Nobody Listening, But Somebody’s Home

Over at the Maily Telegraph website, someone has a problem getting his target audience to listen to him: step forward self styled “saviour of the western world” James Delingpole, who has assumed – wrongly – that he is on a mission to annoy anyone and everyone whose stance is to the left of his (which would be around 90% of the population).

Looking at his sneer-filled blog for a reaction to Monday evening’s BBC4 Meet The Climate Sceptics, which he had decided in advance was a “stitch-up”, I found that his review was missing, perhaps because those climate sceptics, like his pal Christopher Monckton, got plenty of exposure and opportunity to make their pitch, even if they did not convince any of the talking heads who do not share their beliefs.

In place of the expected rubbishing of Beeb and established science was Delingpole’s show of distress at viewing Channel 4’s Ten O’Clock Live the previous Thursday. The show, he concluded, is “leftie comedy”, and Charlie Brooker’s cynical look at “tea party” favourite Sarah Palin confirmed that presenters and audience were “right-on”, which also means “leftie”.

But all is not lost, because, as Delingpole concludes, Palin “drives liberals totally crazy”. In support of this dubious argument, he notes that Dana Milbank of the WaPo has said he will not mention the former Alaska governor for the whole of February. Milbank, whom Delingpole calls a “libtard” – sadly, someone who read English Literature at Oxford is no longer able to summon a competent subset of the language – is making the point that Palin is not worth the time and effort.

This, though, is lost on Delingpole, who may have missed Monday night’s Daily Show, where host Jon Stewart speculated as to whether Palin might be a Russian agent (video may not play in the UK). The message from comedy shows on both sides of the north Atlantic is the same: Palin is becoming a figure of ridicule.

And if James Delingpole wants to annoy liberals, he needs to get someone who liberals actually read and take seriously to relay his ideas. Continually sounding off to his echo chamber on the Maily Telegraph site will merely confirm him as a cheap UK version of Ann Coulter, who is revered by the Republican right, but whose hectoring rhetoric is tuned out by all those liberals who are supposed to be annoyed by it.

Which makes both of them utterly ineffective, so long may they continue.