Bastardisation of the East: From one leech to another: Eff off Simon

Thursday, June 08, 2006

From one leech to another: Eff off Simon

Snotty ex Daily Mail and current Daily Telegraph darling, Simon Heffer has indulged in a seething and irrational rant about Ken Loach in his latest column [you need to naviagte past his erudite and well-researched opinions on John Prescott football and burgers to see it]. Heffer used to write short alarmist rants in the Daily Mail, generally critical of Marxist Britain, pesky gay people and the death of morality all around him, demonstrating how bigotted and out of touch he really was. Therefore, when he moved to the Daily Telegraph in 2005 some believed he had found his natural habitat, forgetting that, while The Telegraph is bad, it is hardly North Korea.

Heffer's main complaint about the Palme d'Or-winning film The Wind that Shakes the Barley [at least we have to asume that is what is raving about. The buffoon never mentions any film by name] is that Loach uses public money to make films that, instead of praising the British Fatherland and its history of perfect foreign policy, criticise the behaviour of the British government and its behaviour towards Ireland in the 1920s. Criticism? We shant be having any of that. If you want to make a film about Britain, do it properly; chuck in some Spitfires and if there are any foreigners involved make sure they're on the wrong side of a good hard machine-gunning.

Unfortunately, Simon gets off to a bad start by claiming that Loach's name looks a lot like "leech". Of course, I would view that as a compliment. Leeches can be used to draw out poison from a wound, an apt metaphor for what Loach has actually been doing over the years in his films, that often side with the oppressed in the face of imperial force. Simon also leaves himself exposed. To me, Heffer looks and sounds an awful lot like "heifer", Simon. Imagine, a mad cow from Great Britain. How absurd...

As George Monbiot points out, Heffer can hardly deny that the events portrayed actually happened. So it seems that Loach's crime is to force the British public to look at - what can't be called their own crimes [despite what Simon, and other right-wing loudmouths like Melanie Phillips might think, it's not anti-British, nor masochistic to critique the government] - but the crimes committed against the Irish at a particular point in history. If a German was to use public funds to make a film about the evil of the Holocaust would he complain? Having read his bitchy Daily Mail columns over the years I already know the answer, and the sad thing is that Simon doesn't think the Germans dwell enough on this point in their history [I say "their" history, but if you subtract the German people who were born after 1945, the German people who opposed Hitler and the German people that would have found the crimes of the Third Reich abhorrent had they seen past the propaganda, that part of German history doesn't belong to many people these days]. It's ok for other countries to flagellate themselves in Simon's world. But an admission of guilt from Great Britain is "repulsive". North Korea would be too good for our Simon.

I suppose it can only get better for Simon after all these double standards and gunshots to the feet. But Simon is on a roll, ad in such a compact columan he manages to fit in one last coup de grace:

"And no, I haven't seen it, any more than I need to read Mein Kampf to know what a louse Hitler was."

He hasn't even seen the film! I don't use exclamation marks lightly, but I think a few more are in order here!!! And of course, we all know that Hitler is universally reviled because he wrote a nasty book. If the xenophobic Simon Heffer was a German he would be the first to sing Hitler's praises, and I should know. I've actually taken the time to read the louse's columns.

¶ posted by Jon at 6/08/2006

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