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The Guardian Apologizes
National Politics, Personal Comments (9)
On the Guardian’s site today instead of the horrid Charlie Booker column that has been made so much of which ended “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr – where are you now that we need you?”.
The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.
“Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action – an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind.”
Actually, the only people who were not offended would have been the same members of left who like to refer to ‘Bushitler the Chimperor.’ I have strongly disagreed with the various policies of different governments over time and yet I cannot recall a single instance of doing something that really is a call for the assassination of a democratically elected leader — especially one then standing for election.
Despite the Guardian’s disclaimer that he does not speak for them, they nevertheless retained and retain the right to refuse to publish such inflamatory and probably illegal invective. Therefore I find the “apology” with which the Guardian chooses to “associate itself” to be a thin attempt at damage control at best.
Perhaps the Guardian would also find the humor in asking where John Bellingham is when Tony Blair next stands for office.
There is no humor there. There could never have been humor there. I am also failing to see the irony in this “ironic joke.” Instead of admitting that it was a mistake to publish such tripe, they are basically responding by saying “it was supposed to be funny and we’re awfully sorry that you chaps are so thin-skinned. Now please excuse us. It’s time for the grown-ups to go have a spot of tea and maybe a biscuit or two.”
If that’s an apology, then I think I refuse to accept it.
[UPDATE: Yes, that's a challenge for someone to point out either the irony or the joke in the original statement.]
MickC @ October 24, 2004
[...] but its shoe remains dirty.
(Via Intellectual Intercourse)
[...] add to the discussion. Outraged I was, but all of those others just said it better. So I issued a challenge that someone point out either the irony or the [...]
Apology or Damage Control?
Appearing in The Guardian today:
The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.
“Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence cau…
I don’t know about you, but to me that was the biggest “non-apology” I’ve ever seen.
Well, it’s not an apology. It’s damage-control.
What’s sad is that the next time President Bush visits merry old England, this nut will get a visit by MI5 and the USSS. We’ll see a Guardian article then about how his “free speach [sic]” rights have been trampled.
UPDATE: Yes, that’s a challenge for someone to point out either the irony or the joke in the original statement
I’ll take the bait. Charlie Brooker has a regular column in the Guardian’s TV Guide, in which he goes into deliberately absurd invectives vaguely inspired by the week’s TV. It’s a running joke, the humour value of which you may or may not appreciate – more like Archie Bunker or Basil Fawlty than a serious columnist.
So if you’re going to suggest that he’s called for the asssassination of President Bush, this does also require suggesting that he’s called for televised suicide as part of Pop Idol, for minor celebrities to be deported to torture camps, and for people who don’t pay their TV subscription to be hanged.
The Guardian website should probably distinguish better between deliberately absurd ranting and serious commentary pieces. However, there was no ambiguity in the print edition – this piece was on p54 of the TV guide; political commentary is in the back six pages of the news section.
To be fair, I’d say that most people that have taken the time to read about Brooker’s background and actually read the article in full will have appreciated that all he meant was that Bush should be hounded out of the White House and dumped in a ditch after a good kicking.
Unfortunately, most of the vitriol has come from those that read the “offending” extract in isolation.
News just in:
Tony Blair should be shot (for buying that tie).
Michael Jackson needs to be blowtorched in the face (as a precautionary measure because of excessive amounts of plastic being used on his last nose job).
Read the words around the words, kids. Otherwise you’re reading someones interpretation of the words, and that’s just stupid.
Speaking as one of those who has tossed out some of the vitriol, I will add that I did, in fact, read the whole thing. Part of what I found disturbing was that within the whole context of the article itself Mr. Brooker was saying that stating that most Europeans are in favor of replacing the current President of the United States using, really, any means possible. When you end that by mentioning three well-known Presidential assassins then that thought takes on a whole new light, does it not?
Mickey, it’s not disturbing. When you take into account the very obvious fact that he’s not actually screaming a rallying cry to would-be assassins, it’s actually fairly light social commentary.
The article talks about Bush’s ineptness during the televised debates, then the wire issue and finishes with a swipe at Kerry and a plea that America vote him in regardless of his resemblance to a haunted tree. Not to mention the fact that the piece is in Brooker’s TV column – we’re not talking about a paper publishing a full-page rant from one of their political correspondents.
This is all bollocks, it really is.