France - Sun Goes Chicken Hypocrite

As leaders from around the world gather in Paris and march to show their solidarity with the French people in the wake of last week’s mass killing of journalists and the subsequent Police killing and hostage takings, questions are being asked as to whether this will all change anything, especially after the German magazine that republished some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons was firebombed earlier.

Over at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, Rupe’s downmarket troops, who have been bullish as ever in the past week, might well ask that. There they are, shouting the odds at any follower of The Prophet who happens to be looking in, and making the most jingoistic noises as the French security forces end the siege of the Kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes, but the reality is rather different.

The Sun and its hacks, by their behaviour, show that nothing in their neck of the woods will change, except for more grovelling to the spooks for those who they don’t like, while they of course have to be exempted from such things, as witness the paper’s non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn, who was aghast to see his phone records had been purloined by the spooks, cheering on the idea of more power for the, er, spooks.

And his boss Stig Abell, supposedly the voice of intelligent and reasoned courage, is no better. He says of the Charlie Hebdo attacks “Today makes you feel very sad, but also a bit proud, to be part - in whatever limited way - in the business of freedom of speech”. So he’s going to be republishing one or two of those cartoons in the near future, then? You jest. No Murdoch shilling taker is of perfect courage.

All that Abell managed to get cleared was the ridiculously jingoistic front page showing the end to the two hostage takings, with the bullish headline “THAT’S FOR CHARLIE”. Those who survived the mass murder of Charlie Hebdo journalists last week might have managed a wry smile at that one. The German magazine getting attacked was One For Charlie. The Sun steering clear of the magazine’s content was not.

Rupe’s downmarket troops are even indulging in facing both ways over security: while Newton Dunn cheered on London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson when he suggested that snooping on suspects was A Very Good Thing, he had earlier sneered at Mil The Younger’s appearance on The Andy Marr Show (tm), noting the Labour leader “refuses to say whether he supports new communications data powers for spooks”.

So when Stig Abell watches the Paris march and concludes “The scale of the march, the unity of the leaders: moving and impressive. But do we believe the world will be any different tomorrow?” he manages not to let anyone know that at least one of his pundits asked the paper to use some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but got turned down. Meanwhile, even the hated BBC showed examples to its viewers.

Stig, your paper is nothing more than a repository of all that is hypocritical - and chicken.