Brendan O’Neill PWNED On Covid-19

At times of national crisis, it becomes more difficult to blame others as a quick way of deflecting from questions about the Government’s handling of the situation. In the world of the Media Establishment, this means not being able to dump on foreigners, and especially those from EU member states, Scary Muslims™, and the Rotten Lefties™. And with the Covid-19 outbreak, some pundits have found their room for manoeuvre constrained.

This has superbly exposed the sheer vacuousness of many in the media class, the total lack of actual knowledge and analytical ability. And for Brendan O’Neill of Spiked, so called because it should have been long ago, this has brought the moment of reckoning closer, so close in fact that it came last night on the Sky Papers review.

O’Neill and the sneering deployment of his all-purpose quote generator came up against a determined and ultimately exasperated Christina Patterson, formerly of the Independent and now a freelance. With today’s Guardian front page up there on the display, its headline “Virus ‘may last a year and put 8m in NHS hospitals’” clearly visible, O’Neill engaged quote generator mode and decided to blame someone from his approved list of villains.

Christina Patterson

It was “Apocalyptic leftists in the media” to blame. On so many other subjects, Bren would have got away with it. Not this time. Ms Patterson had heard enough. “I have to say Brendan, we are going through something that is not unlike a war here, and I am pretty shocked that you’re turning this into a party political issue of left and right … you said it’s leftist people who are wanting to close … where does leftist come in in all of this?”

O’Neill confirmed that he had said “Apocalyptic leftists in the media”. That’s the same media of which he is a part. Worse for him, the Guardian story had been lifted by the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, a paper which cannot in any way be described as leftist.

The offending Lefty Guardian story ...

So Ms Patterson was having none of it. “It’s nothing to do with left or right … nobody knows what [is] the right thing to do in this situation. Everybody in this country is worrying about their loved ones. People older than you … in the 55+ age category are worrying about whether they are going to die. Many people are worrying about whether their parents and grandparents are going to die”. And she wasn’t finished yet.

“We don’t know what is the right or wrong thing to do. What we do know is that what we’re doing is out of step with what the rest of the world is doing”. Bren spotted an entry. “How do you know that what we are doing is wrong?” But Ms Patterson has not said that. O’Neill was once again playing at politics, trying to shift the goalposts to make him look good.

... is also in the Not Lefty Express

So she called him out once more. “Did you not listen to a word I just said? I said we don’t know what is right”. O’Neill then accused her of shouting and told her to calm down. Sexist, much? But by now the penny had dropped: O’Neill knew that his usual schtick was not going to work. He had been rumbled. But he still pretended that someone out there (leftists, perchance?) was using the Covid-19 crisis to “transform the world forever”.

This was also bullshit. But by now he was horribly exposed, stripped of the comfort blanket offered by his ability to blame Rotten Lefties™ and forced to engage his brain for once.

Covid-19 has had one beneficial effect: Brendan O’Neill is bust. And about time too.

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