Ian Hislop is disappointing

[RoyalCorgi]

Glinner's latest substack mentions that the new issue of Private Eye makes a dig at him for being "unhinged" on Twitter. Glinner then reveals that four years ago he emailed Ian Hislop asking him to cover the subject of SH, and politely explaining the issues. This is the reply Hislop sent:

Dear Graham,
Hello. Thanks for the messages and for alerting me to the activities of Hayden and Bergdorf. Despite my well known belief that Twitter drives everyone bonkers and my suspicion that the Trans/TERF debate is not quite as important as those involved in it believe, I do have people looking at the issues, the areas of impact in the real world, and I will pass on your information to them. “The oxygen of publicity” is always a possible side-effect of the “letting in of sunlight” but as I say I am grateful to you for the guidance. Hope that you are ok somewhere in the social media swamp.
Best,

I've always liked Private Eye and hoped that Hislop was privately gc, even if the subject didn't feature much in the mag. (Deputy editor Francis Wheen was very gc but has now retired.)

So that's a shame.

Here's Glinner's full post:

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/ian-hislop-knew

And you only have to watch how Hislop treated Paula Yates ( I was never a fan ) and Paul Merton had to intervene after filming. For me it was a case of when someone tells you who they are listen….

Hislop was never and is highly unlikely to ever truly stand by those who are fighting to protect women and children’s rights. I believe that for many men, women are an irrelevance.

I suspect also that that Hislop finds someone being quite passionate and a bit outspoken to be a tiny bit vulgar.

Had Glinner not being taking up the fight against trans ideology, I suspect PE would have loved to make fun of him for (in their view) going against the grain and saying what he thinks in a direct assertive way. In PE's world view, getting himself into trouble when if only he had kept it as a few satirical remarks in a jovial setting, that is easy to pull back from.

Well, the incredulous thing certainly applies to me as a man watching all of this.

I remember my early teens, extricating myself from religion, balking at the Catholic Church and their various abuse scandals and exaggerated ceremonies. Exasperated at the resistance to ordination of female clergy in CoE. Irritated by the Moral Majority trying to tell me what lyrics I could read.

And feeling like I was part of the Enlightenment as I connected to comics and scientists and philosophers who really were compelled to challenge orthodoxies, and championed free speech and fighting flim flam, from the Python team to Rowan Atkinson, Dawkins to Pinker to Goldacre to Haidt to Hitchens.

And less than two decades after this golden age of reason and anti pomposity peaked, what are we left with? Individuals with massive social capital, fearless in their criticism of Trump and Boris, MAGA and Brexit, the Tories, the alt Right, Covid and vaxx deniers, pro BLM and racialised politics, weaponised in their support for all things intersectional, anti climate change, seemingly anti flim flam like that older generation of heroes, but in fact nothing of the sort as they nail their colours to the anti science/anti humanist/anti woman cult/neo religion of TRA.

Ask any of the new "heroes" what they think of "men can become women" and the medicalisation of youth, and you'll hear either radio silence, the questioner accused of transphobia, or acceptance of the cult.

Stephen Fry, Dr. Brian Cox, Jonathan Lis, Ben Goldacre, to name but four prominent individuals in the arts, science, journalism, ethics worlds.

And once again, the stress of extricating from a world hamstrung by religion, but crazily one even more hard to believe than the previous one.

And beyond the heroes of the GC feminist world, and individual men like Glinner and Ricky Gervais, criminal silence from so many, including my group, men.

Here we go..

It affects all women, even the ones that are handmaidens AND it affects all our children too. It affects gay men. All men who care about women and children. So a lot more than 51% of the population.
Yet here we are.

This.

Hislop is not in the "justice" business. He's in the anti humbug (his own word) business. To him, the issue is just another issue in a long line of lies, incompetence, cowardice and hypocrisy. I think that's his take.

HIGNFY has a section in their animated opening credits of JKRowling as a statue and she is in a tug of war between two factions, obviously supposed to represent this current debate.

It's in the credits. But they never mention it.

So they know its happening, they know its important enough to put in the opening credits with climate change, brexit and putin, but they won't mention it.

I would love to see them explain that. They can't say they don't mention it because it's really not important to anyone who isn't engaged in the debate. It's in the credits.

I think Hislop is simply one of many men who don't get it. If you read Private Eye regularly, you'll know that it's excellent on things like local government corruption, NHS cover-ups, media hypocrisy and so on. They covered the Post Office scandal for years before the national newspapers started reporting it.

I think men like Hislop think the trans issue is a niche issue that is mostly being inflamed and exaggerated on social media. After all, very few people are trans, so why are women getting so unduly upset about it? He's failed to grasp that this isn't about the 0.5% of people who identify as trans, but the fact that self-ID is an open invitation to any man at all to identify as female and use that identity for harmful ends. Probably the reason he doesn't get it is either because he's not very good on logic (I've found this to be true of a lot of Oxbridge humanities graduates types) or because he doesn't care much about women's rights. Or perhaps a bit of both.

Having said that, I'm a little surprised he hasn't cottoned on to the enormous scandal of girls and young women undergoing medical transition. The facts were laid out very clearly and calmly in Hannah Barnes's book, which Hislop is surely aware of. Over the years, Private Eye has covered numerous cases of medical malpractice - and in Phil Hammond, they have a very good writer on medical issues - so you'd think this would be right up his street.

Perhaps, in the end, it is simply cowardice.

'I too am very disappointed by Private Eye & Hislop's inaction & trite dismissal. It smacks of public schoolboy dismissal of women full stop as though women are concerned in some sort of trivial, pearl clutching hysteria'

Well that's exactly how he comes across on HIGNFY. I'm not remotely surprised that he's dismissive of the whole issue. As others have pointed out, it would be way too damaging for him personally to engage fully with women's concerns, and I don't think women particularly register with him anyway

Cowardice and misogyny.

It's always so disappointing when a man you have respected in the past shows his colours as a misogynist, but this letter is pretty clear on that point in my opinion. The removal of women's, children's and gay rights affects more than 50% of the population.

He knows this, and when he writes 'my suspicion that the Trans/TERF debate is not quite as important as those involved in it believe, I do have people looking at the issues' what he's really saying is that things that affect a certain 51% of the population aren't important because - you know - they're not men and so he can safely delegate anything to do with women's rights to his employees. Because obviously the removal of women's rights and child safeguarding wholesale isn't something to bother a man as important as Hislop with.

Oh and I've decided not to renew DH's private eye subscription (shortly due to expire) on the back of this thread. I do pretty much all the life admin and am wanting to get rid of a few expenses, this seems an easy win.

He rarely reads them these days and I'm fed up with putting them in the recycling after they've been left untidily all over the place anyway. I doubt he'll notice.

PE still has a parody columnist called Glenda Slagg.

I think that's an excellent analysis of Private Eye, RoyalCorgi.

I've read Ginner's article now. Of course he is right that mainstream media ignored this subject until very recently. At the same time I totally agreed with the substantive point in the Private Eye screenshot about the hypocrisy in the media towards people like Frankie Boyle who has made many dismissive and cruel remarks about disabled people compared with the calls to cancel those who oppose self ID or retaining single sex spaces.

Neither women nor children signify much to PE. Neither does education (except possibly higher education and the fictional St. Cake’s).
They have regular features on health, agriculture, the railways, architecture, TV, books (often very funny), the media, business and the aforesaid government/local government. But not education. It doesn’t signify to them.
Having said that, I enjoy my fortnightly read very much - but I would LOVE for them to do an all out exposé of issues to do with gender, naming names and providing all the absurd and horrifying details.

PE still has a parody columnist called Glenda Slagg.

Which, TBF, is a pretty good send up of various female columnists over the decades.

Oh no! Ian is my guilty crush. So disappointing!

In fairness, that is a parody of tabloid columnist like Lynda Lee-Potter, who wrote appalling stuff about women. I haven’t read PE for years, but my recollection is that Glenda Slag did a good job of highlighting the impossible tabloids standards set for women. It’s interesting that it parodies women being misogynistic, though. Mustn’t ever hold the male establishment to account, must we, Ian?

Wow. That is so horrible. How do these people get to reinvent themselves as tub-thumping allies when they’ve said and thought such cruel things about trans people? Imagine if JK Rowling had said anything like that!

Edited to add: @RealityFan apparently Prof Brian Cox’s wife Gia Milinovich is firmly in the gender-critical camp! She’s read and praised the book ‘Trans’ and has spoken out against cancel culture and Be Kind bullies. Could Brian be GC by association?

I'm inclined to agree with this statement: "(M)y suspicion that the Trans/TERF debate is not quite as important as those involved in it believe..."

I find both sides equally annoying at times.

Agree with all of this. One thing I would say is that Daisy Goodwin, who spoke out against being groped by Danny something (the Tory mayoral candidate), said that IH was supportive and helpful.

I am quite surprised that he hasn’t picked up on the impact of this ideology on the press and speech though, even if he doesn’t care about women and children. Things like using female pronouns for male sex offenders, the IPSOS guidelines etc. And the infiltration of Stonewall and this agenda into all areas of public life.

Private Eye has a lot of things that some people don't like. In general i find it very good on some subjects, and IIRC also has GC cartoons.

That email was from 4 years ago. I wonder if GL considered writing a follow up email and waiting for a reply before laying into PE?

How about if a few of us wrote now, and asked if it is time to finally delve into the world of SH and maybe women's sports? I wonder if that would make a difference?

They reported the Forstater and Bailey tribunals in some detail, as far as I recall.
Shahrar Ali’s action against the Green Party would be a great opportunity for PE to delve deep (they don’t have much time for the Greens as it is).

Forgot to add: whatever the outcome might be. Makes the GP look awful anyway.

Just for info Helen Lewis is working part time at Private Eye now - I am sure that loads of you won't agree but obviously I support GL right to say what ever he wants, and I am very GC but for me GL often doesn't come over well - eg releasing an email from 4 years ago is just wierd and unhelpful.