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O'Hagan, bile and idiots

There's an excellent David Aaronovitch piece today about anti-Americanism. I'm particularly happy at his remarks about Andrew O'Hagan:

This week you could hear the author Andrew O'Hagan on Radio 4, reading from his collection of self-conscious essays, The Atlantic Ocean, in which - despite his own claims - every impact of American life on Britain is somehow configured negatively. He writes of an exported popular culture “born in the suburbs of America” and defined as “Spite as entertainment. Shouting as argument. Dysfunction as normality. Desires as rights. Shopping as democracy.” This in the country that has sent Big Brother, Pop Idol, Wife Swap and Location, Location, Location over the Atlantic in the other direction, while taking delivery of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire.

I should admit that I am irked by O'Hagan's dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O'Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world's affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet's migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can't help recalling those - the most honest - who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

O'Hagan is, in my view, simply BNP-lite. Two years ago he wrote, in regard to Mel Gibson's antisemitic rage:

Dangerously worded as it was, Gibson's drunken comment was, it could reasonably be argued, a statement against the arrogance of the Israeli military: "They started all the wars in the world." Isn't it that which is making America call for his head?

Of course it isn't even remotely true that Jews are behind most wars, but it is true that they are behind most movies, and pundits are saying that Gibson may never work again in Hollywood. But their response is overbearing and slightly hysterical: if black or Hispanic or Asian people sought action every time a ludicrous remark was made against them by a drunkard, the world would fall to pieces.

I somehow don't believe that Mr O'Hagan thinks that if a well established actor was to start ranting about how ni**ers weren't fit to vote and the KKK had the right idea, there wouldn't then be a fuss, and that said actor wouldn't see his career collapse - all quite rightly.

Given the message of rest of his piece - we should all be able to have a bash at the Jews - it seemed that he might have something else in common with Mel Gibson. And I don't mean acting ability.

But that's almost the least of it. O'Hagan is incapable of writing a column - or, it seems, a book - without it dripping with his ill-directed bile.

There are some columnists with whom I disagree profoundly but nonetheless read, not least because they provide good blog fodder. But I no longer read O'Hagan. HL Mencken said that reading a newspaper was like eating poison for breakfast, and that is how I feel about O'Hagan.

I gather that he is the partner of India Knight, which gives me the excuse to reproduce this correspondence, taken from Media Guardian:

On October 15 [2006], India Knight wrote in her column in the Sunday Times headline "Muslims are the new Jews" where she attacked the negative views of Jack Straw and feminists towards the Muslim veil. This email exchange followed shortly after:

To: letters@sunday-times.co.uk
From: Julie Burchill

Dear India Knight,
I dare you to walk into any mosque - after covering your filthy female head in the Islamist fashion, of course - and spread your glad tidings that "Muslims are the new Jews."
You'll be lucky if you get out alive.
Yours sincerely,
JB
PS: I see that your new book is a compilation of 'dirty bits' from novels. I'd love to know how this fits in with your new found love of feminine modesty and discretion.

To: Julie Burchill
From: India Knight

Oh, for fuck's sake. I don't have a "newfound love of modesty and discretion" - I just don't despise people on the basis of what they wear.
Regards,
IK

To: India Knight
From: Julie Burchill

What, not even the working class slags in crop tops you're forever slagging off, you hypocritical snob?

To: Julie Burchill
From: India Knight

I do NOT slag off working class people in crop tops, you fucking loon. Where? When? Why would I slag them off? I am many things but I am not a snob. God, you're driving me mad. Go away.

To: India Knight
From: Julie Burchill

I wrote to the letters page, not YOU, you stalking cretin. Why dont you fuck off and turn yet another of your husbands gay?

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