Raheem Kassam Gets Mildly Paranoid

One problem that the tribalist right never manage to get over is that not every media outlet serves up the news in the way that they would like it to be. A then more telling problem is their reaction to this, which is generally to veer between adhering to Olbermann’s dictum (“the right exists in a perpetual state of victimhood”), and forthright paranoia, the thought that those rotten lefties are coming to get them.

It's "Mr Conservative" again, folks! Keep hold of those sick buckets!!

Illustrating this superbly is narcissist and fantasist Raheem Kassam, who has taken my post on his excursions into the land of make-believe particularly badly. Having gone on ad infinitum – verging on ad nauseam – about how he plays the ball and not the man, Kassam was reduced to carping “You really are shit ... Are you really this thick ... you pinkos” while accusing me of editing his Wikipedia hagiography.

But there was one achievement from his rantings: The Commentator, yet another over-hyped repository of right-wing frothing and ranting which is just another jumped-up group blog, is conceded by The Great Man to be a mere “side-project”. Hopefully he has communicated this message to owner and publisher Robin Shepherd and those 250 plus writers, so they all know the true value of their efforts.

He has, though, been constructively engaged while not lashing out at those of dissenting view. Kassam has been tuning in to cable news channel MSNBC. Here, he has found the content on offer not at all pleasing to him. But, having also looked in on Zelo Street, he has, in the manner of his pal the flannelled fool Henry Cole, borrowed my words to illustrate his distaste.

So “vomit inducing” goes from being a description of his narcissism (sorry Raheem, I’m still not linking to it) to part of his characterisation of MSNBC, which from behind the Kassam sofa of fright becomes a “ruthless ... propaganda machine”. Er, hello? The channel which kicks off its day with Joe and Mika is a “propaganda machine”? The station with Rachel Maddow and her Cocktail Moment?

Ho yus. Especially Rachel Maddow. “MSNBC is potentially worse than the Guardian” he carps. Heck, its journalism must be quite decent, then. And he borrows from another recent Zelo Street post to follow that: “Rachel Maddow makes Polly Toynbee look like Enoch Powell”. Correction: if Raheem Kassam had to face Rachel Maddow, he’d be shown up to be a graceless, clueless, floundering buffoon.

Cocktail Moment: deeply subversive

What’re you frightened of, Raheem? You’re just another tribalist who can’t understand why some folks don’t agree with you. You’re so far out on the right that you call Bill-O “immovably centrist”. What will you be telling everyone next? That there are communists in the State Department? Maybe they’re behind the proposed deletion of your Wikipedia hagiography. Perhaps you should be afraid.

Not that they’re out to get you, of course. Or are they?