Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The National Trust and the evils of heteronormative history

There is a satirical website called ‘Guardian headline generator’ which purports to offer a service to aspirant journalists who wish to be published in the floundering, godawful rag. Press a button on the site and it will give you your subject matter for a typical article, such as: ‘Islamophobic white men will soon be widening the gender pay gap. This shouldn’t happen in 21st-century Britain.’ It even gives you a suitable name for your byline — in this case Jessica Veryangry.

The problem, however — as the website rather forlornly admits — is that increasingly it is out-satirised by real Guardian headlines. It simply cannot match the woke idiocy and hysteria, nor the craving for victim-hood. Indeed, just before writing this piece I clicked on the Guardian’s site and immediately saw this headline: ‘Carcinogens in your cosmetics? Welcome to Brexit Britain.’

That is every bit as stupid as the one about Islamophobic white men. I sometimes wonder if this is actually a tactic on the Guardian’s part — to deliberately place themselves beyond parody, perhaps following Marcuse’s dictum that humour is the last refuge of the bourgeois, and therefore should be undermined. Becoming more risible than a satirical headline is a fairly potent defence in that it makes parody otiose. The carpet is pulled from beneath the parodist’s feet.

In a normal world it would not matter what headlines run in a very low circulation north London newspaper and so we should not get too worked up about them. The real problem, though, is that despite the complete and utter lack of appetite among the general public for the agitprop drivel spewed out each week by Jessica Veryangry and her many colleagues, the relentless guff is swallowed whole by the establishment, including the Conservative establishment.

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