’t be filing for bankruptcy on my account.
But here’s where the fun really starts. In my last post, I opined that Chris Muir was an untalented hack (and, I should have added, one whose depictions of the female form are evidently derived from a life-drawing of two pythons mating under a blanket). Now, I’m prepared to go even further. I remember being perplexed at this cartoon — and perplexed enough to be able to find it two years later. Is that the lamest defence he can come up with? It’s like he’s trying. And would he defend The Last Temptation of Christ the same way?

The saddest part (or the funniest) is the way Chris Muir enters the comments (which up that point have largely been discussing Kant, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Heidegger, Hegel and those fellows. Chris Muir is the equal of such conversation.

Note to hilzoy: Don’t believe the philosopher in the mirror.
What a tool you are.
y’all need a life.

(I don’t know what “Don’t believe the philosopher in the mirror” means, but I’m prepared to bet that it’s a Rush lyric or something.) Even better, Anderson whom I’m already a fan of thanks to Kant has books readily available in the library, and the letters do form readable words. The same has been said of Hegel, but I’m not sure what happens to the words when they’re formed into sentences … says:

The point is that, for normal people, a guy who thinks a universal moral law is implanted within each of us by virtue of our being rational beings … is not a nihilist.

I read “a guy who thinks…” as an unambiguous reference to the sage of Königsberg. Chris Muir, political cartoonist for Captain’s Quarters, sees the ‘philosopher in the mirror’, perhaps.

I love the way morons like Anderson immediately assume I believe in a universal moral law.
Way to miss the entire point, cretin.
All you see is black & white. So much for ‘nuance’. Sheesh.

Muir’s philosophising is on a par with his ready wit. If America was founded on ‘Judeo-Christian moral values’ why did Groucho Marx have such a hard time joining clubs? I can’t claim that I’m sure what Judeo-Christian values might be. From what I can remember of the Bible, they seemed to consist of being persecuted by Pharisees, being persecuted by Philistines, being persecuted by Egyptians, being persecuted by Romans, murdering family members, stoning people, and breaking the monotony of all this by listing ancestors at length and having beard growing competitions (though I may be imagining this last one). I can’t relate this to present day America at all. Well, the murdering family members bit, perhaps.

To raise the tone a bit, I’d like to share an extract on Schopenhauer from I book I finished this week.

Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship — Shop — Schopenhauer. That’s the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description. Well, Uncle Thomas, when his gastric juices have been giving him the elbow, can make Schopenhauer look like Pollyanna.

It’s quite a feat, knowing even less about Schopenhauer than Bertie Wooster (and even his nearest — and if you have to call them that — dearest will admit that he’s something of a chump), but Chris Muir manages it.

Like Mike, I think Paxman “should have wiped the floor with” Coulter. But he didn’t. I admire Paxman; he adds to the gaiety of the nation. I’m still disappointed. I can think of reasons why he lost. (Is it a contest? The way Paxman plays, yes it is.) Here they are.

He had an attack of Neil Kinnock syndrome. (Do I have to explain this?)

Ms Coulter isn’t accountable to anyone; she’s a journalist. Paxo holds politicians up against their promises. He didn’t have that here.

He was under briefed; and Coulter boxes cleverer than she looks. (Yes, there are some terrible puns trying to get out there.) It all went wrong for me when Paxo tried the “You don’t really mean that, do you?” gambit, which is only marginally more likely to produce an “of course you’re right” response than “You are barking mad, aren’t you?” One problem I have is that he ought to have predicted that his question would have received her asseverative reply. And he should then have found a particularly weak passage. (She didn’t seem at all clear on alternatives to ‘Darwinism’* for instance.) The other problem is that she has been described as a “satirist”*. Now if Swift, say, had appeared in front of a leading Grub Street hack of his day and asked if he believed that the Irish poor should eat their children, he might have said ‘No.’ Or he might have said ‘Yes’ in an ironical way which told you that he meant ‘No’ and mischief besides. But Coulter deadpanned.

I don’t find Coulter funny. She has hyperbole, but so had Hitler. Her writing doesn’t have rhythm or grace. I find her polemics strangely repulsive and disturbing, like letters taunting the police from a serial killer.

But she has had a comeuppance on TV. With Alan Colmes of all people. She’s in the wrong: she does call him a liar, and doesn’t give grounds. (If I’m to sink to her style, she thinks grounds are what you throw out of the percolator.*) But there must be better ways of resolving conflict that a mirthless titter, a cheese-eating-surrender-monkeyite shrug, and a “but I’m a girl” look.

Apologies to the rest of crew here. No one’s posted in a week, so this is a placeholder, and an excuse for comments.

* Scare quotes because I prefer the term ‘[evolutionary] biology’.
* Scare quotes because there should be some humour in satire.
* I drink tea, me. But I used to watch Kojak.