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Brian Micklethwait versus Jimmy Carr – Laurie Penny versus David Starkey

I have just been reminded by a spam commenter that long before denouncing Jimmy Carr was fashionable, I denounced Jimmy Carr, in September 2008. Quote:

I am watching the late night rerun of 8 Out Of 10 Cats on the telly, and I have a complaint. Carr has just said that: “It’s true. 68 percent preferred brains to beauty.” No Carr. If you join me in thinking about this, Carr, what you will realise is that 68 percent of people said they preferred brains to beauty.

Time was when we ordinaries just had to put up with media distortions of this kind, but now, the internet has changed the balance of power. We can now shout back at our tellies, and be heard. The world will never be the same again.

Indeed not. Don’t bother following the link to read the whole thing, because you just did.

More seriously, on a related note to the one sounded by me in para 2 above, here is a posting at Guido’s about how Laurie Penny threw some mud at David Starkey, calling him a racist, and he then threw some more mud back at Ms. Penny. Two short video clips show both bits of mud flying through the air.

This is the first time I have ever see Laurie Penny in action. I definitely prefer her beauty to her brain.

Time was when the original mud thrown by Ms. Penny would have stuck, and Starkey would have been muddied for ever, even in the minds of those who would have sympathised with what he said, on account of the original performance by Starkey on Newsnight that was the basis of Ms. Penny’s accusation not being available for anyone to check, even if they saw it first time around. But the game no longer plays out like that.

As is further illustrated by the fact that, in trying to recover her position with subsequent tweeting following the debate shown in those video clips, Ms. Penny only dug herself deeper into her hole, also exposing her original racism accusation to yet another audience and enabling commenters to clarify the whole spat still further.

The complete video of the event over the weekend is still, alas, stuck behind the Sunday Times paywall. It will surely emerge soon.

9 comments to Brian Micklethwait versus Jimmy Carr – Laurie Penny versus David Starkey

  • 'Nuke' Gray

    Never mind your non-stick glass for tomato sauce bottle! When will some clever scientist come up with non-stick mud? There is a crying need!!!

  • “Bit shaken, but I’ll be OK” Oh, how they do love the little brave quiver in the voice. How perfectly rotten it must be never to have a proper opportunity to, like, totally defy the oppressors because the sly swine confine their oppression to gesticulating and shouting.

    I keep meaning to write a post on persecution envy.

    Another recent example was how Representative Lisa Brown of Michigan (D) pretended to believe the Republicans in the room were all out to rape her:

    ‘I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no’:

    Naomi Woolf then pretended to believe that Brown had been barred from speaking further in the debate merely because she had fearlessly spoken the word “vagina”.

    To give the Guardian credit, a link to a video clip was provided and quite a lot of the commenters mentioned up the inaccuracy in Ms Woolf’s framing of the story.

  • “Bit shaken, but I’ll be okay.”

    Ah, the self-styled ‘riot girl’ and would-be revolutionary who delights in Occupy’s mob intimidation and, as she puts it, “upsetting the police” – but who’s “shaken” by the “violence” of someone giving her a small taste of her own medicine and waving a finger in her face. Let’s hope Laurie never develops self-awareness. She brings so much laughter to our lives.

  • Paul Marks

    Yes – it is interesting that the “racist” charge no longer AUTOMATICALLY wins.

    Dr David Starkey actually said that WHITE people were adopting the culture traditionally associated with blacks.

    This is clearly an ANTI racist statement as it is the position that culture is CULTURAL not GENETIC.

    As an historian Dr Starkey knows that culture is the result of history – for example the growth of the Welfare State, and also the “cultural revolution” from the 1960s onwards.

    This was (for example) Collingwood’s attack on Herder – that culure is a matter of HISTORY, not of BIOLOGICAL RACE.

    The alternative view would be that some vast genetic mutation had occured in the WHITE English population.

    Are the left seriously suggesting that Dr Starkey holds that opinion?

  • Edward Smith

    Francisco Franco, after having been helped so much by by Germany and (to a much lesser extent) Italy, was asked to join the Axis alliance.

    How do you say no to Hitler? Not directly, certainly. Franco was clever. He demanded so much to join the Axis alliance that Hitler and Mussolini left the table in disgust. Franco lived to be an old man. He had a state funeral, and his remains remain undisturbed.

    Laurie Penny felt so threatened by David Starkey that she had to pull a Franco? Perhaps she is a tad too sensitive to heat to even approach the kitchen.

  • Apparently after the tortuous negotiations with Franco Hitler is reported to have said something like, “I’d rather have two or three teeth extracted than go through that again.” We are very lucky Franco didn’t come on side with Hitler – Gibraltar would have fell…

  • Paul Marks

    Yes Nick.

    And that would have cut Britain off from the Med and the Middle East.

    War over.

    Britain would have had to come to terms with National Socialist Germany – if Churchill had refused he would have replaced by someone who would come to terms.

    Franco could have given Hitler victory.

    But Franco (quite rightly) did not trust Hitler – and so made (deliberatly) impossible demands in return for Spanish support in closeing the Med by taking Gib.

  • 'Nuke' Gray

    I know it is hard to believe, but some members of some governments will take money for promoting viewpoints! I read somewhere that some people in Franco’s fascists were being bribed to report to Franco that they should stay out of the war! Shocking, I know! Can anyone confirm it?