Monday 9 December 2013

Cringeworthy Comedy At The Guardian

Via Timmy, do go read this hilarious claptrap at the Graun.
Nigel Farage's cigarettes are often depicted as one of the most appealing things about him. To date, his deployment of crafty or, occasionally, cheeky ciggies, while all around him conform to public health advice, has been a remarkably well-received token of his libertarian vision. Of course, his constant smoking is, first and foremost, a little guy demonstration that he is nothing like professional politicians – NB E Milband, D Cameron – who rarely invest in anything more than a lager to advertise their human DNA.
Well, yes. That's perhaps why his party is riding so high in the polls, no?

But this is but a poorly-attempted hatchet job - as remarkably well recognised by the derision from Guardian commenters below the line - so could only result in one denouement.
When Farage argues for zero interference by the nanny state, this inevitably makes him an unhealth campaigner – for lung cancer, for obesity and for an epidemic of diabetes, not forgetting his party's enthusiasm for higher speed limits, thereby adding thousands more to Ukip's morbidity targets.
Course it does, dear, because absurd leaps of logic are no longer for immature spotty teens. As Dan Hannan explains adriotly, they are for idiot adults too.
Without intending to, Bob was using the same line that trolls habitually do: “Unless you explicitly say X, we can all assume Y”. Every blogger, every Tweeter, will recognise the tactic.
Not our pitifully poor arroganza, though, she's obviously not aware of anything of the sort. She just motors down that intellectual cul-de-sac without a care whether she has a reverse gear or not.
Why Farage should be 100% in love with easeful death is anyone's guess, but, for pure, cautionary value, he could still be the best thing to happen to the nanny state since the foundation of the NHS.
Presumably why voters are deserting Ukip in droves; why mainstream politicians are enjoying historic levels of popularity; and the nanny state has never been more respected by the public.

Do go read. Watching the desperate furiously scraping barrels can be very funny sometimes.

UPDATE: Simon Cooke has written about this with more of a broadsheet inspection to my tabloid guffaw. Go visit there and read about the "especially unpleasant piece of ad hominem in The Guardian".



2 comments:

Edgar said...

Aye. One of the comments contains the following words " ... just look how unattractive,crumple-faced and wrinkly they [some well known smokers] are as a result for example; Hockney is admittedly an old man now, ... ". But how did Hockney get to be an old man, him being a smoker and all? Come to think of it, every day I see any number of cotton-tops puffing away on their fags. To be honest, I'm beginning to think that there may be less to this 'smoking kills you' claim than meets the standard organic instrument of vision.

truckerlyn said...

Ah, professional politicians - now we know! Obviously the school for professional politicians needs some drastic changes, as what they have been producing over recent decades has been a Total Disaster!


What is wrong with professional politicians is that they have never actually lived in the real world, the one that most of us live in. They haven't had to decide whether to eat or heat, whether to go without food and clothes themselves in order to feed and clothe their children and pay the bills. That means, in my book, they are not fit to govern a country where they are so far out of touch with the majority of the population, simply because they do not have a clue!


Give me the likes of Nigel Farage over professional politicians any day of the week. I would willingly put my trust in someone who is in touch with the general public.


Close the school of professional politicians, it is a complete failure.