Rod on Rod

Fatbloke on tour

Trevor

Rod the Rogerer has the look of a man who gets the burds Boris can't be bothered with and knows it.

I think he has come second on so many occasions I think his name should be the "Porridge Stirrer.

Alternatively using MH's immortal story I fear he is the "Queen Mary" of SpectatorLand, he has knicked about with so many tugs.

Sunder Katwala

Great interview.

Clearly, Rod did go far too far with this piece.

And he does seem to apologise for it.

But why bother with the claim that "It was supposed to be a parody of guttural, base sexism," ...

That is self-evidently nonsense.

David Ossitt

He is a national treasure.

Long may he be a permanent fixture in the Spectator.

Jez

"But does Rod Liddle go too far?"

Obviously not.

He binned my Nelson Mandela comments 'twice' on the Seacole article!

Scandalous.

Harriet Harman? Would I?

No. Not if i were coming down of a massive weekend bender. She tried paying me. And she had a paper bag over her head.

*That* would be going too far, by gum!

(Now if you asked me about Baroness Scotland though! FWOOOAAAAR!)

Craig Strachan

Does Rod Liddle go too far?

In his column in the magazine, no he doesn't.

On his new blog, yes he does.

Do blog posts maybe get less editorial scrutiny than content intended for print?

(Just my opinion, and I'm not saying he should be censored or anything. A good spanking every so often should be sufficient.)

Paul Hughes

Any man who would consider such a revolting act of deviance is barely a notch above paedophilia.

verysmallurl

you know, I'm starting to wonder what, if anything, Fatblokeontour adds to these pages. I feel he may be happier on Loaded's posts. I don't mind provocative posts if they're erudite, witty, thought provoking. He's just puke provoking.

SJH

I think he's a chump

Austin Barry

Rod is always good for at least five excellent jokes in an article or post. He may be the love child of Max Miller and Joe Orton.

salieri

Why chuck stones at Fatboy? And why deny him the courtesy of these pages? It's like expelling someone from a debating society because you disagree with them.

Besides, he has much to offer us all. An alternative and amusing point of view. A firm, if not rigid, political creed. A rich armoury of invective. A constitutional unawareness of irony. Alternative English, and an alternative way of spelling it.

Marbury

The Harman article was a disgrace, of course. But the question of whether Rod regrets it is less important and less interesting than whether his editors do.

Fatbloke on tour

Verysmall ...

I have to admire your honesty, SpectatorLand name and all that, very up front if you can pardon the expression.

Although I have never heard it called a "url" before.

One eyed trouser snake / tadger / John Thomas, yes ,but never "url".

Obviously the intensity of your intellect makes up for your lack of physicality.

john

Rod is a bit of a fraud.
He insists on "Rod" rather than Rodney: It's a Hollywood tough sounding name; Rodney suggests an upper class twit.
He smokes, he drinks, he swears, he supports Millwall.
It's all a bit contrived.
Rodney, you were (privately) well educated.
Leave the chav stuff to Littlejohn.

biggestaspidistra

Is she really called Viv Gross Kop? You couldn't make that up. Rod should never explain, never apologise, but for the time being it's probably best if he stays in here with us.

Vulture

Something that has always puzzled me abt. Rodders, and perhaps he could enlighten us. How did a man of his libertarian right-wing views rise to such a senior post in the BBC as Editor of 'Today'? His rise is akin to Trotsky winning a place in Stalin's Politburo. Did he conceal his beating Tory heart behind those lovable tousled curls?
Keep schtum during the editorial meetings?
Bite his tongue when chewing the fat with professional Celtic socialists Naughtie & Humph? Or what? Either way, it was a deep cover act worthy of Kim Philby himself.

Press Button Get Bacon

Congratulations to Mr Rodsicle on his forthcoming name-change - he was always a few spins short of a full pop-cycle, but this takes the biscuit.

National treasures are often emulated and henceforth I will be known as Mr Wan Ton Pun to release my inner fook.

Tiberius

Why the distaste over the prospect of a menage a deux with Harridan? Is there no greater satisfaction than seeing a feminist gradually and helplessly lose the power to articulate her fictions?

Superficial Seacole Sexist

Rod is always worth reading.
Always.
The Harriet Harman piece didn't hit the bullseye but it wasn't as bad as some precious types say.
But it was wrong.Harriet Harman is a prime piece of upper class totty.(Alternatively, and for precious types, one would say she is an attractive woman.)She is not as lithe and lean as she was 30 years ago, but then neither am I, and neither is Rod Seacole Liddle.

Snowman

Rod on the Left or Right? I reckon neither. Amongst the many who aspire to inform and give pleasure at the same time he talks sense, deploys common sense as a life compass, and peppers his trenchant stances with charming wit. Pity that those who run the media kicked out Mark Steyn. The two competing with each other would have been a spectacle to treasure forever.

Just a word of warning to both, and Fraser, too; Watch it, the pseudo-liberal fruitcakes are still about, and may hurt.

Simon Stephenson

It's an interesting discussion that Rod Liddle had with Viv Groskop. I wonder if anyone else sees it my way.

Rod is part of a 1% minority who deal with the challenges that inconvenient conclusions make to their worldview by amending the worldview. So they're never in a position where they're exposed to inconsistencies between two separate areas of their belief. This may mean that they are forced into believing things that they finds distasteful, but at the same time it allows them to claim that their entire construct of how the world works is internally consistent, and of a single standard.

Viv on the other hand is part of the 99% majority who construct their worldview from a less exacting concept of truth. So inconvenient conclusions can be ignored or rewritten so as to allow a construction of the world that is nowhere distasteful. The technique for doing this is to blank out entirely the idea of fallacy, so that however improbable may be a desired thought, it's OK to incorporate it because, well, it hasn't actually been proven to be false. And, equally, however probable something unpleasant may be, it's OK to ignore it, because it can't actually be proven to be true.

Developing ones thought processes from Viv's to Rod's used to be one of the main purposes of formal education. No longer, it seems.

epidermoid

Liddle is amusing but dangerous, for he is incapable of the rigorous attention to the ignorant, wilfully foolish misapprehensions he holds as to the nature of medicine and science even or perhaps because they are repeatedly pointed out to him. The concern that a man of proper moral worth would have lest his broadcast opinion be the cause of hurt to children would by now have drawn from him an apology for his grotesque attitude to those whose lives are lived to protect innocents from harm. Children are regularily harmed and sometimes killed but Liddle has only oafish mockery for their protectors.

Laban Tall

Vulture - you ask how a man of such right-wing views could have been the Today editor for four years.

During those years Today was probably at its PC zenith. I can never forgive him for the damage done to my blood pressure. I remember, for example, the Today programme working to death the hideous revelation that "Asians applying to study medicine are more likely to be rejected than other students."

To be exact, "while one third of all applications for medical school places are from Asians, they represent only one fifth of those accepted".

Given that Asians were approximately 4% of the population at the time, the real story would have been that they were applying at 8 times the rate of the natives, rather than that they were "only" being accepted at 5 times the rate.

Mr Liddle appears to have undergone a Damasacene conversion on these and many other issues.

I'm still trying to work out if his radical switch from Guardianista par excellence is a road to Damascus job or whether he's a careerist who can sense the way the wind's blowing.

Or a third alternative - that he simply got bored with the liberal political consensus and found that the only way to epater the bourgeoisie - or anyone else these days - is to be on the right.