Posted on 09/05/2003 4:01:37 PM PDT by Pokey78
"Hoon failed to reveal all" said the headline on the Telegraph website yesterday, and for some reason I thought it was a review of Calendar Girls, the new and somewhat twee British movie about the WI ladies who stripped for charity. Hoon, it turns out, doesn't play Celia Imrie's best friend and, so far as one can tell, isn't in the movie at all, but is instead a man called Geoff. He's not a member of the WI but, like Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, he and his friend Tony and other gentlemen of a certain age all agreed to expose themselves for a good cause.
And now he's failed to reveal all. As on the WI calendar, Geoff metaphorically speaking tucked his "front-bottom" (in the ladies' parlance) behind a strategically positioned jam jar. In Calendar Girls, even when a front-bottom appears to loom, the film is shot through so many Doris Day Vaseline filters one can never be sure it isn't some decorative quilted item from the village fete. Likewise at the Hutton Inquiry, the more that's revealed, the blurrier it all looks. Appropriately enough, the only person to turn up at both the inquiry and the movie premiere is Alastair Campbell.
Tony Blair seems to have fallen victim to a kind of reverse-emperor's-new-clothes effect. No matter how much he takes off, the crowd will always be convinced he's still hiding something. No matter how much he reveals, they still sing, "The King is not being altogether straight with us." Even if he were to show us his front-bottom, it would be assumed to be an artfully placed aspidistra, and demonstrators would still be demanding he come clean.
Well, I hold no briefs for Blair, even while he's posing naked. But I must say of all the fuzzy, blurry, Vaseline-lensed phoneys hanging round the Royal Courts of Justice, the worst by far are not the Government, nor even the BBC, but the anti-war protesters posthumously conscripting the late David Kelly to their ranks.
As we now know, Dr Kelly was in favour of the war. Not only that, but his most significant point of disagreement with the Government is that it was (officially) opposed to regime change, while he thought it absolutely necessary. In that respect at least, he was more hawkish than Blair, Jack Straw and Colin Powell. He had more faith in the existence of WMD than half the cabinet on either side of the Atlantic. Yet a man who believed there was no option other than war has been enthusiastically adopted by the anti-war crowd as an emblem of their cause.
Since everyone seems to use Dr Kelly, alive or dead, for whatever line they want to peddle, let me belatedly join in. He is an emblem of the anti-war movement - or, to be more precise, of its utter vacuity and incoherence. If anyone stands naked, it's these fellows. Dr Kelly is just a convenient cudgel with which to beat Blair: in that sense, he sums up the sour oppositionism of the anti-war movement.
They're against Blair and against Bush and they'll use whatever's to hand. But ask them what they're for , what they'd do instead of war, and they've got no suggestions, unless you count Jeanette Winterson's response to 9/11: "Touch me. Kiss me. Remind me what I am." Fortunately, Jeanette herself is always around to remind us what she is.
If I got to touch and kiss Jeanette - admittedly a bit of a long shot - I'd leave a Post-it note on her nose recommending that, two years after September 11, it's not enough just being anti-Bush (not something I thought I'd ever find myself accusing Jeanette of). We warmongers have quite a detailed agenda and, agree or disagree, it's not short of specifics.
The anti-war movement, by contrast, is fundamentally unserious. It just moves on to the next jeer: in October 2001, the Afghan war was already another Vietnam quagmire; by January 2002, with the Taliban overthrown, the new line was that Hamid Karzai would be lucky to last the year. Well, he's hanging in there: while things are never going as well as they might, they're not going as badly, either.
And the question remains: other than grabbing Dr Kelly's shroud, what have you got? The other day, a terrorist called Sawad, who helped mix the Bali bomb, expressed his gratitude to the anti-war movement. "I want to thank the Australian people who supported our cause when they demonstrated against the policies of George Bush," he said. "Say thank you to all of them." Aussie peaceniks reacted somewhat huffily to this endorsement, insisting Sawad was no pal of theirs.
True. They weren't on the side of the Bali bombers, any more than Dr Kelly was on the side of the anti-war movement. But Sawad found the peaceniks useful, just as the peaceniks found Dr Kelly useful. And you can't blame Sawad for being confused as to what, underneath the opportunism and narcissism and 1960s nostalgia, the anti-war movement is actually for. They're the ones who need to get some new clothes.
Not that I can see.
Ummmm.....no thanks.
He was right. The BBC was wrong. But they were huge and had a reputation of being RIGHT. So he was dead, professionally and politically, so he killed himself.
Heads should roll at the BBC, and not just their dishonest reporter, Andrew Gilligan. If the top dogs at the BBC are not forced to resign in disgrace, it will be one more proof of Lily Tomlin's routine as Ernestine the Operator. She pulled the wrong plug and said, "There went Pittsburgh. Oh well, we're too big to care."
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "We Are Running for Congress -- Maybe," discussion thread on FR.
Steyn bump!
Worth repeating.
And, thanks for the "ping", Pokey.
Good one, LOL!
Priceless! And very strongminded - I can't imagine Tony Blair's front-bottom without feeling ill.
What's with the WAS? :o)
Excellent article, of course.
Good question.
Thanks, Pokey.
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