Dear British Guardian Readers
I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be able to write to you on White House notepaper. I cannot thank you enough for your cruciate support in our country’s recent presidential election. When my colleagues used to show me cuttings from the opinion pages of your newspaper, the cartoons, and the letters you wrote to the editor, I could not understand why you hated me and my fellow Americans so much; your Prime Minister Blair is a such a good friend—whiney maybe, but a good friend. I am embraced to admit it now, but I thought you that your views about Iraq and Afghanistan, about the War on Terror, about the environment, and about the members of my administrontium were “rubbish”.
Since you won Ohio for me with your reverse psychology letter-writing campaign I have realized that I was blinded by my ignoramus of British sophistication. Jean, my international media adviser, has studied in your fine country and visited it many times. She told me that your writing style is “a model of English irony”. She said that this meant that what you say and what you mean are very different. So all along you wanted me and Dick to win! I feel like a dumb monkey.
Thank you again. I get The Guardian delivered every day now, but I know that I should read everything in it the other way round. I like Seumas Milne.
Love
W
p.s. Jean has just read this letter over and tells me that I have mastered this irony thing just fine.
Bloody brilliant! *clapclapclap…* Oh wait, irony, right then. *ahem* Utter rubbish. Pooter, you should be ashamed.
I have no doubt that “The Guardian”‘s well thought out and sensible plan to sway the Ohio vote will result in the american voters listening to left wing britain, as they always do, and voting for Kerry.
Of course… maybe… perhaps.
The same editor that started the
misbegottenbrilliant letter campaign, wrote another superb opinion piece a few days after its successful conclusion, wondering where our modern day John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were hiding. Do the world a favor, get his drift? This British irony thing is some powerful stuff, I never realised what a force it could be! Unfortunately, the article can’t be found on The Guardian’s website any longer, must be a computer glitch, I’m sure…Sorry, I’m confused – are you saying that Guardian features editor Ian Katz (who was responsible for the Clark County campaign) and their Saturday listings guide TV critic Charlie Brooker (the author of the offending Bush piece) are one and the same?
If so, this is a major scoop, as “Charlie Brooker” is also credited as co-author of the notorious Brass Eye paedophile special. Tell the Daily Mail that he’s really a senior Guardian features editor and you’ve got a guaranteed front-page splash on your hands!
I thought it was Katz, but I was mistaken (they pulled the column, as I said). But does it really matter? The Guardian shows a curious uniformity of opinion from day to day, writer to writer. You’d almost think they were reading the same talking points. Andropov would be proud.
Are we still being ironic? * holds hands in head* This is so hard!
Dear Guardian Readers
You remember the ill advised Guardian campaign to swing the vote in Clark County, Ohio ? PooterGeek’s had a letter about it. Remember to swallow…
Timbeaux wrote:
“The Guardian shows a curious uniformity of opinion from day to day, writer to writer.”
The stuff that gets ranted about in ‘Blogs is not completely representative of the paper. “Uniformity of opinion” isn’t what drove me away from buying The Guardian by any means. Read David Aaronovitch’s columns and see how they fit into the standard Right wing view of what the paper stands for. I’d certainly agree that many of its writers share a depressing set of unquestioned assumptions about the way the World works, though.
…
Dear Limey assholes…
The Guardian have misguidedly waded into the American election. They have launched Operation Clark County encouraging people outside American to email registered voters in this knife-edge swing district in Ohio. The idea is to lobby them to vote for a…
Damian, the column is….interesting….but not exactly political. Well maybe it is to the morality police, but not in some meaningful way to the rest of us. The Right in the States is not defined by the morality police, it is distinctive for holding any morality whatsoever (compared to the alternative), although that situation is in flux. I suppose you can limit my Guardian comment to the front-page news and editorials.
Art is opinion. News is dogma (at least for the Guardian, for whom all news is politics).
Timbeaux, I wrote that you should check out Aaronovitch’s “columns“, not just the most recent one that is the main content of the page I linked to, but all the others listed down the left hand side of that page. This one about the reality of the terror threat to Western states, for example, could profitably read by our friend john b.
Operation Clark County – your chance to save the world
This is possibly the most important thing I’ve ever done at work* – in the last few days I’ve been helping** the Guardian set up Operation Clark County. Here’s a chance for you to influence the result of the US…
I’d actually read the Aaronovitch article before making the comment linked above. I’ve long respected and admired his writing.
The column linked to is accurate and reasonable – I don’t see how it contradicts my belief that Islamic terror groups exist, pose a major threat to law and order in areas of the developing world, and are likely to cause some civilian casualties in the developed world, but that these groups aren’t a co-ordinated attempt to destroy life as we know it.
Idiot.
[…] And Bush’s reaction? Of course, he’s delighted. […]