Apologies for the low output, but it's taking me a while to recover from the virus that flattened me last week. I've also decided the time has come to leave the Spectator and go back to indie blogging. My thanks to James Forsyth for inviting me on to the website, and to Pete Hoskin for keeping the technical side of things up to scratch. Thanks also to all those readers who've followed my ramblings. I'm sorry if I missed out on replying to some of your e-mails. I'm going to take a short break, and if all goes well my new blog - which will feature one or two new contributors - should be up and running next week. You'll be able to find it here.
The Crunchy Con continues to fight a lonely batttle against the rabid Right. Once again, his mail-bag provides a glimpse into an alternative universe:
The truth is Glenn Beck is a danger to the liberals, socialist and communist group now in power. He and others like O'Reily, Hannity, Linbaugh are exposing and letting people know that Obama and his staff of tax evaders, homosexuals, chicago thugs and criminals want to ruin our country and make America a socialist ,communist country... So bottom line ,thank God for people who will stand up and expose the what the lying Hilter Hussian Obama and his staff of idoits are trying to do to America.
As one of the commenters points out, the real Mr Hilter is still biding his time in the West Country. (One of his new neighbours, my spies tell me, is that nice Mr Griffin, who is busy making plans for a triumphant appearance on Question Time next time the programme comes to the Minehead Sportspalast.)
A friend of mine accused me of having a terminal attack of the cutes when I ran those "She, we", "Us, them" headers at the weekend. Well, it was supposed to be a playful reference to the late, great George Plimpton's anecdote about Muhammad Ali, Harvard and the shortest poem in the English language. Here's Mr P in person. Unless my memory is playing tricks, the clip comes from that classic boxing documentary, "When We Were Kings".
Most reporters only have time to deal in sound-bites, and this is a region which is all about history and complexities. No wonder, then, that our view of the Arab-Israeli conflict is often so one-sided. Joris Luyendijk's book - a bestseller in his native Holland - is starting to win attention further afield. Simon Kuper, for one, is glad:
“The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’,” Luyendijk writes, “but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping.” ... TV can convey the horror of a suicide bomb but it is less
Apologies for the low output, but it's taking me a while to recover from the virus that flattened me last week. I've also decided the time has come to leave the Spectator and go back to indie blogging. My thanks to James Forsyth for inviting me on to the website, and to Pete Hoskin for keeping the technical side of things up to scratch. Thanks also to all those readers who've followed my ramblings. I'm sorry if I missed out on replying to some of your e-mails. I'm going to take a short break, and if all goes well my new blog - which will feature one or two new contributors - should be up and running next week. You'll be able to find it here.
Most reporters only have time to deal in sound-bites, and this is a region which is all about history and complexities. No wonder, then, that our view of the Arab-Israeli conflict is often so one-sided. 
