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What is up with David Aaronovitch?

Tuesday, 12th February 2008

There's an extraordinary piece in today's Times by David Aaronovitch, which is so wrong in every aspect that I can barely believe it's by him (much as I disagree with him on almost everything except Iraq, I usually have a high opinion of his writing).

Perhaps it's the fact that the Archbishop genuinely is holier than us that has contributed to the exuberant pleasure it has given so many people to misrepresent so violently what the poor man was saying. Or what I think he was saying, for I was pedantic enough - unlike some of his most enthusiastic assassins - to read the bloody speech.

Eh? Let's leave aside how holy he supposedly is. I'm fed up with this idea that somehow the only people who have either read his speech or heard his interview are those who defend him, and that those of us who think his speech was a disgrace not just to his office but to the liberal values of his country have clearly not bothered to read or hear his actual words.

I'm not going to go over old ground but almost every serious commentator I have read has represented his words both to the letter and spirit and has clearly read the speech and heard the interview.

If David Aaronovitch thinks the Archbishop's words really were as bland as he represents them as being, then either it's he who hasn't read them or he is a lot dimmer than I have always thought he was.

As for this comment:

The conservative Jewish commentator Melanie Phillips exercised some extra-jurisdictional powers of her own in calling for the Archbishop to be dethroned (next week the Vicar of Dibley gives her choice of Chief Rabbi), entirely missing Dr Williams's conservative attack on the decline of civility and “customary ethical restraints” produced by our “narrowly rights-based culture”.

Well, that is simply beneath him, as Melanie herself points out:

I wonder which is the greater of my crimes — to be ‘conservative’ or to be Jewish?

Apparently, this should debar me from saying that Rowan Williams should step down as Archbishop of Canterbury or saying who I think should be his successor.

What on earth was he doing writing this column the other day - White woman v black man. One's got problems - about the US elections and telling us who he thinks should and shouldn't be elected? Since he is neither black, female or American, he was surely excercising "extra-jurisdictional powers" of his own. I assume he has never once argued that a foreign politician should be removed from office. I assume he always kept quiet when Pinochet was in power, and never once expressed the view that the National Party should be removed from power in South Africa.

Awful stuff. Really, really awful stuff.

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Rob Johnston

February 12th, 2008 8:07pm

Poor Aaronovitch ... when I knew him in student politics in the 1970-80s he was pro-IRA/PLO/PFLP/ZANU/KGB/Stasi etc etc; pro-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (and pro-invasion of Czechoslovakia as a Young Pioneer), anti-Zionist, anti-US imperialist, anti-capitalist warmongers and so on. His mind has done one of those high-speed spins, like in an in an ice-dance -- bits of his brain get left behind. It's very difficult to take anything he says seriously anymore (nor was it, even 20-30 years ago, come to think of it).

Max Kaye

February 12th, 2008 10:10pm

Rob Johnson - you've evoked a wonderful image (though it's hard to think of the pudgy Aaronovitch gracefully executing an whirl on ice). Perhaps there is substance to the theory that being extreme left-wing in one's youth causes irreparable brain damage.

David Aaronovitch

February 13th, 2008 9:10pm

It's not often you get to say this, but whereas Stephen Pollard is, in my opinion, just wrong, Rob Johnston is a straightforward liar. For example there is, for those who want to find it, a letter from me to the Hampstead and Highgate Express from 1968, titled "David, 14 writes....." condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I know, I know, it's a bit William Hague, but it's better than being a shameless liar.