Growing Up All Dizzy

Why some bloggers insist on using aliases remains a mystery to me. The initial anonymity never lasts, as Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) discovered when the Guardian’s Michael White unmasked him in the television studio. Another whose real identity is widely known is Phil Hendren, who blogs under the banner of Dizzy Thinks.

And Hendren has a stock in trade that he might do well to follow himself: the urging on others that they “grow up”. The latest manifestation of this clarion call was to Will Straw and the routinely mischievous Sunny Hundal after the two had commented adversely on the buying up of domain names by Matthew “Gromit” Elliott of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, as part of his fronting up the campaign against the proposed Alternative Vote (AV) reform.

Hendren, demonstrating his mature grasp of political discourse, labelled Straw and Hundal “pant wetting”, “girly”, and asked if Straw “filled the proverbial nappy”. He then signed off by urging the two to “grow the f*** up”, apparently unaware that effing and blinding is not a qualification for adulthood. In this faux rage he has been cheered on by Iain Dale, a compliant and reliable conduit for Tory propaganda, in the manner of a schoolboy egging on a participant in a playground fight, while ensuring he does not get personally involved.

This is not the first time that Hendren has urged growing up on others: last year, using a particularly lame appeal to authority as cover, he ranted at length about the surplus of heat over light generated as the US healthcare debate spilled over into Canada and the UK. There was no mention of the appallingly high cost to the USA in terms of GDP (around twice the UK percentage), nor of the vested interests attempting to buy influence on the Hill.

This was, in his view, about us in the UK being anti-American, arrogant, and characterising fine upstanding US citizens as “knuckle dragging rednecks”, which latter came as a surprise, as I’d not previously heard it used in the debate. The ranting was then reinforced by his claim to have been off work recuperating, and so being in a position to see the debate on TV. Here, good citizens were engaged in rational Q and A, and no more.

So he managed to miss the wheelchair bound woman who was howled down at one Town Hall meeting, the Jewish man backing the reforms being subjected to a “Heil Hitler” taunt, and Rep. Barney Frank being asked why he was “supporting this Nazi policy”. There were many others.

Hendren also misrepresented the activities of Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, who went on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) and took part in a routinely misleading portrayal of the NHS. But the purveyor of this selective and slanted drivel says others need to grow up.

Yeah, right, Phil.