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Sunday 2 November 2014

Don’t Menshn Muslims

The Sun is hidden away behind a paywall, but a Zelo Street regular has made extracts from today’s paper available (see how that works, Rupe?). And from these, it is all too clear that the attack on Mil The Younger is being joined in earnest, even at the expense of what little factual accuracy the red-tops can usually manage. The event is, to no surprise at all, Miliband’s donation to a homeless woman.
(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

Who will lead the charge? Will it be a down-to-earth man or woman of the people who walks among them on a daily basis? You jest: for this task, the Super Soaraway Currant Bun has enlisted the dubiously honed skills of (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket. The detachment from reality is palpable from the word go.

Everything about this incident shows just why Labour is imploding” she asserts, managing not to notice that the party suffering in-fighting and defections right now is the Tories, but then, she and her paper are shilling for Young Dave and his jolly good chaps. “Ed only handed out a copper” she claims, although, as I pointed out yesterday, it was at least two coins, and neither appeared slim enough to be a 2p bit.

But it does not take too long for Ms Mensch to go way over the top: “let’s throw in the fact [that would be ‘personal observation’, actually] that this street vagrant looks clean, well-dressed and is wearing a headscarf that indicates she is some kind of immigrant”. I’ll just capitalise that: “WEARING A HEADSCARF THAT INDICATES SHE IS SOME KIND OF IMMIGRANT”.
Wearing a headscarf means that the wearer is, er, wearing a headscarf. No other attribute can be given with any certainty, although in most cases, it shows that the wearer is a follower of The Prophet. So what Louise Mensch is saying is “All Muslim women in the UK right now are immigrants”. Had that been a Labour, Lib Dem or indeed UKIP pundit saying that, the Sun would have been outraged.

We’re left with one of two alternatives: either the Sun’s subs – or, worse, its senior editorial staff – thought that kind of singularly nasty comment was OK, or they couldn’t be arsed subbing Louise Mensch’s column, which, given the litany of wacko opinion masquerading as fact that she has come out with in the past, is most unwise. And that she meant to say what she said is not in doubt.

The Sunday Sun has shown here that its desperation to smear the Labour leader is so great that it is prepared to base opinion columns on speculation dressed up as fact, and then to reinforce them by smearing people in the basis of their religious affiliation. Louise Mensch and her paper are veering too close to the racism line; one more wobble and they’ll go straight across it.

That remark is bang out of order. So don’t expect an apology any time soon.

5 comments:

rob said...

"his street vagrant looks clean, well-dressed and is wearing a headscarf that indicates she is some kind of immigrant”.

A bit like saying a Sun columnist with botoxed looks indicates some kind of overpaid bitter ex pat right wing Murdoch puppet?

Shawlrat said...

As a clean, well dressed home owning woman who has immigrant ancestry I shall commence the wearing of a headscarf forthwith.

Yellow or pink stars anyone?

Phil said...

The next line (after the 'headscarf' sentence) is

"Exactly the class of person Labour threw open the gates to, insisting that Eastern European immigration would be good for the economy."

Although the target of Mensch's bigotry may be Albanian and Kosovar headscarf-wearing Muslims, I think it's just as likely to be Polish and Romanian headscarf-wearing Christians.

Equally appalling either way (or both ways). Perhaps incidents like this will provoke more of a united response from all minority communities - for someone like Mensch they're all equally suspect.

Anonymous said...

If someone went from Britain to live permanently in the US wouldn't that make them some sort of a .... can't think...

rob said...

@ Anon

Someone who should be trying to concentrate on integrating with his/her current society rather than pining for the fjords, sorry, the old country by passing remarks on Twitter such as:

"Louise Mensch ‏@LouiseMensch 4h4 hours ago

SUN: Our streets are plagued by organized beggars run by East European criminal gangs. Ed Mili just endorsed that"

Notice "our"?