'Nother Solent

Isn't this headline absurd?

"The National Crisis." It's about Cherie Blair.

Sure, Cherie has tried to have it both ways for too long: standing on her privacy yet holding seminars on policy issues. And who fixed it for Euan Blair to hob nob with Kate Winslet at a movie première?

As so often there was a whole new story lurking in the margins of the one everybody's talking about. Explaining the hostility between the normally pro-Labour Mirror and Cherie Blair, the Guardian comments:

There is no great mystery as to the reason for the hostility. Piers Morgan, the Mirror editor, recently revealed that Mrs Blair had tried to get him the sack, complaining to his bosses that he was missing a moral compass.

I am surprised and concerned to learn that the Prime Minister's wife could even think she had the power or influence to get a newspaper editor sacked.

All very revealing. But not a national crisis, let alone the national crisis.

Dan Dare was

actually a little too scary for the six-year old market today. Arachno-humanoid aliens wrapped up captives - including our heroes - in cocoons and ate them as and when. Fortunately Sondar was there to whop their heads off, spreading ichor all over the place. It owed something to the film of Starship Troopers and something to Aliens. One of the best in-atmosphere spaceship battle sequences I have ever seen, though.

No, Natalie you have not pressed the right buttons.

Some Blogger glitch or other means that I'm stuck with the malformed post before this one, my shame public for evermore. Good thing I didn't idly tap my fingers on the keys and write My vote for Sexpot of the Blogiverse is [edit]

Here is the previous post done properly:

No, Margo, you are not well read. Tee hee. Margo Kingston, the dame Tim Blair made world famous, has been caught out by the same fake Shakespeare quote that earlier caught out Barbra Streisand. In this webdiary entry she¹ writes:

"Quoting historical figures can be perilous when confronting the convictions of the righteous, but just to demonstrate that this has all happened before, I've included a selection of the sayings of the wise and not so wise over the ages. Just in case anyone thinks I am well read (I wish!) I found these by trawling the internet for a few minutes. If you don't need further convincing you can skip this part."

I do need further convincing that Julius Caesar, either in his own right or as imagined by Shakespeare, ever said this:

Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervour. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Julius Caesar.

Barbra Streisand quoted almost identical words in a speech to the Democratic National Gala, but later on had to put this correction on her website.

(The Kingston and Streisand versions of this internet hoax are almost identical but not quite. The last line Kingston quotes has "And I am Julius Caesar" where Streisand had "And I am Caesar." Also Kingston has "drum" for Streisand's "drums". However, in comparison to publishing the notion that the phrase "...the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry-" either came from the Latin or was penned by William Shakespeare, the misquotation of a misquotation is no great sin.)

Funny thing is, Babra Streisand's slip happened two months ago and was widely reported then. Ms Kingston ought to read more Mark Steyn. Then she'd catch up with things.

¹ LATER: What a complicated post this is turning out to be. I thought there were two mid-length quotations from this chap David Makinson in this Margo Kingston webdiary entry, each of them starting with his name and ending with three little stars. I never dreamed that any real journalist would get away with putting their byline at the top of an article, writing an entry quote and one paragraph and then abandoning the whole of the rest of the article to be filled up by quotes from a mate of theirs. (How did they split the take, I wonder?) Yet this is what Tim Blair claims has happened, and he knows more about what is allowed in Australian newspapers than I do. So it's David, not Margo, who is not well read. Well, both of them actually.

No, Margo, you are not well read.

Tee hee. Margo Kingston, the dame Tim Blair made famous, caught out by the same fake Shakespeare quote that earlier caught out Barbra Streisand. In this webdiary

Never give up your disbelief

Wot, no posts?

I am on a secret mission to hunt down and destroy the enemies of our country. My claim to be trying to learn two different graphics programmes at once in order to earn a few pennies is mere cover. I know I can trust you guys not to tell.

"All right then, who would He vote for?"

I have a post about the phrase 'What would Jesus Do?' over at Samizdata.

"We must prevent an exchange of monologues."

Airstrip One reports how brave little Holland is standing up to be counted in the face of Mugabe's tyranny.

Asymptotically limited blogging today.

I have to make some money. But I can't resist quoting an exchange in the Libertarian Alliance Forum between me and Sean Gabb, the author of the God and Margaret Thatcher piece linked to in the post below.

After Dr Gabb posted his piece, I commented thus :

Jesus Christ was so little minded to give specific guidance as to politics that he didn't even deal with the issue of slavery. And these twits think that it's heresy to be in favour of the free market or against the UN.

SG responded:

From the Revered Elderberry Pinkneedle:

"Of course, and in a very real sense, are not the Gospels the foundation of the 2001 Labour Manifesto? Would not Jesus have gone up to Tony Blair and said: 'Well done thou good and faithful servant. Depart in peace -but not yet?"

From the BBC Today book of Thought for the Day, © BBC Publications, 2003

Just in case the BBC's lawyers are already on the case, it was me that added the copyright sign, seeing as it had got swamped by tachyonic inteference in the temporal transfer.

God and Margaret Thatcher and The Established Church of England.

The inimitable Sean Gabb lets fall an avalanche of criticism on a snowball of an aside thrown out by a report to the Church of England. The report said, just in passing:

[u]ntil the Church of England can choose its own bishops, Christian ecumenicism is stymied, because no other church will amalgamate with one whose bishops might be chosen by a future Margaret Thatcher.

That little remark spurred Dr Gabb's commentary.

"Far more effective, the authors of the report knew, was to imply her theological status in a sneer of 32 words - 32 words that it has taken 3,200 words of even abbreviated argument to expose and refute."

The 100 to one ratio is not so disproportionate if you think of the many more than a hundred occasions that foolish little sneers like this one have appeared in the media.

LATER: I can't link directly to the piece concerned, so the link takes you to the Free Life Commentary index page. Scroll down the little blue window on the left to find Free Life Commentary No. 82.