It is, after all, one of the favourite lines used by their
unfunny and talentless churnalist Richard Littlejohn, so it should be no
surprise to hear yourself think “you
couldn’t make it up” in response to the mixture of desperation and
stupidity doled out today by the Daily
Mail’s deeply unpleasant Glenda-in-residence Jan Moir, who has been ordered
over the top on the subject of internet porn.
“Why
DO the Left sneer at Cameron's bid to block porn?” she trills,
right on cue. What’s the problem, Jan? “How
on earth did it happen that a river of pornography merrily flows into every
house in the country via a laptop? When did hard core become so ... normalised?
I didn't sign up to a national porn programme. Did you?” she bleats,
painting a picture that does not exist.
And, as the man said, there’s more: “Yet porn seepage has crept up on all of us -
a rising flood water of vile and violent imagery that seemed unstoppable, until
now ... Of course, normalcy
and acceptance is just what the porn industry wants. It craves respectability.
It wants the consumption of porn to be as casual and everyday as the purchase
of a packet of cornflakes”. What a load of tosh.
Then we get the attempt to conflate any adult
content with child porn and paedophilia: Vincent Tabak leads to Mark Bridger
and soon we arrive at the long defunct Paedophile Information Exchange. Yes, we
must Think About The Children, and Ms Moir has the opponents to Young Dave’s
jolly good scheme in her sights: “Yet
some, particularly on the Left,
dismiss Cameron's plans” [my emphasis].
So who are these rotten lefties who “sneer” at the attempts to hold back this tide of stuff that most of
us have never seen, or even so much as thought about seeing? Well, one particularly
trenchant critic of Cameron’s ideas is Mic Wright, who says “David
Cameron can't protect us from child porn because he doesn't understand the internet”.
Terrible, eh? Except he’s at the Telegraph.
And, not that it seems to matter to the obedient hackery of
the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, Wright has some idea of the technology
involved, as does another critic, Mark Wallace, telling “Claire
Perry’s porn filter is fantasy policy making, and it’s coming unstuck”.
Except he used to shill for the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, and is writing
for ConHome.
On top of that, the tech publications, like
TechWeek Europe, not a
particularly well known hotbed of leftism, are not impressed. And there is the
small matter of Claire Perry, self-proclaimed champion of banning porn, showing
herself up this week as technologically illiterate and signally clueless.
None of this has anything to do with “the
left”. But it has everything to do with folks not knowing their subject.
And that convocation
of blind ignorance clearly includes Jan Moir.
4 comments:
You can understand the Mail's position on a lot of things, even if you vehemently disagree with them.
On the other hand this is baffling, unless Mailonline is so addicted to getting hits that it publishes articles (as it must know by now) is going to prompt a torrent of criticism on related comments boards.
As the "war on drugs" staggers to a failed end, let's start another un-winable one .... The "War on Porn".
It gives those thoughtful right-wing commentators a new stick with which to beat anyone who stands in the way of their crusade.
And with no hint of irony the next Moir article is laying into killjoy lefty feminist Harriet Harperson, banner in chief of Page 3 stunners.
The most liberal attitudes to internet porn come from the libertarian right. But the main attacks against Cameron's proposals have no ideological basis; poorly conceived, inconsistent and technically illiterate.
Can't for the life of me think why the Mail keeps banging on about this.
Other than the fact it's the one subject Dirty Des has to steer well clear of.
Post a Comment