Are you in urgent need of a jolly good laugh? Then read page one of yesterday’s Guardian and then turn to page thirty for the punchline, and a most unexpected and unintended punch it is too. One usually gets an idea of what kind of ”joke” is being told from merely hearing the punch: “…but that doesn’t mean a dog is a donkey”. And here the two pieces in today’s Guardian – one a piece of news reporting, the other a comment piece worthy of the National Inquirer and Voice of Freedom – inadvertently fulfil the setup and the punch. While the setup is of the classy school of not giving anything away and keeping one gripped, the gag line is definitely of the Bernard Manning “dog and donkey” tradition of telegraphed stupidity laced with the bigotry only a select “clientele” can enjoy. To take the latter instance first, page thirty has the maniacal scribbler and Chuck Norris of political commentary, Oliver Kamm, commenting on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. Here we are “informed” of the alleged danger Iran poses to the world.
For instance: Syria is a “client state” of Iran, something Syria may enjoy learning; that the “Iraq war might not have happened” had it not been for the “farce” that was the IAEA and UN inspectors, who, Kamm will be shocked to learn, comprehensively dismantled Iraq’s WMD but whose intelligence was disregarded in favour of “sexed up” insults to the intelligence by latter-day disciples of Henry Kissinger; that “Iran’s complaints of discriminatory treatment and a denial of its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) are only slightly less risible…,” a knowingly untrue statement that tells you all you need to know about Kamm’s regard for journalistic ethics; that there was no “fault in translation from the Farsi” when Ahmadinejad apparently spoke of a desire to wipe Israel off the map, though Farsi speakers seem to think otherwise, another minor irrelevance; that “if you want peace, avoid anti-war campaigns,” an unexpected declaration of WAR IS PEACE. And on and on the scribbler goes in that customary fashion of his that always brings to mind George Eliot’s line, “He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow”.
That the whole article is a series of lies, distortions and fantasy, ought not surprise anyone, as a cursory inspection of Kamm’s “journalism” will prove; a thorough investigation will leave one with the concurrent strange feeling of constipation and suffering from a terrible bout of diarrhoea. Appropriately enough, Kamm’s piece is entitled ”A Dangerous Fantasy”. When Paul Goodman, during the Vietnam War, coined the term “wargasm”, he had people like Kamm in mind as sufferers, possibly sadists, although Kamm evidently suffers from a multiple need and just can’t get enough.
Meanwhile, on page one of the Guardian we learn that the National Intelligence Estimate, the combined analysis of the sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, has disclosed that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is non-existent, and that Iran’s protestations that it is seeking a civilian nuclear energy programme have been corroborated. Seldom has providence been so kind in making a propagandist like Kamm look like a warmonger. No doubt, the risible Kamm and his fellow capos will find other ways to campaign for further destruction of the Middle East. The rape of Iraq has not had the desirable climax for those who crave another “wargasm”. Perhaps even the Times has tired of Kamm’s risible efforts at “commentary”, and perhaps, just perhaps, even Rupert Murdoch’s flagship has succumb to embarrassment, even shame, that they gave the reactionary windbag space to propagandise for a war that has unexpectedly threatened to dismember U.S. hegemony.
This may explain Kamm’s disappearance from the Times’ comment pages, even though he is great chums with the comment editor Daniel Finkelstein, who, incidentally, was, along with Amanda Platell, the “brains” behind William Hague’s unimaginably weird “Common Sense Revolution”. Kamm’s risible blog has many tributes and references to his “friend” Daniel Finkelstein, and they seem to grow ever more frequent the longer he is denied space at the Times. It may not be a “revolution”, but denying the reactionary windbag space is certainly “common sense”. That the Guardian has given Kamm space to pimp for another “wargasm” is tantamount to pornography.
Original Author: Tawfiq Chahboune
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