Rod Liddle says the advertising world has plumbed new depths of macabre tastelessness
I haven’t seen much of my wife this week — she’s been camped out on the sofa, filling her boots with 9/11 porn. She loves it, can’t get enough of it, gagging for it. Sits there with a glass of pinot noir, shaking her head, knees tucked up into her chest. People falling from the windows, scary men on aeroplanes shouting in Arabic and waving box-cutters around, firemen covered in concrete dust; whole programmes about 9/11 text messages, doomed people telling their loved ones that everybody’s calm. And then a very long film culled exclusively from amateur footage — the double XX-rated Debbie Does Dallas of 9/11 porn; you got all the money shots — those planes hitting the towers, people jumping out, towers falling down, the lot. For a long time, film of the planes hitting the towers was banned from our screens, much as erect penises were banned. You could show the towers burning, but not the moment of impact. It all changed this week.
It was a Channel Four documentary ‘sponsored by Volkswagen, taking you further’, it said during the commercial breaks, which I suppose was true in a way. Volkswagen: the first VW ‘Beetle’ car was created by Dr Ferdinand Porsche in 1934 in commemoration of Hitler’s mum, Mrs Hitler. Klara was a charming and devout woman by all accounts, and died in 1907 from complications arising from breast cancer — Hitler was very upset, apparently, because he liked her. This is a useful link, because while 9/11 porn leaves me cold and I don’t really get it, we all have our foibles, our peccadilloes. We are what we are, as the former politician Ron Davies once explained to the House of Commons after he’d been caught ‘watching badgers’ in a copse near the M4. And my particular vice is Hitler porn. I like to curl up on the sofa with a packet of Cadbury’s Snack biscuits and a nice mug of coffee and watch old Adolf going about his business. There’s almost always some Hitler porn on TV, somewhere, if you search through the channels. And when there isn’t I have a luxury boxed set of The World at War, the director’s cut of Downfall and the complete Dad’s Army. Don’t tell him, Pike! That’s soft porn, really, hardly any worse than an old copy of Razzle with the nipples blacked out. Comfort porn.
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cuffleyburgers
September 10th, 2009 8:34am Report this commentRod
I am sure we don't need Hitler to tell us about aids.
However, overuse of the word "need" to define what we should or shouldn't do, is a characteristic of socialism.
In this case, I'm afraid I found the ad rather splendid, well made and funny.
I don't much care for films of adolf's speeches or people dropping out of towers, but a pretty girl getting a good rogering is more my ticket.
For once then we must agree to disagree.
Mr. Green
September 10th, 2009 11:43am Report this commentMany years ago, during a late night chat show hosted by some lefty or other,a doctor was asked about the spread of Aids. It appears that someone forgot to mention the host's leftiness and unwillingness to hear the truth because when the doctor said "well, if you are a heterosexual male and do not inject drugs then it is unlikely you will catch Aids from a female partner, but if you are a heterosexual female you can catch Aids from your male partner". He was quickly passed over an never spoken to again. Now this made the rest of the program rather amusing as the whole show was about Aids and he was one of the invited panelists!!
He was seriously off message, you see.
What he should have said was "If you are a white middle class male you will die of Aids regardless of your sexuality, but especially if you are a no-drug taking heterosexual"
Julian Fruppapoipepauppioioip
September 10th, 2009 1:55pm Report this commentTo Cuffleyburgers: well done for nailing the extremely irritating use of the word "need" by social worker-y types. I first spotted this in about 2005 and have been banging on about it since, but yours is the first public comment I've heard on that.
("He needs to move out"; "You need to move out of the way".)
Other examples of irritating SW speech: the use of "on that" where "that" stands not for a noun but for the previous idea, clause or sentence ("We've come a long way on that"); and the use of the continuous form of a verb to attampt to "soften" a message ("Well, I think that's something we're going to be needing to be looking at in a community context".)
Related point: why are firemen now firefighters even when, in any particular news story, they are all demonstrably men? This would be less annoying were it not for the tendency, in other situations, for feminists to snarl, "...and it usually IS a MAN...".
eunice
September 10th, 2009 3:00pm Report this commentto julian f, hands off Social workers, i am a Social Worker, how u can tell me what i can and cant say i do'nt know. u sound like a toff we cant all have an education like you
irate
September 10th, 2009 3:32pm Report this commentConsidering your recent "Would you shag that?" piece on Harriet Harman, you are hardly qualified to talk about matters of taste.
David Short
September 10th, 2009 7:07pm Report this commentYou've got to stop writing when you're drunk.
We'll miss you if you get the push.
Kojak
September 11th, 2009 1:46am Report this commentEunice,
Regarding your message on Sept 10th at 3.00pm:
Are you taking the p##s?
James R
September 11th, 2009 4:07am Report this commentWell, I have not seen the advert, but the Devil may be in the detail. A le chien is one thing, but as I understand the epidemiology, it matters whether the Fuhrer was invading Poland versus say the Low Countries, as it were.
Jez
September 11th, 2009 9:13am Report this comment"I suppose the film-makers thought it unlikely that any babe would cop off with that latter sort of Hitler, no matter how much they’d had to drink — although I know one or two who might well have succumbed, and at least one who’d have shagged both Goering and Pol Pot if they promised to buy her a kebab on the way home."
Have you been drinking in Grimsby again Rod?
Murgatroyd
September 11th, 2009 10:26am Report this commentCheck out Harry's Place for a hard porn version of a Hitler fetish as exhibited by one Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who is most assuredly at the moonbat end of flakery.
Dwight Vandryver
September 11th, 2009 10:33am Report this commentWe need (that's "need") an article in The Spectator: Rod Liddle does manmade climate change (from behind?).
By the way, Aids can be caught off a toilet seat, can't it?
Mr Green
September 11th, 2009 12:30pm Report this commentDwight,
yes it can, if you eat it.
Pavo Absolutus
September 11th, 2009 2:20pm Report this commentRod is right to raise his eyebrows at this almost absurd 'advert' - the insane syphilitic Hitler would in all probability have been incapable of a heterosexual act by the spring of 1944 never mind 45 !
To narrowly focus on AIDS when the rest of the worlds' sexually transmitted diseases are 'blossoming' like wildfire in our younger generations, really shows how out of touch with reality much of the european health bureaucracy has become.
But that is the EU for you ! Malignant in itself and looking only ever to grab headlines demonstrating its 'powers' whether they be ostensibly supportive or subjugational rarely matters - as long as they show 'authority' or should we say "competency" - their much beloved catch-all defying the English language.
"Maximus in minimis"
( very great in very little things !)
Edward Scarr
September 11th, 2009 2:42pm Report this commentRod
Its worth mentioning High Definition Hitler Porn (HD HP) now available via the HD National Geographic channel which actually places you inside the Zeppelin Feld in 1936 and therefore eye witness to a computer enhanced, colourful and vibrant looking Adolf astride his podium. Enough to make anyone moist with excitement.
Matthew Wilson
September 11th, 2009 3:52pm Report this commentThe Aids Is A Mass Murderer film features Hitler, but - hilariously - there are separate campaign posters featuring Saddam and Stalin. Go to the following link and click on 'Campaign'.
http://www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com/
As for the film's subtext, presumably it would have been okay to shag Hitler if he'd been wearing a rubber? Also, why are the only mass murderers featured those with facial hair?
Cecily
September 11th, 2009 8:27pm Report this commentHitler was always an advocate for chaste living (see the Hitler jugend).He was an absolute ennemy of sexual promiscuity.
Brenda
September 13th, 2009 2:20pm Report this commentTo Kojak, I don't think Eunice is taking the you know what, she's just defending her profession. Granted she writes in that silly text language but sadly so do a lot of under 30's. Though she does inadvertently reveal more about her profession than may be she realizes, I would not want to think all social workers have a chip on their shoulder about not having an education.
Bill Corr
September 14th, 2009 8:29am Report this commentEvelyn Waugh referred exquisitely to Goering's 'matronly charm' - which he compared to that of Tito.
And those spendid glittering uniforms! Only the inimitable Muammar Gadhaffi and the late Michael Jackson come close in the style league. Ciano claimed Goering's kit remided him of a very expensive courtesan's outfit for an operatic gala.
Mighty hosts of otherwise sensible girlies go weak at the kneees at the mere sight of a well-groomed man and well-mannered man in a splendid Student Prince / Ruritanian Palace Guard uniform; Goering was never, ever short of female companionship.
However, Goering's idea of real sensual pleasure was shooting stags. A tragic waste of splendid opportunities.
A. MacAulay
September 15th, 2009 8:53am Report this commentOne of the best kept secrets of the 3rd Reich, better than all the murders, was Hitlers sex life! He was presented as an ascetic, married only to destiny and the Aryan race. Of course, as a dictator he attracted totty to an enourmous degree. ("Hitler und die Frauen" Ulrike Leutheusser, Heyne) A fate spared our pols because we live in a democracy for which I'm sure they're grateful. That he was keeping a tussi (pron. As in tootsie, but without the T) like Eva Braun came as a surprise to them all when it came out.
Thanks to Matthew Wilson, I watched the clip which is so bad its not even a joke which makes it a joke. Nobody I know in Germany, where I happen to live has ever heard of it let alone seen it.
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