Little Owen Jones and Private Eye

[DanseAvecLesLoup]

Oh dear😂

This is so stupid it feels like satire! It’s like that science-y publication of a few weeks back where they suggest eradicating the sex binary by renaming female as ‘XX’ and male as ‘XY’ (conveniently forgetting that male and female also apply to species that do not have XX/XY chromosomes and also that changing the name of two categories to another two names is still a binary categorisation).

I bloody love my imported tropicals (my favourite plants, indoors and outdoors are the ones that Victorian and Edwardian Britains first took a fancy to and that then experienced a fashion revival in the 70s - the plants my own mum grew during my childhood) but regardless of personal preference the fact remains that importing plants (and animals) from elsewhere has an effect on the existing flora and fauna of that part of the world.

The most obvious example is red squirrels - observing that ‘foreign’ grey squirrels have become dominant in the UK does not make any inference regarding human migration!

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2018/11/red-squirrel-facts/

A properly democratic society and a nation’s social contract is the difference between humans and other mammals and indeed, plants.

Besides, thinking that ‘native to the British isles’ has some sort of negative inference and ‘native to Asia’ or ‘Native to the Americas’ does not sounds kinda racist in itself, like an echo of the noble savage trope?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

Of course, nature conservation is a sort of conservatism (small c!) so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that IDPOLidiots think plants can be racist or transphobic or whatever.

When it comes to plants and wild animal species climate change likely has a massive part to play on what will survive in the centuries to come… so I’m calling it now, by the end of 2023 the Green Party will be declared institutionally fascist for wanting to conserve (or even reverse) the current climate. Global temperature increase is progressive, yo!

Agree. And he was condescending to Charlotte Church when she was the temporary host, at still quite a young age.

She said she’d like to go to university and he laughed and said “don’t you need A levels for that?”.

After seeing those two incidents I concluded that he’s a man who feels the need to put down attractive women to make himself feel better. Not an admirable personality trait.

I used to work tangentially with Private Eye. It was a very, very traditional ‘male’ environment. It took its tone from the founders, and it had never really moved on.

He's "clever", but a nasty little effer.

He's known as "Dan the Potato Man" in Chateau Viper, since DS pointed out he looks like Dan the Potato Man from the Flowerpot Men (the old B/W version).

Hav to say I've felt similar towards Graham Norton after his nasty comments about Amy Winehouse - when she was at her lowest ebb. That sort of humour is just misanthropic, and not for me.

I never liked 'Little Britain' either, I don't know about you?

I didn’t see his Amy Winehouse comments but I was disgusted by what he said about Jade Goody. I actually like Graham Norton, and get the sense that he’s spent a lot of his life feeling unhappy, but a lot of the content of the TV show is meanness passed off as late night drunken edginess. I liked his radio show when I used to listen to it.

I find Little Britain misogynistic, and David Walliams massively triggers my “creep-dar”.

Mine too! Not sure if it is the bald head, or what, but he gives me the creeps.
Reminds me of the suitcase thief, Sam Brinton. Same effect!

Maybe they have a deep discomfort with themselves and this comes across, because I don't think it is bald heads per se, because I absolutely love Luca Zingaretti ( Inspector Montalbano)

David Walliams, yes - and Matt Lucas (the bald references)

Walliams is one of those men who makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. Little Britain was a sordid programme.

Norton strikes me as pathetically desperate for attention.

PE have been covering done GC stuff & we've been very supportive of female journalists that have been silenced by their papers. I agree it's not had the same coverage as some of their campaigns (such at the Post office or contaminated blood scandals) but it's been more than a lot of the daily papers until very recently. I loved this cartoon (as a Reformation historian & GC) that I purchase the original.

I liked these ones enough to photograph them too

That's a great cartoon - congrats on owning the original! I met another Eye cartoonist, Royston Robertson, at uni (he shared a house with a mutual friend) and he is married to another old friend from those days. I even appeared in a couple of cartoon strips he did for the student newspaper, but foolishly didn't keep copies.

What he's saying is the idea that there is a British gardening tradition is inherently racist. Because, British.

I presume he also thinks the French or Italian or Japanese gardening traditions are also racist, given that they relate to a specific culture, but I don't believe he has said as much.

Ah. Well that's an issue then.

I've been disappointed by how cowardly the Eye have been on gender issues. Too worried about being cancelled on BBC I imagine but it was seriously ripe fruit for their picking and they are only putting a foot in the water now that they think general opinions are changing.

Imicola · Today 08:53
I've been disappointed by how cowardly the Eye have been on gender issues.

Yes I agree.

I was at that recording with Charlotte Church. What you see broadcast is only about 30% of what they actually record the evening before. Half the stuff simply can't be broadcast for libel or other reasons. I thought Charlotte was superb, she was only 16 but very confident and certainly won over the audience and any doubters. Even better was that post recording she belted out a few Ella Fitzgerald numbers to the studio audience.

Have to confess I don't remember Hislop being mean during that show but I concede that could be my shit memory.

I've never liked David Walliams but put it down to my general loathing of the mindset of Englishmen who went to posh schools with cadet corps (some of them manage to recover from it, but it is toxic). Recent agp threads and links within them has made the Boy in a Dress seem a bit of a symptom of scorn of women.

@Ofcourseshecan - it's his heritage too as James Wong's mum is white Welsh.

I posted this on the other thread but he encourages his followers to do Twitter pile ons of small accounts. He's not just misguided but he's a nasty piece of work.

I think he is coming from the perspective that the idea of nationality is exclusive and therefore racist and wrong. So recognizing any cultural heritage or patrimony is exclusive and racist, as it is a claim that there is something concretely true about how people with a shared history are connected.

It's maybe not surprising that someone who believes this also believes in gender woo. Both repudiate material reality for a kind of unembodied essentialism.

I thought with Private Eye they've always seem themselves as the good guys doing the skewering, and it's taken a while to realise the TRA are not the good guys/underclass in need of protection. I don't know, could be just cowardice/misogyny.
They have always stuck the boot into Foxy Kimono though, and for that we thank them.