Spectator death-spiral I
Another rant about British journalism.
Boris Johnson is many things. A mayor with a knack for losing deputies. A remarkable journalist who does not take himself too seriously. A rather good editor, who improved The Spectator no end. How much? Well, it’s pretty easy to work out how much by observing the dreadful nonsense being pushed by the current editorial team.
It feels like shooting fish in a barrel, but Mad Mel Phillips is given a slot to say things in the Speccie that the Mail won’t let her say. That’s right. There are things that the Mail won’t let her publish. True, you can scaremonger about vaccinating your children in the Mail, and you can fret that gay marriage is the Achilles’ heel of civilisation. But, it transpires, you can’t say that Barack Obama is a Muslim Manchurian candidate in the Mail.
Happily, there is no such bar in the Speccie. The whackier the claim the better.
Indeed, according to Melanie Phillips, Obama, when not acting as a sleeper president for Islam, is also a secret Communist.
Yes. At the same time. Entirely unencumbered by fact or reason, Mad Mel has actually built a pretty solid case. But it’s very subtle. If he was a communist, you see, he wouldn’t govern as a communist - because that is what you’d expect a Red to do. So, by not acting as a communist, he proves he’s not one.
He’s staying one step ahead of supersleuths like Mel by not doing anything suspicious at all. But gifted gumshoe that she is, that just plays into her hands. And, as if that were not evidence enough that he’s a revolutionary, he has appointed centrist technocrats to his team. Brilliant. That’s exactly what a communist hiding his inner communist would do.
The rest of the Speccie’s online team isn’t quite so bonkers (Alex Massie and Clive Davis are rather intelligent, charming chaps). But most of it is lousy.
The “Coffee House”, their group blog, is a forum for relentless brown-nosing. The Spectator uses its online presence, where talk is cheap, to suck up to important Tories so that its journalists are able to punch above their rather pathetically meagre circulation. Who would talk to weakly dullards such as Fraser Nelson or James Forsyth if there wasn’t a chance of having a gushing online write-up?
This all points to a coherent strategy for a slightly crappy magazine with few readers. Win more google juice and eyeballs by allowing mental Mel free rein. Win over would-be interviews with patsy questions and partisanship so they’ll talk to them. But the madness doesn’t stop online.
Oh no. These people are allowed space in the magazine.
And now, they’ve commissioned a piece from James Delingpole, a relentlessly tedious bore from the failing Telegraph, to puff a book by Ian Plimer. Now, I think George Monbiot is a pompous arse. And much too lefty for me. But, frankly, he’s nailed them. The book they are puffing is monstrous. A waste of time. There are big arguments to be had about climate change, but the nonsense of these psuedo-scientists isn’t helpful to anyone’s case.
It turns out the Barclay Brothers are wrecking the Speccie, much as they are destroying the Telegraph.
