Alastair Campbell in emotional defence of Blair on Iraq

[morningpaper]

Alastair Campbell in emotional defence of Blair on Iraq

Seven years of being asked the same question seems to be grinding him down

Andrew Marr's constant interupting makes him look like a bit of a bastard

lolol at MP's passionate dossier.

I saw the interview and just can't decide whether the overflow of emotion is real or not. He is such an odd combination of ultra hardman and vulnerable. Remember the story about his breakdown? -- the colleague handing him a bag of marbles, with the line 'Here they are. Don't lose them again.'

But even the arrival of that anecdote in the public domain is evidence of his ultra-hardman ability to put his vulnerability into play.

lol OBM

It looked like a panic attack to me.

lol at MP.

Think Anguis puts it very well

And of couorse it doesn't have to be 'real' or 'not real': our emotions are such a bloody hall of mirrors.

If I add

New Labour slashfic

then the thread becomes the only example on the web

and we will all get our computers confiscated

Re OBM's discharge, MP could call her story the Tossier Dossier.

LOL

FWIW I really don't believe that was 'faked' emotion. I'm with Anguis - it was just 'emotion'. We could just as easily have been witnessing an enormous effort to suppress a psychically catastrophic rage - and therefore Carmelita's panic attack suggestion also rings true to me.

Anguis, perhaps you could work a guinea pig in there somewhere and then it really would be perfect

Still PMSL at 'you sex everything up' and 'Have you been talking to Sky?'

Yes, in his blog he seems to suggest that he was trying not to get v angry

Yes, agree. And it is just v v v risky to risk faking emotion in this context, with 100 000s dead. I don't think he would take that risk.

I would have thought that if it (the crying/breaking down) were scripted, AC and GB would not have chosen to do it on the same day, as it would all look a bit obvious.

he's like the Max Clifford of politics

yes he is in polital pr - that's his job!

Please remember that AC is a bit mentally unstable too and has MH problems which is what i put this down to - love the idea of him and TB locked in homoerotic things lol

I'm absolutely certain that so-called emotion was faked - look at us all talking about it, and it's all over the TV channels, and it will sell loads of his 'novels', and it may have wrongfooted Andrew Marr, who might otherwise have got somewhere close to the truth about all the dead British soldiers in Iraq.

i think with GB it is a whole different ting however, what has happened in his family is dreadfully sad and no matter how well tutored you are it is so hard to say out loudh

I agree that rage is more likely

Referring the dossier and then talking about his "latest work of fiction" is completely offensive!

(N.B. I resisted saying that "Blair wrapped his hand around Alastair's weapon of mass destruction")

I've just been googling for a clip of that moment in Broadcast News where William Hurt'a anchorman squeezes out a tear with such professionalism. Couldn't find it, but I think that the point there was that he genuinely did feel the tear, and then allowed his consciousness of the power of the emotion to feed its further, insincere, expression. I can imagine that happening to AC a tiny bit. But on balance, I'd say he was genuine.

It would hvae been more fun if he'd just hit Andrew Marr TBH

But Campbell is just doing a book tour remember

Oh that's interesting PollyTroll wrt anger.

D'you hear that MP? we might have had Marr-Campbell Lawrentian wrestling to enliven our Sunday morning reveries, had Al's internal battle been played out differently..

lol, MP. You should have said it -- but perhaps Blair was afraid that it would take 45 minutes to get the WMD ready for action.

I saw AC on Marr. I don't think Marr was a bastard AT ALL. I agree with Sophable, AC should answer the question. He is a liar; his body language at the Chilcott enquiry was that of a blatant liar.

And I've read the Blair Years and it is very clearly revisionist.

Oh and I reckon AC had a great big, stiff, hard on when he said: "the public can tell the difference between authenticity and spin."

Gordon Brown's smiles aren't genuine; I thought his tears appeared a little crock. But clearly he finds it difficult to play himself so who knows.

Marr has been around the block a few times - if he allowed himself to get knocked off course (and I don't think he did really, he continued to question AC quite closely) then that's his lookout.

Marr's script (the jokey intro bits) is bloody awful isn't it?

i confess I find BOTH of them mildly arousing.