Militant Moderate: The case for the defence

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

The case for the defence

Blimpish believes that there is a sense of humour failure currently taking place in our comments section. I differ slightly from this opinion (although I stress the original piece was not mine), and feel that if we are being attacked so publicly it is only right to reply.

The comments section became dragged off course when one of our regular readers took offence at Blimpish's use of "hard bumsex" in his posters attacking the Liberal Democrats. Blimpish maintains he never meant to cause offence, but has continued spiritedly in his defence of the use of the term. My position is clear - I didn't think there was much wrong with the reference (although it wasn't particularly funny), but when someone took offence at the comment he could have apologised for the offence without necessarily apologising for the comment himself. After all, I doubted he meant to cause offence with the comment. If he considers the debate to be over so little, a little magnanimity might have prevented further acrimony.

In any case, Blimpish is using the development of the debate as a smokescreen to hide from a point that he finds much harder to refute. Let us take one of his comments from the ensuing debate:

I don't know how much of my blog you've read, but my prattle about being a Right-wing nasty is just that: prattle. Oh, and self-loathing sarcasm, because most people think being on the Right means you're just a big lump o' nasty.

I suspect otherwise. I suspect he enjoys being seen as a right-wing nasty because it plays to his vanity, and I suspect that he enjoys it when "Liberal pietists" like Richard take offence at his comments. The vitriol he directs at the moment against those on the left-wing of the Conservative Party suggests that. So do the posters that he created for all parties. Some of his comments are on the mark - take the LibDem one regarding honest political debate, for example, or the Labour poster highlighting the rise in violent crime under their leadership (even if I'm not convinced prison is the solution). But others reflect values which, as Richard said, provide many good reasons not to vote for the Tories. I'll take a few examples from the site.

One: "If you value it, vote for it. Cheap, exploitable foreign labour, or your wife and daughters' hands cleaning out the shit"

Two: "If you value it, vote for it. Classy Thai brides (with optional cocks) or the dregs from the local club"

Three: "Imagine four more years of paying for Darren's Burberry (not to mention his kids). Do you hate chavs like we hate chavs?"

Four: A picture of Gordon Brown with the slogan "Have you seen how he minces?"

It's not the sort of thing that I want to be supporting. To be blunt, some of the values that Blimpish is expressing are just plain nasty. And that was the original point of the post. If his 'prattle' is just prattle, I've seen little evidence of it.