Why him?

Both the Vol-in-Law and I reacted a little more strongly to the death of Heath Ledger than we would have thought. It’s not like we were big fans. It’s not like we even go to the movies. But it did seem a little shocking.

The Vol-in-Law said “He seemed so full of life, and yet that Shane McGowan just goes on and on and on.”

“Why couldn’t it have been Amy Winehouse or somebody like that?”

get me out of here

Jury selection for the Princess Diana inquest begins today. According to Reuters:

The long-delayed inquest will investigate how Diana and Dodi Fayed died, along with their driver Henri Paul, when their car crashed in a Paris tunnel.

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, will address potential jurors before they complete a questionnaire to gauge their eligibility.

The inquest is due to hear evidence relating to some of the most controversial aspects surrounding the couple, who died on August 31, 1997, including allegations the late Princess was pregnant.

Controversial elements? This means the inquest is likely to hear all kinds of crackpot fantasies and conspiracy theories cooked up in the minds of wackos and grieving fathers. This inquest is likely to drag on forever and come up with no more than a confirmation of the French inquiry.

I’m not eligible for jury service here, but if I were these are among the things I would do or say to exclude me from service on that jury.

• Fake idiocy
• Use Halloween makeup to create a seeping facial wound
• Say “I’m glad Diana’s dead and I’d like to hand a medal to the Royal Family for getting her.”
• Bring Cletus. He screams a lot anyway, but we might just leave off a feed just to ensure maximum crankiness and say “I will be able to breastfeed my baby in the jury box, won’t I?”
• Attend jury selection in my birthday suit
• Shoot myself in the foot

He takes up hardly any room.

You see in Britain, jurors are enjoined from ever speaking on matters juridical. If it were in America, I’d be all

“Princess Diana?, never heard of her. And as for me, I’m the most objective person you’ll meet.”

And then I’d try to find an agent for a book deal.

Putting the fun in funeral

Last year I missed the Lambeth Cemetery Open Day. I had a previous engagement. But I was excited to learn that there would be another one this year when we went on one of our frequent walks in the nearby boneyard. I was dying to go. And so we went. And this was the first public event outing for Baby Cletus.

Now, you might think that a cemetery open day would be a moribund affair – and you would largely be right. There was, as far as I could see, a poor turnout. There were not throngs of onlookers crowding the roads as the parade of hearses toured the cemetery.

A gaggle of coffin cars

The famous Harley Davidson motorcycle hearse

And we didn’t manage to get one of the offered rides in the hearses. This one looked quite fun:

But we did manage to go on the Tomb Trek during which the cemetery manager went around showing us special graves and sharing the history of the cemetery. We learned:

• around 250,000 people are buried in Lambeth Cemetery. Stacked like hotcakes or buried in between the spaces of old graves. Many of the original graves are long, long gone.
• The cemetery is chock full of London music hall and variety greats. None of whom I’d heard of – but there were bullet catchers and Wild West type acts and circus folk, too. And that’s kinda cool.
• Charlie Chaplin’s father is buried in a mass grave there and Ida Lupino’s father and other kinfolk are also buried there (in a private plot).
• A quarter of an acre of fresh burial space can generate a revenue of £1.5 million

This is your Jerry Springer moment

A couple of years ago the Vol-in-Law and I went to see Jerry Springer, the Opera in the West End. The content was about as blasphemous and offensive as it comes, but all good fun – really. Much more fun than the Jerry Springer episodes currently aired on British cable which all seem to run like this:

Guest 1 tells Jerry and the assembled baying crowd a secret which will upset Guest 2 if Guest 2 has any shred of decency.

Guest 2 comes out on stage bewildered and bemused and bracing for the worst (as one Guest 2 said in a show I recently watched – You didn’t bring me on the Jerry show to tell me good news?)

Guest 1 -suddenly hesitant – reveals all with the encouragement of Jerry.

Guest 2 lets fly with a flury of ineffective punches and security steps in just that little bit too late.

The secret varies – but only slightly – from show to show. Guest 1 is:

• a lesbian sleeping with her cousin
• a boyfriend sleeping with the cross-dressing best friend of his girlfriend
• a bog boned gal is sleeping with anyone who has a six pack and twenty-five dollars cash much to the shock of her husband.

Back to the opera – one of the numbers – which becomes a bit of a leitmotif – was This is Your Jerry Springer Moment – essentially describing that point in time when your life becomes so trashy that your role as Guest 1 or Guest 2 is instantly defined.

I thought about this, because well, I’m watching a lot of daytime tv these days and because of the comments about Australian sex workers on this post – which reminded me of a moment in time when I told a friend “Man, you coulda a been on Jerry Springer with that tale.” Which, in retrospect, may not have been the most supportive thing I could have said.

Turns out this friend of ours – an Australian – had a girlfriend who turned out to be a sex worker. Well, he being the understanding sort who always saw the better side of people he said that while this needn’t be the end of their relationship – she did need to find a new line of employment. Which she did not. And then there was another whole sad sorry tale of a pimping boyfriend and an abortion and a legal consultation – and even though this had happened some time before he related the tale and in a land far away – it was obviously still very painful. And I said “Man, you coulda been on Jerry Springer with that tale.”

-0-

I’ve racked my brain, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly Jerry Springer moment. I did have a boyfriend who cheated on me – but she was just a normal girl (hmmmm…as far as I know). Oh, but looking back on it – she did live in a trailer – so maybe it was just a brush with a Jerry Springer moment.

I did meet my husband through the Internet – but that was like sooo mid-90s that it barely attracts comment these days.

California emissions standard

I used to love to watch The Price is Right with VolBro – especially sitting in the easy chairs in my grandparents bedroom – but anywhere really. VolBro was a natural – he was usually right – even when he was a little tiny kid with no money or shopping experience of his own.

He was very good on guessing the price of cars – often guessing what I thought was quite high. When I’d voice my doubts, he’d pipe up in his little 6 year old voice “you can’t forget the California emissions – that always makes it higher.” And he was right.

I can’t say that I built my life around TPIR (as my grandmother sometimes did), but I really enjoyed it.

-0-

When I moved to the UK, I had to leave behind TPIR. Well, sorta. There is a British version of the show, but it’s only a half an hour. There’s no showcase showdown – the showcase contestant competes against a randomly selected margin of error (though of course, one can never go over on the price). There’s no reminder to spay or neuter your pets. California emissions do not come as standard – and there’s no Bob Barker.

Sure, there’s Plinko and the other little games I knew and loved. But there’s no Bob Barker. And I can’t but watch the show without thinking “Hey, this guy isn’t Bob Barker.” The show has since been cancelled and I can’t help but think – without the refined dignity of Bob Barker (the British version always seemed kinda sleazy) – it’s no wonder that it didn’t work out.

Now America will have to watch TPIR with the interior monologue running “Hey, this guy isn’t Bob Barker.” Although, there’s some speculation that folks may be saying “Hey, this gal isn’t Bob.”

Bob retired this month – his last show airing on Friday. It makes me a little sad.

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My cousin Blake won a car on TPIR. He gave it to his mother. It had California emissions standard.

While I was birthing

What with a new baby and all I haven’t been following world events as closely as I might have liked. But fortunately, it seems like it was kinda a slow news week, despite the G8 summit and the weird Azerbaijani compromise. And was there a Republican presidential candidate debate? Wouldn’t matter, ’cause I’m not blogging about it until it’s an actual election year. And then in the UK, there’s a little kerfuffle over the matter of a few hundred million pounds in kick backs to a Saudi prince Bandar (and Bush buddy) in the mega, mega Al Yo-Mama arms deal. You couldn’t make it up (OK – I did a little, it was the Al-Yamamah arms deal)

But now that I’ve kinda lifted my head from the epidural haze – I can see that the big stories brewing have been:

1. The London 2012 Logo.

I hate to admit, London Mayor Red Ken is right. The people who came up with this logo should be loaded into a burlap sack, along with their logo and a live rooster and throwed into the Thames. Well, Ken Livingstone just suggested that the designers not be paid, but I really don’t think that’s good enough.

Do you?

2. Paris Hilton’s return to the slammer.

Regular readers will know I don’t usually spare much time for celebrity goss. But clearly, this is the story of the week.

It’s not the drunk driving or the probation violation that bothers me. Hey, we all make mistakes. It’s the being dragged screaming from the courtroom, I can’t stand.

No class.

t-0 (-9): finally I see a celebrity…on the labour ward

I had a monitoring appointment today. The midwives and junior doctors wanted to put me on the induction train for Cletus’s lack of promptness. I said no. They said that only a senior doctor could “let me” go and agree an “alternate” care plan. So we waited and saw a senior doctor. He was totally cool with our wanting to watch and wait. He didn’t think there was any risk in waiting until our cut-off date for induction (a week from today). So we went on home.

On the way out I saw Jordan, glamour model, pneumatic breast wearer and one of these people who seems to make a living off being famous.

I almost never see any celebrities, and if I do – I don’t recognise them.

And Jordan’s pregnant, too. Quite pregnant.

I’m not really surprised that a celeb was there – just by the fact that I noticed her. Our local hospital is reknowned as one of the better for “problem” pregnancies, and despite the fact it’s really not a very nice environment it’s definitely the place you want to go if you want to be on the safe side. Or if you’re a celeb, you might want to go to a nearby private birthing centre – which is just spitting distance from the hospital. (My house is the same distance, which is why I’ve felt OK about a home birth).

I actually had my camera with me, but there’s no way I’d have got it out at the hospital. First off, what if it wasn’t really her? And even if it had been, it just would have been too trashy to snap someone’s pic in the hospital.

The ViL puts the world to rights

I said that if the Vol-in-Law did a good job on the Conservative Home web tv programme, I would post a link. Well, I reckon he did do a pretty good job (though I recognise my bias). So here it is.
And though it means breaking anonymity, the Vol-in-Law is not the young chap with the revealing neckline, nor is he the blonde woman.

He came yesterday wearing makeup (to make him look less shiny) and told me he’d had precisely 15 minutes of fame. So, if your even vaguely interested in the internal workings of the British Conservative party, give him a quarter of an hour to entertain you on the matters of candidate selection, the British relationship to Europe and the Gove lecture on an anti-islamist intelligentsia.

An anti-islamist intelligentsia?

It seems like you can wait ages to spend an evening with a Conservative MP and then two chances come along at once.

We’d been invited to hear the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Peter Ainsworth MP speak on things environmental at a Wandsworth Tory event – and we’d fully intended to go. I knew I was going to spend the evening spitting and fuming about how the Conservative party has adopeted the pseud-scientific mantras of environmentalism. (Don’t get me wrong, I like nature – I just think there are greater threats to human health and the environment in Britian than global warming.) But we would have been in the company of people we know and like, so it wouldn’t have been awful.

But then the Vol-in-Law was invited to hear Michael Gove, MP speak at a New Culture Forum event “Are we seeing the emergence of a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia?”at Portcullis House (the parliamentary office building). And it’s not that we’re ruthless social climbers or the kind of people who’ll stand you up for a better offer, but well it just sounded like a swankier and possibly more interesting event.

Unalloyed gushing
And it was. First, let me gush a little bit about the venue – as a girl who went to Lawrence County High School is allowed to do (so do bear with me or, if you must, skip down a few paragraphs). Portcullis House is a fabulous building – one of those places that firmly demonstrates that you can have wonderful modernist architecture so long as you a) follow the laws of physics and b) use predominantly traditional building materials (e.g. oak and stone).

And the building was filled with celebrities. Celebrities of the political sort of course, but none of whom I recognised. (The Vol-in-Law mocks my statement If London’s so full of celebrities, how come I never see any? It’s true, I recognise no one. The only celeb I’ve ever spotted on my own was because I recognised his voice first.)

But we saw, for example, Helena Kennedy QC ( the ViL says she’s done more to destroy life in Britain than almost anyone else) and David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party who looks remarkably healthier and younger in real life now that the burdens of Northern Irish political leadership have been forcibly removed.

And finally, the wine. I know this is cheesy, but I was impressed. The wine served at Portcullis House – was House Wine – House of Commons wine – with its own specialty label including the seal of the House of Commons. I’m a sucker for a visual pun. The wine itself – well, I didn’t indulge as I’m pregnant, but I definitely had to sample it – and it tasted much as you might expect Government wine to taste.

Anti-islamism on the Left?
But on to the topic itself, Michael Gove is the author of Celsius 7/7 an analysis of Islamism and how this came to manifest itself so violently in Britain just over a year ago. A sample of Amazon UK review comments:

It is a well reasoned attempt to show the historical roots of Islamic totalitarianism from Maulana Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al Banna, all the way through to their modern incarnation of Al Qaeda and other Jihadist groups.

Gove’s is a clarion call to all of us to defend liberty and rationality. Unless we do this, we may well find ourselves heading rapidly towards a time of repression by religiously motivated totalitarian ideologues.

Although a Conservative politician, Michael Gove concentrated on the emergence of a “new” anti-Islamist intelligentsia on the left. Partly, this is because there is little intelligentsia on the right (in the UK) and partly because the non-Islamic ideological support for Islamism and Islamic politcal aims has come recently most strongly from the Left. Gove says, yes – there is an emergence of anti-Islamist thought and voice on the Left – and he feels that it will be as powerful and important the condemnation of Soviet socialism in Europe by Left-liberals was during the cold war and in the collapse of communism. And Gove highlights a few key thinkers to support his argument. Daniel Johnson, also at the event, writes:

…the most prominent voices now being heard in protest against the scandalous alliance of the Left with Islamo-fascism are themselves for the most part intellectuals withimpeccable Left-liberal credentials. Gove singled out the journalists Nick Cohen(whose book What’s Left? How the Liberals Lost Their Way chronicles the Left’s great self-betrayal), David Aaronovich (who defected from the Guardian to the Times of London), and Christopher Hitchens, who needs no introduction for American readers. Nick Cohen is also a leading light among the group of liberal academics and writers who last year signed the Euston Manifesto, distancing themselves from the Leftist consensus.

For me, an unapologetic Liberal (more classical liberal) and still romantically attached to the Left, it’s always seemed more shocking to me that the Left has aligned itself to a clearly backwards ideology. Yusuf Al Qaradawi – Islamist imam – was described by London Mayor Ken Livingstone as a force for progressivism. Yes, if by progressive you mean stoning gays and beating and covering women. I’m less interested in why a few voices on the Left are speaking up but in why so many have submitted to Islamism and so many more remain quiet.

Michael Gove almost seems to clutch at straws in a way. Who cares about a few Guardianista journalists (who like Nick Cohen might easily be dismissed as being Joo-ish Zionists anyway – so rife is anti-semitism these days)? So what that a few novelists like Ian McEwan or Martin Amis or even Salman Rushdie (who might be accused of still being peevish over the whole fatwa thing) are speaking out? Though I’ve got to admit they do it cleverly (again via Daniel Johnson).

Amis even describes himself as an “Islamismophobe,” but the real objects of his hatred are the “middle-class white demonstrators last August waddling around under placards saying ‘We Are All Hizbollah Now.’” As he observes, “People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead.”

So now I’m also interested in the question – what can those on the Right do? The American Right has funded intellectual pursuits through think-tanks, Chairs and fellowships and has managed to fundamentally shift the debate. There is plenty of intellectual fodder there. Unfortunately, I cannot subscribe to the position of the American Right – for me it’s often too closely aligned theocracy and the very anti-progressive views that I despise in Islamism. And while I find the optimism of neo-conservatism appealing - everyone wants democracy – everyone wants to be “free” - I don’t find this view supported in reality. Not everyone wants democracy – Islamists for example believe that it’s absolutely antithetical to Islam.

So I guess my question is – what can those on the British Right do? – particularly those who follow the Thatcher view that as Conservative you’ll be alright so long as you follow the principles of “Liberty under Law”. How can they develop cogent and powerful arguments to support the maintenance of a liberal society in the face of those who seek to impose Sharia – not just abroad – but here in Europe – and in contravention to those who would support them through ignorance or mischief.

The limits of rudeness

Advisory: This post contains strong language of an adult nature

I can’t believe I’m posting about Celebrity Big Brother. The “normal” version of Big Brother is bad enough – but pack the tv fishbowl with a bunch of second rate celebs and it’s even less interesting.

But here I am commenting on it. Here’s why.

Many, many people are upset over “racism” on Big Brother. There have been 27,000 complaints (and counting) to Channel 4, which produces and airs the show. Apparently, a Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty has born the brunt of many negative comments from her fellow celebrity incarcerees. Shilpa Shetty is probably an annoying diva, but I bet she’s more talented than the other D-list shut-ins and makes a ton more money, too. I’m sure that’s at the root of the problem, rather than racism per se.

When asked whether she thought she’d been the victim of racial abuse, Shilpa Shetty didn’t think so. She didn’t think she’d been treated well by Jade Goody (another participant) but she didn’t think the remarks were racially motivated.

I think there are a lot of insecurities from her end, but I don’t think it’s racial.

Now I don’t know if any of them are racist or not. But I have noticed that appalling behaviour – rude, crass comments, sexism, classism, snobbery (reverse or straightforward) go unremarked on – unless, of course, it smacks of racism.

Jade Goody’s boyfriend called Ms Shetty a name which was bleeped. Many people complained that he’d called her a “Paki” (a derogative term for someone of Pakistani origin – Ms Shetty is in fact Indian). But actually, he’d called her “cunt”. Well, that’s ok then, apparently. Misogyny is all good viewing – (until you use the c-word), but woe betide anyone who uses a racial epithet.

I don’t think it’s OK to call Ms Shetty a Paki or a cunt. I don’t think that this is the kind of behaviour we want from anyone. Why can’t we just stand up for decency? Why do people even watch these nasty-mouthed people act in ways we wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) tolerate on the playground. Have we become so immune to rudeness that we only think it’s worthy of comment when it’s racist? Personally, I think we should be drawing the line a lot higher.

(Oh – and for anyone who comes to this post looking for Paki cunt – go fuck yourself. And yes, I do appreciate my own self-generated irony)