February 20, 2010
Poor Little Liddle
Somehow this one got through for nearly a week without anyone on the left/Stop Liddle Campaign picking it up in a major way. Presumably because we’ve all got better things to do than read Rod Liddle’s weekly bile in the Sunday Times.
But his effort from last weekend is really worth a look.
Ostensibly, Liddle is bemoaning the case of a primary school that set up it’s own farm, and when a little lamb was old enough to go to the chop house, suddenly “all hell broke loose”.
Apparently “It was at this point that the endlessly hyperactive, bone-headed online fascists got involved”.
“Some 2,500 cretins started an online petition calling for the beleaguered head teacher [Andrea Charman, of Lydd primary school] to be sacked. It is entirely possible that none of them whatsoever had any connection to Lydd primary school. However, the campaign of vilification and vituperation had begun.”
Righteous Rod goes on:
“Another Facebook site was set up by 650 similarly sad, lifeless, drongoes, demanding not merely that Charman be sacked but — and I quote — to Ban Andrea Charman From Teaching Anywhere. Can you imagine the sort of people who would associate themselves with such a cause?”
But there’s more!
“Thick, bitter, utterly convinced of their own rectitude, though they constitute about 0.001% of the population. Convinced enough to make this woman’s life a total misery. The new electronic media might make the world a better-informed and more democratic place, but it also allows the splenetically dunderheaded to impose their will upon others, in a spectacularly uninformed and undemocratic manner.”
Ouch! But wait, there’s even more to be said:
“ [I]t was a defeat for democracy and a victory for those crepuscular cyber-warriors, holed up in their dank bedsits, who cannot bear other people to hold opinions which differ from their own and demand that their minority views must prevail.”
My-oh-my, Rod has certainly got his knickers in a twist about those evil online campaigners, hasn’t he?
Of course, this article couldn’t possibly be about something other than Lydd Primary School, could it? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be about another highly energetic online campaign that now appears to have succeeded in preventing Rod Liddle becoming editor of The Independent?
Of course not. That would just be the fevered paranoid imagining of a crepuscular cyber-warrior, holed-up in his dank bedsit, laughing his sad, lifeless, drongoe head right off.
Peter said,
February 20, 2010 at 4:07 pm
It is fucking dumb to call for the Headteacher to be sacked though, isn’t it?
(relatedly, have you heard about the “No Meat Mondays” that is happening in various Oxford colleges?)
Of course, none of this changes the fact that Liddle is a massive bellend.
Paul Sagar said,
February 21, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous insofar as Liddle’s account is accurate.
The Bounds of Legitimacy « Bad Conscience said,
February 25, 2010 at 1:46 pm
[...] the stalking horse piece about internet campaigners that I recently flagged up, Liddle uses the following choice [...]