The Times They Are A'Changing....

If they were talking about the newspaper, I wish they bloody would, but however....

I recall the time when I got very bothered by an infantile editorial from Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger on the occasion of the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. It was pretty much a 'Hey! Hey! LBJ' kind of piece, and, being keen on history, I was irritated by the amount of utter bollocks the article contained.

So I wrote a letter to the editor, calmly highlighting his inaccuracies and making a few points about the mythology of the war. And it was published. I felt quite warm inside. Until the next day, when I read about 10 reader's responses which ranged from the hysterical to the downright sinister. I became an Imperialist Lackey for a day. I was shaken, but nevertheless quite proud of the temporary notoriety. I also changed newspapers. These days I don't read them at all, and make do with alerts from Reuters and the BBC, which seems to work reasonably well.

Which leads me to the Russian spies. The one's the US just deported, right? And without a hint of Harry Palmer in a hearse, so it wasn't really very much like the Cold War at all, despite the dribblings of the press. (I know a guy who used to get paid to transfer people between West and East Germany, so really...)

Anyhoo, what erupted in my psyche was the image of Anna Chapman.

You see, what bothered me was that, apparently, out of all of the sleepers the FBI rounded up, Anna Chapman is in some way more evil. At least, that's what TV and Print seemed to be saying.

By the time Channel 4 news gratuitously described her as 'infamous', I was beginning to get a bit annoyed. The only way in which Ms Chapman is infamous is because the media have decided that she is so, and that's because she is an attractive young lady. She has done nothing more than any of the other agents; and in fact she seems to have gone native, if anything. She wants to stay in the UK.

Teresa May, of course, wants to see her hanged, but can't, so is seeking to have her declared persona non grata instead. But is she really the baddest apple? Or is she the target of prurient chauvinism?

Honest to God, I am beyond exasperation with UK journalism. Making stuff up was always in the mix, but has now become the default for news. I'm beginning to think it might be a GOOD THING (see 1066 And All That) if individuals and organisations simply stopped speaking to the press in entirety.

It would be more entertaining, for example, to see Jon Snow (whom I used to respect very much and now have only contempt for) continually interrupting his own tendentious monologue.

Anthony Bourdain wrote of a chef friend who described keeping his bread dough on the make as 'feeding the bitch'. Perhaps we should stop feeding this bitch and see what happens.

BTW, in assembling some tags for the above, I've noticed I have some witty combinations to choose from: Politics, Porridge and Power Lines seems like a good one to quote.