Andrew Doyle2013-05-23T05:46:17-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=andrew-doyleCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andrew DoyleGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Aggressive Homosexual Community Fights Backtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33108912013-05-21T19:00:00-04:002013-05-21T12:40:27-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/caused outrage during Monday's Commons debate on the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill, when he warned that "there are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community" who perceive the bill as "but a stepping stone to something even further".
A spokesperson for the aggressive homosexual community, located on a Barrett Estate near Solihull, summarised the local disappointment: "This isn't the first time that the tories have attacked us like this. We didn't choose to be aggressive homosexuals. We were born that way. When I came out of the womb the first thing I did was wink at the handsome doctor and slap the midwife."
The aggressive homosexual community is no stranger to controversy. Former residents include Lady Sovereign, David Starkey, Ronnie Kray and Alexander the Great.
The estate is regularly picketed by fundamentalist Christian groups who jeer and throw holy water. "Being an aggressive homosexual is a lifestyle choice," insists Stephen Teal, head of reactionary protest group Christian Tongue. "I mean, yes, we can all lose our temper from time to time. And yes, we all enjoy the shape of other men's bodies. But God wants us to control our baser instincts."
But Thomas Gibson (23), a new member of the community, says that such views are antiquated and offensive. "Deep down I've always known I'm an aggressive homosexual. I used to try and deny it, but then in university I discovered who I really am. I'd sleep with men, and then in the morning I couldn't stop myself from criticizing their soft furnishings."
Now the residents of the community are fighting back. "From now on we're going to be as flamboyantly aggressive as possible," says Ruth Otter, a long-standing resident. "If the tories don't like it, that's too bad. I've already sent an abusive email to my MP, and this morning I threw some salt at a passing slug."
There are now fears that Sir Howarth may broaden his attacks to include the relatively peaceful passive-aggressive homosexual community on the outskirts of Widnes. A spokesperson for the community declined to comment, although we did hear some audible tutting down the phone.]]>The London Vegan and Vegetarian Film Festivaltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30277262013-04-06T07:16:57-04:002013-04-09T09:51:25-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/
Festival highlights include seminal masterpieces such as the award-winning "Meathands", Ang Lee's acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain 2" and the controversial "Lamb Burgers".
Here's a preview of what's in store:
]]>Review: 'The God Argument - The Case Against Religion and for Humanism' By A.C. Graylingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29859122013-03-30T21:17:31-04:002013-03-31T05:19:51-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/Catherine Pepinster, A.C. Grayling's new book The God Argument is a "stern, unrelenting and unforgiving" attack on faith, a "vilification of theists" written in the style of "an angry Old Testament prophet". Grayling, we are told, is guilty of "railing at religionists" such as the theist philosopher Alvin Plantinga, whose version of the ontological argument for the existence of God causes Grayling "to see red".
At this point, those of us familiar with Grayling's work might begin to smell a rat. Typically so measured in his tone and tolerant in his outlook, what could have happened to transform him into this pugnacious, fire-breathing polemicist?
Well, nothing. Because The God Argument is about as far removed in tone from Pepinster's account than it is possible to imagine. It is, in fact, one of the most dispassionate overviews of the atheistic stance yet to appear. Pepinster is of course entitled to her opinion, but readers should be aware that her review is of a book that does not exist outside of her imagination.
This is a common enough phenomenon. Elsewhere I have argued that the notion of atheistic anger is grossly exaggerated by those who take a different view. For instance, in his book The Rage Against God, Peter Hitchens makes the claim that "the difficulties of the anti-theists begin when they try to engage with anyone who does not agree with them, when their reaction is often a frustrated rage that the rest of us are so stupid". I enjoyed Hitchens's book a great deal, but what he describes here as "rage" is nothing more than a plainspoken scepticism when it comes to the question of faith.
That is not to say that Grayling is incapable of expressing frustration. In his excellent book Ideas That Matter, he writes that "the definition of Orthodox Christianity might as well be something like 'Christianity of a more than usually comical kind'". But such barbs are nowhere to be found in The God Argument, which is characterised by an impressive degree of restraint, and is all the more devastating for it. Nobody could honestly describe this book as "sneering", a ploy favoured by those who argue that religion should be ring-fenced from criticism; those, in other words, who insist on patronising the religious.
The God Argument is a book that most intelligent people of faith will welcome. As a concise and erudite articulation of the core rationale behind atheism, it is a valuable contribution to the debate, not least because the humanist alternative to religion is so persuasively expressed. Although other atheist writers have been at pains to point out that individual fulfilment does not depend on a belief in the supernatural, Grayling expands on this idea with insight and poise. His invocation of Plutarch's essay The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men to illustrate the humanist ideal is particularly effective. Moreover, there is a laudable emphasis on what has become known as "applied ethics", as opposed to the "meta-ethical" abstractions of modern academic approaches to the study of philosophy. Grayling's position is consistently life-affirming, a far cry from the rabid, belligerent caricature we find in Pepinster's review.
Many will dislike this book because of ideological differences. Conservatives will be uncomfortable with Grayling's views on abortion, pornography, prostitution and the social benefits of drug legalisation. Left-leaning cultural relativists will balk at his emphasis on universal human rights. But whatever else one might think of Grayling's views, his skills as a writer are incontestable. The sheer clarity of his jargon-free prose makes The God Argument a pleasure to read.
Grayling is particularly adept when it comes to addressing the oft-repeated charge of "fundamentalist atheism", anticipating Jonathan Rée's review in The Guardian which claims that "as a militant atheist, the philosopher AC Grayling has much in common with the literal fundamentalists he derides". But critics would do well to avoid this tactic. The phrase "fundamentalist atheist" is a semantic contradiction, and as such is meaningless. With infinite patience Grayling explains that "atheism is to theism as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting... How could someone be a militant non-stamp-collector?" The analogy may not be original - Grayling acknowledges as much - but it does the job.
Other reviewers have also been quick to misrepresent Grayling's book. Martin Cohen tells us that it is loaded with ad hominem arguments, which simply suggests to me that he needs to brush up on his Latin. Whatever else one thinks of Grayling's views, he only ever attacks the basis of any given religious argument itself, not the person making it. Of course, Cohen is unable to quote any actual examples of these supposed ad hominem attacks, which helps him to maintain the illusion that they are present in the text at all.
Cohen goes on to question Grayling's philosophical approach, accusing him of hypocrisy:
[A]lthough Grayling accuses "supporters of religion" of making lots of silly, elementary errors of logic, doesn't he himself commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent?
If religion is an evil influence on people, then people's minds will be addled and lots of bad things will result. (First premise.)
People's minds have been addled and lots of bad things have resulted. (Second premise.)
Religion is an evil influence on people. (Wonky conclusion.)
Of course, having misrepresented the initial premise in this way it's easy for Cohen to reach the "wonky conclusion" that serves his agenda. What Grayling actually argues, quite plainly, is that religion can be an evil influence, that "moderate" faith can lead to fundamentalism, and that humanism is preferable as a guiding principle in life. If Cohen sincerely believes that Grayling's argument runs along the lines of the syllogism outlined above, he can't have read the book very carefully. Or, what's more likely, he had a preconceived notion of what Grayling would say and interpreted his words accordingly.
The God Argument is a book that clearly divides opinion, but that's to be expected given the sensitivity of the subject matter. Critics can mutter their disapproval until the sacred cows come home. For me, this is a superb piece of work; elegant, accessible and profoundly humane.]]>The Man Behind Rocky Horror: An Interview with Richard O'Brientag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26906612013-02-14T21:03:12-05:002013-04-16T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/
"No, no, you can't," he says. "You're not a member". It's his way of insisting that he buys the round, so I decide not to press the point. It would seem ungracious and, let's be honest, he's almost certainly richer than me. The ongoing success of The Rocky Horror Show has seen to that.
Richard's outlandish musical is currently enjoying its 40th anniversary with a new touring production, but his interests aren't limited to musical theatre. He's the very definition of a cult figure, from his bizarre antics on Channel 4's The Crystal Maze to his inimitable performances in films as diverse as Flash Gordon, Spiceworld, and Derek Jarman's wonderfully anarchic Jubilee. I ask him why his various projects always seem to achieve cult status.
"I've always been an outsider, that's why. I think being transgender I was always an outsider. I wasn't all there. You know how they say that about somebody: 'oh he's not all there'? That was me."
Anyone familiar with Richard's work might well see in his extravagant characterisations an unshakeable personal confidence, but it wasn't always the case. Up until ten years ago, the real performance was taking place off-camera. "I was very good at coping. My defence mechanisms were strong. I seemed sparky and chirpy, but the real me was hidden away inside. That's not healthy. Madness ensues. And I did step off the edge of the abyss ten years ago; I went a bit loopy. But I'm over that now, and I'm dealing with what I am and who I am quite well."
At this moment I can't help but glance over to Richard's fiancée, Sabrina Graf, who is sitting on the other side of the table, reading a copy of Hello magazine. She's trying to keep a polite distance from the interview, but I can't help but wonder what she must think of Richard's unflinching honesty.
"So you feel you're in a good place at the moment?" I say, wishing I could retract this banal question almost immediately. Richard, quite rightly, picks me up on it. "Well, I wouldn't employ an American cliché quite like that," he says, laughing. I take a sip of my orange juice and mutter something about watching too much American television.
"I'm at peace with myself," he says. "I like being in the middle of the sexes and I'm very happy there. I can go out in a frock or whatever and nobody ever says anything. I'm completely and totally free to be myself without any fear of rejection."
But doesn't he still experience some prejudice? "Obviously I'm going to get some flack from certain quarters of society," Richard admits. "But f*ck 'em. Who are these people? People who don't have a sex life, who don't have any life whatsoever".
He reserves his harshest criticism for his own generation, those born during the Second World War who came of age at the advent of the sexual revolution. "I look across a restaurant sometimes and see these old bastards and I think, you're my f*cking age. What went wrong? When did you lose the joy? Why did you let yourself turn into this parody of your grandparents? Were you hippies? Were you rock n' roll? Did that happen, or were you always a miserable old f*cker?"
He somehow says all of this without a trace of anger. He isn't bitter, he simply has very little patience for what he sees as the tyranny of gender, a phenomenon that he believes is irrevocably associated with misogyny. "It's b*llshit. It's absolute b*llshit. Arrogant f*cking men full of testosterone thinking that they're better than women. We're a human race; let's forget male and female. We're a sentient species; the greatest gift that could be provided to anyone anywhere in the universe. And then to turn around and say that fifty percent of this group that we belong to is less viable than the other fifty percent is sickening. It pisses me off."
The current production of Rocky Horror stars Oliver Thornton as Dr Frank-N-Furter, and X-Factor's Rhydian in the title role. "I've been talking to journalists about this tour, obviously, because the producers want me to. It's a dreadful job if the production isn't good; you have to go out anyway, put on a brave face, and say you're so excited. But here we have a show which is wonderful. The cast is great. The band is terrific. It's so easy to go out and wave the flag and beat the drum when it's good."
I ask him whether there is any room for reinvention with each new production. He has a straightforward answer to this. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've got the same dialogue, the same characters, the same locations, so it's kind of written in stone. And I think probably, from the actor's point of view, that's the challenge isn't it? Because our original Frank-N-Furter, Tim Curry, was definitive. We had one actor twenty or thirty years ago who said to me: 'I hope you know, Richard, I'm stealing everything off Tim Curry'. And I thought that was an honest way to approach it."
Perhaps this consistency is the key to the show's longevity. Richard thinks it's more to do with the fairytale essence of the piece. "That's its charm, that's the reason it has a life. Rocky falls into this tradition: children's fairy tales, Greek myths and legends, the Bible and other documents of faith. I'm a Darwinist, so I have no problems saying that the story of Genesis and the Garden of Eden is a parable. Rocky is like that. Brad and Janet are Adam and Eve. The serpent is Frank-N-Furter."
This is a particularly interesting analogy given that by the end of the show, after Frank sings the sentimental number "I'm Going Home", we invariably feel sorry for him. "Sympathy for the devil? Yes, exactly. And you should do so. A tyrant doesn't think of himself as a tyrant."
The Rocky Horror Show flouts many conventions of musical theatre. Was this deliberate? "I wanted to put genuine rock n' roll songs into it rather than pastiche. Grease is pastiche. It annoys the shit out of me."
I tell him I prefer Grease 2. "Let's not go there," he says abruptly.
To Richard, The Rocky Horror Show represents the full realisation of his craft as a writer. "All the characters come on at the right time, all the songs come at the right time, and it has a very simple linear plot. Rocky Horror is foolproof. It's flawless. And I know I shouldn't say that. But I'm not patting myself on the back. It's just a fact." Somehow, this doesn't sound arrogant coming from Richard. It sounds honest.
Before I leave I ask about his forthcoming marriage. Sabrina tells me they'll be getting married in New Zealand in April. "I'm her fool," says Richard, smiling and taking hold of her hand. "I'm the luckiest person on the planet. I really am." It's difficult to be cynical about this kind of happiness. I'm left with the impression of a man who is proud of his achievements, excited about the future and, to employ the forbidden American cliché, most definitely in a good place.
The full version of this interview appears in the February issue of ScotsGay Magazine]]>Valentine's Day Recipe: Heart-Shaped Horse Pietag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26688732013-02-13T19:00:00-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/Findus, horsemeat is now more popular than ever. What better way to say "I love you" than to cook this delicious heart-shaped meaty treat for that special someone in your life?
500g fresh horsemeat (or one average-sized baby Shetland pony)
111ml water
Vegetable stock
Potatoes (lots)
Cheddar cheese
Method:
Chop the onion and garlic into small pieces. A knife is best for this, as it has a sharp side which can be used to cut through stuff.
Peel your potatoes. Since this recipe is inspired by Nigella Lawson, you should make sure this procedure is as sexualised as possible. Lick your lips as you peel, and touch yourself inappropriately at regular intervals.
Cut the potatoes into smaller pieces. Alternatively, you can use smaller potatoes and then you won't have to bother.
Grate the cheese. The best way to do this is with a cheese-grater.
Heat a little oil in a frying pan. As this is for Valentine's Day, you may wish you use a small quantity of semen as a low calorie alternative (available at Waitrose - behind the wheelie bins after nine o'clock).
Toss the onion and garlic into a frying pan and brown over a low heat for four minutes. That's roughly the length of Kate Winslet's 2001 Christmas single What If, so if you're worried about timing just play that in the background.
Add some chopped carrot and turnip if you're one of those five-a-day freaks.
Add the minced horsemeat to the pan and try not to think of Boxer from George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Pour in the water and vegetable stock.
Turn up the motherfucking heat, bitches.
After 15 minutes or so taste the meat to see if it's ready. It should have a tough, chewy quality, not unlike Mel Gibson's jowls, or George Osborne's sense of compassion.
Lower the heat, cover the pan and simmer until the smell of hot dead horse is overwhelming.
Preheat the oven to 200C. Leave your heart-shaped oven dish in the oven until it is hot. You'll know it's hot if it burns your tongue when you lick it.
Boil the potatoes. In water, ideally. If you work for the Daily Express you may prefer to use the blood of a small child.
Add milk to the potatoes in order to mash them. This can be obtained from virtually any lactating mammal. Except for Kate Middleton, who is known to bite.
Pour the horsemeat into the heart-shaped oven dish. Add the mash and sprinkle on as much cheese as possible to disguise the flavour of equine flesh.
Cook in the oven until the cheese begins to bubble. Serve with roasted vegetables and a large bucket.]]>Review: Unhitched - The Trial of Christopher Hitchens by Richard Seymourtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26329212013-02-06T18:07:11-05:002013-04-08T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/
A similar thing happened last week with the publication of Richard Seymour's book Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens. As the title implies, it's an all-out assault on the late polemicist in which he is attacked for, amongst other crimes, his "career-minded avarice", his "misogyny", "his many plagiarisms", his "ferocious American nationalism", his "profoundly colonial" outlook, his "closeted sympathy for Thatcherism", his "theophobia", his "bigoted attitude towards Muslims", his "downright racism", and for acting as "an amanuensis of the Bush administration".
Given that the "trial" is posthumous, Seymour comes across every bit as churlish and opportunistic as Pope Stephen. But readers should consider two points before judging Seymour too harshly. First of all, the book was commissioned six months before Hitchens's death, so all Fred Inglis's talk of Seymour dancing on the "fresh grave" seems a little unfair. Secondly, this kind of blood-and-guts diatribe is precisely the sort of thing that got Hitchens excited. He wrote similarly damning screeds against Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger, and certainly didn't observe a tactful period of mourning before remarking of the late Jerry Falwell that "it's a pity there isn't a Hell for him to go to". Hitchens may not have liked Seymour's book, but he would have relished the chance to lock horns in the aftermath.
And he would have had much to criticise. Seymour is a purist when it comes to Marxism; he will brook only one interpretation (his own), pronouncing Hitchens as guilty of "philistinism" and "vulgarisation", as though Marxism were free from divergent schools of thought. More seriously, he demonstrates an uncritical overreliance on biased sources; most notably the testimony of Tariq Ali, whose personal animosity since his falling out with Hitchens is well known. In short, Seymour's book is unashamedly partisan, meaning that his analytical objectivity is compromised. This isn't so much a trial as a show trial.
That said, it's much better than his critics have suggested. Seymour has a methodical, assured style, and he understands as well as Hitchens that the occasional rambunctious self-indulgence makes for an enjoyable read. There can also be no denying that Seymour knows his subject. His familiarity with Hitchens's work is of a kind only ever attained by a true aficionado or determined adversary.
Central to Seymour's thesis is the notion of an ideological consistency throughout Hitchens's life; that he always was, essentially, a "man of the right" (an accusation which, if true, would surely undermine Seymour's charges of apostasy). But Seymour is extremely effective when it comes to pointing out Hitchens's many discrepancies in his views on American foreign policy and military intervention, particularly with regard to the Bosnian war following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992. He adroitly identifies Hitchens's vacillations over the NATO air strikes in Kosovo, and his use of Hitchens's own advice from Letters to a Young Contrarian to attack his own later tendency to speak of the US military in the first person plural is a shrewd move.
But looked at from another perspective, there is perhaps more consistency in Hitchens's position than Seymour admits. Hitchens, for instance, always mistrusted pacifism. In 1965 Hitchens was calling for the withdrawal of British troops from Aden and South Yemen on anti-imperialist grounds. At the same time, he supported intervention in Zimbabwe against white supremacists in the Rhodesian Front, albeit feeling "uneasy" whilst doing so. He blamed American foreign policy for the partition of Cyprus in his book Hostage to History, but was scornful of British "inaction" during the Turkish invasion of 1974. He even went so far as to rejoice in the ETA's assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973.
So one might say that Hitchens was consistent in his inconsistency - a point he freely acknowledged - for the simple reason that no two conflict situations are precisely alike. Hitchens's rallying cry "out of Aden, into Rhodesia" was not, therefore, necessarily hypocritical.
Much of this comes down to individual moral values. Hitchens would probably agree with Seymour's conclusion that he began to "identify the United States Armed Forces as a human rights detachment, an antigenocide task force, and a vector for democracy", but whether or not this is an indictment is disputable. It is certainly damaging if you accept Seymour's interpretation that he was motivated by a latent imperialism, but this is unconvincing. You don't have to be pro-war to recognise in Hitchens's argument an ideological coherence firmly grounded in a hatred of totalitarianism. When Hitchens stated that this was his sole consistency, he had a point.
But Seymour won't have it. For instance, he insists that Hitchens's support for the Falklands War was a manifestation of his "instinctive Thatcherism" and "faith in empire". But isn't this rather unlikely given Hitchens's view of extreme nationalism as "toxic", as expressed unambiguously in his memoir Hitch-22? Rather, Hitchens's support of the Falklands conflict was based on an overt animosity towards the fascistic nature of the Argentine junta, a perfectly satisfactory explanation that Seymour unfairly dismisses as mere "left gloss".
Seymour makes much of the nationalistic fervour that galvanised public enthusiasm for Thatcher in the wake of the crisis. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with Hitchens's stance in 1982, which seems to me entirely consistent with his later support of the war in Iraq when understood from a position of liberal internationalism. Whether Seymour chooses to accept it or not, Hitchens's shift to the right was motivated by a desire to defend the principles of the left.
This is why a reductive left/right dichotomy is unhelpful when it comes to engaging with Hitchens's later career. His "defection" is appealing as a convenient narrative, but it doesn't do justice to the substance of his work. Seymour accuses Hitchens of propagating a new "Jeffersonian" imperialism, or a "neoliberal imperialism with a faint leftist patina" but the essay he cites in support is not really a paean to empire at all. Again and again, he tries to shoehorn Hitchens into a fixed, familiar category, but is only able to do so through careful omission. He speaks of Hitchens's "savage rhetoric of conquest" but supplies no examples. He tells us that Hitchens's attack on Edward Said in 2003 was "a signal that he would never again write the things he once had about Palestine. And indeed he never again did". But here's Hitchens writing for Slate in 2009:
Surely nobody will be so callous as to say that there is less despair among Palestinians today - especially since the terrible events in the Gaza Strip and the return to power of the Israeli right wing as well as the expansion of Jewish-zealot settler activity.
Seymour is right that the emphasis of Hitchens's targets altered in the last decade of his life, but it is simply not true to suggest that he lost all sympathy for the Palestinian cause. It is revealing that Seymour dismisses Hitchens's 2006 piece "Overstating Jewish Power" as "equivocal", even though in that very article Hitchens reasserts his belief that "the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe", and goes on to cite a litany of examples of how the Israeli government has been complicit in various human rights abuses through its morally dubious foreign policy.
Perhaps what Seymour means by "equivocal" is "insufficiently aligned with my own particular views". And this strikes me as the major failing of Unhitched. This would have been a more persuasive book had Seymour restricted himself to his perfectly legitimate criticisms of Hitchens's arguments. He is able to refute successfully some of the more egregious misconceptions, such as the belief that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was an al-Qaeda agent working in tandem with Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war. Likewise, Hitchens's description of Northern Irish paramilitaries as "religious" in his book god is Not Great is deservedly ridiculed. But these valid critiques are marred by Seymour's repeated insistence that Hitchens was a shoddy writer, a view that simply won't stand up to serious scrutiny.
Critics of Hitchens have always been notoriously reluctant to concede the obvious truth, that whatever one might think of his ideas he was one of the finest rhetoricians of our time. There are nods to Hitchens's polemical expertise in Unhitched, but they are sporadic and grudging. Seymour acknowledges his "eloquence" and "rhetorical power" but, tellingly, only when Hitchens's views mirror his own. He avers that Hitchens's intellect was "greatly overvalued in his later years"; coincidentally, it seems, when he began writing articles that differed from Seymour's worldview. Draw your own conclusions.
One of Seymour's tactics is the wholly unsubstantiated imputation of plagiarism. Offering by way of example Hitchens's review of Edward Said's Orientalism, Seymour asserts that "much of the article is actually plagiarised from the book it is allegedly reviewing". Rather than provide any concrete examples of his own, he instead footnotes an article by Clare Brandabur in which this claim is originally made. Here is Brandabur's argument:
Throughout his essay, he takes lines from Orientalism without letting the reader know they are not his own. For example, when he says that Lord Macaulay was "a near perfect illustration of the sentence (which occurs in Disraeli's novel Tancred) 'The East is a career'." That line, correctly attributed, occurs on page 5 of Orientalism. But you would not know that from Hitchens' text. From there he moves to discuss Karl Marx, again taking passages in which Said quotes Marx quoting a stanza from Goethe (pages 153-4 of Orientalism).
Brandabur simply does not know what she is talking about. Hitchens is perfectly at liberty to quote sources that Said has also used. Brandabur's examples only serve to demonstrate the exact reverse of what she is trying to prove, that Hitchens has not poached anybody else's work and passed it off as his own.
In his dogged quest to discredit Hitchens's professional integrity, Seymour also cites John Barrell's review of Hitchens's book Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Barrell, it is claimed, had "detected plagiarism" in the text. Interesting, then, that in the review in question Barrell (no fan of Hitchens) makes the admission that "there is of course no question of plagiarism". Seymour omits this aspect of Barrell's review because it doesn't serve his agenda. It reminds me of the rhetorical question Seymour posed in his 2005 essay "The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens": "why highlight a report to support your point when it doesn't say what you claim it does?"
Barrell indeed argues that Hitchens "depends heavily" on John Keane's 1995 biography of Paine, and cites passages in which Hitchens has clearly garnered some of the historical details that underpin his writing. He makes the valid observation that "Hitchens's debt to Keane is palpable", but Hitchens acknowledges as much himself. If plagiarism was his intention, one might suppose he would have kept quiet about his source.
A low point is when Seymour stoops to the unfounded accusation of racism. This is especially ignoble given Hitchens's lifelong passion for opposing racism in all its forms. In his memoir Hitchens writes: "I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice", and to doubt him seems plain boorish.
Later, Seymour connects "racism" with what he calls "theophobia" (an unfortunate choice of word given that a fear of God is considered to be a virtue in Christian doctrine). He argues that in Hitchens's case "antitheism as an element in his politics and idiolect really began in and around 2005". Anyone familiar with Hitchens's body of work will appreciate the extent of this inaccuracy. Seymour maintains that in the wake of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie "Muslims living in the imperialist societies found themselves increasingly pigeonholed into identarian boxes... as their religious identity was itself racialised", an over-simplification which enables him to conflate race and religious ideology. This is spurious. It accounts for the common misuse of the neologism "Islamophobic" to disparage those who have legitimate reservations about theocracy and religion generally. Seymour (re)defines "Islamophobia" to suit his purposes, with a little help from the Runnymede Trust, but his application of the term to Hitchens is a form of posthumous libel.
Unhitched is unlikely to be the last book-length attack on Hitchens, but in spite of such efforts Hitchens's legacy is assured. A few hungry bark beetles cannot topple a redwood. Seymour's belief that Hitchens's "literary flair... declined in proportion to his political nous" is wishful thinking; a well-argued untruth. As a strategy, it cannot help but misfire. As one of the most prolific and brilliant political writers of our time Hitchens's gifts were prodigious, and if there is a guilty verdict to be reached in this "trial", it must surely be to the charge of "not being in complete agreement with Richard Seymour". I should think Hitchens would be happy enough with that.]]>Faggots, Trolls and Azealia Bankstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25050252013-01-21T19:00:00-05:002013-03-23T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/YouTube clip to realise that ignorance is no guarantee of humility. Undeterred by illiteracy they forge ahead, virus-like; attaching, penetrating and replicating their way through the infinite fabric of cyberspace. And at the thinnest bat's squeak of a Twitter-feud the hordes descend. Like their namesakes from Norse mythology, these trolls can smell blood. And they're hungry.
But even trolls have their uses. The prevalence of anti-gay sentiments on the web is a valuable gauge of just how much more work still remains to be done when it comes to tackling homophobia. If you don't believe me, you can watch real time tweets that include the terms 'faggot', 'dyke', 'no homo' and 'so gay' at NoHomophobes.com, a website established by the University of Alberta's Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services. The site has recorded over six and a half million tweets featuring the word 'faggot' since July of last year. It would appear that through the medium of social networking bigotry can readily find a voice, albeit one that is somewhat gruff and laryngitic.
Of course, pointing out the imbecility of internet trolls is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel; a futile activity which, as a staunch vegetarian, I would never condone. What interests me about this whole affair is what happened when the journalist Patrick Strudwick called on Banks to apologise for her language. Banks refused, arguing that since she was in no way repentant an insincere apology would be worthless. From her perspective she was merely responding to the provocation of Hilton and, in any case, she claims that her comment had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. "A faggot is not a homosexual male," she tweeted. "A faggot is any male who acts like a female. There's a BIG difference".
There is some merit to the argument that the intention behind a word is more significant than the word itself. When my friend Tom calls me a "dirty homo", as he often does, I can be fairly sure that this isn't his way of telling me that he's decided to embrace the principles of neo-fascism. Chris Rock is right when he says that "it's not the word, it's the context in which the word is said". The context of Twitter is that it's a public forum. Private intentions cannot be conveyed telepathically. In the Twittersphere, language is all we have.
Banks may well seek to redefine the word 'faggot' so that it is divorced from homophobic implication, but her fans have made it absolutely clear that they do not share her definition. Since Strudwick's call for an apology from Banks, he has been inundated with abusive tweets of such severity that he has considered contacting the police. They range from the grammatically incoherent ("People who hates the word faggot is a faggot") to the tautological ("Faggoty faggot, stop this godflabbit faggotry") to the downright black-hearted ("leave Godzealia alone and kill yourself you aids infested filthy faggot"). If you really believe that the expressions "faggot" and "so gay" are no longer associated with homosexuality in the popular mindset, just try a quick search on Twitter. The trolls will set you straight.
I doubt very much that Banks is a homophobe. She has worked with many gay artists and is bisexual herself. But the fact that sales of her music have risen sharply since her tweet to Hilton probably suggests that she won't be admonishing the homophobic members of her fan base any time soon. In any case, it's quite difficult to take her defence seriously in the light of her suggestion that Strudwick should also, like Hilton, commit suicide. This appears to be her favoured ultima ratio. She'd better not volunteer for the Samaritans.
We all know that freedom of speech is fundamental to any democratic society. If you want to say the word "faggot" you are free to do so, but you should also accept the consequences. Don't feign surprise if people assume that you're a bigot. It's very difficult to occupy the moral high ground when you're nestling under the bridge with the trolls.]]>Richard Dawkins and the Myth of the Angry Atheisttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23631182012-12-17T19:00:00-05:002013-02-16T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/
This, at least, is the way in which prominent figures in the so-called "New Atheism" movement have been characterised in certain sections of the media. Commentators delight in branding the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and A. C. Grayling as 'angry' or 'cantankerous' or, worst of all, 'fundamentalist atheist', an oxymoron that betrays a basic misunderstanding of both fundamentalism and atheism.
This is hardly surprising. When backed into a corner, the argumentum ad hominem seems an attractive escape route, even if it involves the imputation of anger where none exists, or the misinterpretation of strong rhetoric as indicative of a lack of objectivity. We saw this in Alom Shaha's review of Dawkins's two-part documentary series The Root of All Evil? for Channel 4, in which Shaha claimed that Dawkins "seems to have chosen a deliberately condescending, patronising and aggressive approach, unnecessarily re-enforcing the notion that scientists are arrogant bigots themselves".
This is a fashionable thing to say, but it doesn't bear much relation to the facts. The worst you can say of Dawkins in these programmes is that he occasionally appears to lose patience with his interviewees (a tendency he has since learned to curb). Aggression can only really be claimed if the dictionary definition is abandoned. Dawkins's rhetoric is no more acerbic than one hears in parliamentary debates, and yet to my knowledge nobody has suggested to Ed Miliband that he should go easy on the invective when deriding Tory policy. Shaha elsewhere berates "the 'angry atheist' brigade". This is another phantom, a projection. Like the 'PC brigade', it only really exists in the minds of the people who deploy the phrase.
It's not a particularly new technique. Take the comic book tracts of Jack T. Chick, an American evangelist who seems to delight in hatemongering in the name of Christ (I was first introduced to his work as a child and, as a devout Catholic, was rather taken aback by the description of the Vatican as the "Mother of Abominations"). Chick's representation of scientists is unflattering to say the least. In one tract, entitled Big Daddy?, we see a lecture in evolutionary biology interrupted by a polite, young Christian student. When the student mentions the Biblical account of the Earth's creation, the lecturer is depicted as visibly sweating and screams the words: "HOLD IT YOU FANATIC!! I could have you jailed for that!!" The sheer lack of subtlety is hilarious.
Of course, Chick is an extreme example, and no thoughtful Christian could take him seriously. But the idea of the intransigent, antagonistic scientist is familiar enough, not restricted to the extremists. It is a commonplace perception based on a false characterisation of atheism that has somehow gained credibility. It is a caricature designed to undermine critics of religion so that legitimate questions can be dismissed as 'sneering'. Moreover, it is experientially unsound. I have never seen any of the 'New Atheists' react with such ferocity. Even when faced with an intellect as unrefined as Bill O'Reilly's, Dawkins manages to keep his cool. And that's quite an accomplishment.
Leaving aside the possibility that, in some cases, anger is a legitimate response (as posited by Greta Christina in her book Why Are You Atheists So Angry?), what interests me is the way in which commentators continue to argue against imaginary foes. A good example is Mehdi Hasan's recent article for The Huffington Post UK, which doesn't so much attack Dawkins as it does 'Dawkins'.
In his article, Hasan restates a number of common anti-atheist arguments, all of which have been successfully rebutted innumerable times by brighter people than me. My concern here is not the obvious weakness of Hasan's arguments, but rather what this article tells us about the misrepresentation of atheists in general. The likes of Christina Odone may call Dawkins a "turkey", and inaccurately describe his views as examples of "prejudice and bigotry", but that's just about the level of sophistication we've come to expect from her. I expect more from Mehdi Hasan.
"I believe in God," he writes. "Shame on me, eh? Faith, in the disdainful eyes of the atheist, is irredeemably irrational; to have faith, as Dawkins put it to me, is to have 'belief in something without evidence'. This, however, is sheer nonsense. Are we seriously expected to believe that the likes of Descartes, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Rousseau, Leibniz and Locke were all unthinking or irrational idiots?"
No, we are not. And no such expectation has been articulated, at least not by Dawkins. Nor has anyone suggested that Hasan should feel "shame" for his beliefs. But what this straw man argument so clearly reveals is a reluctance to engage in the debate properly. Religious positions would be better served if their proponents addressed the actual criticisms, rather than taking a defensive stance against the imagined disdain of those who disagree. Like Robert Frost's drunken cow, they bellow on a knoll against the sky.
Many religious thinkers are happy to concede that faith, by its very definition, is irrational. A dearth of evidence does not pose a problem for faith, it is an inherent corollary of it. And what's so wrong with that? If there are human beings who have no irrational tendencies, I haven't met them. Hasan, however, is loath to make this admission.
What this tells us is that the subjectivity of religious experience can overpower rational instincts in even the sharpest of minds. This is why the religious need to be wary when they participate in this debate. It's clear enough that Hasan wouldn't tolerate such sloppiness in any other realm of discussion. He is fairly damning, for instance, about Sunny Hundal's speculations that the Iranian regime are developing nuclear weapons. On this topic, at least, evidence matters.
But when it comes to religion, Hasan needlessly wrangles over tortuous semantic distinctions between "evidence" and "proof" as a means to circumvent the argument. He affirms that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I can't prove God but you can't disprove him", as though Dawkins hadn't already made the identical point in his bestseller The God Delusion. It is known as the "spectrum of theistic probability", and Dawkins makes it clear that as a scientist he cannot possibly be at the very end of this spectrum as a "strong atheist", but that he occupies the position of the de facto atheist, the belief that there is a "very low probability" of God's existence, "but short of zero".
Dawkins made this very point during a recent interview conducted by Hasan for Al-Jazeera, so it cannot have escaped his attention. Yet in Hasan's recent article it is the imaginary Dawkins who once again takes a beating; he of the frothing mouth and stamping feet who angrily berates the idiocy of his opponents. I'd quite like to meet that man. I'm sure he'd be quite entertaining. Unfortunately, and crucially, he doesn't exist.
The aggressive atheist is not the norm. I fully believe Rabbi David Wolpe when he says he has been bombarded by belligerent emails from non-believers, but the internet is seething with trolls, and these missives can hardly be said to be representative of atheist thought in general. I, for one, have never met a genuinely angry atheist. Should I take it on faith that they exist?
I'm all for having the debate. But let's not have the debate with shadows and ghouls.]]>A Near-Death Experience At The Edinburgh Fringetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17558102012-08-08T13:17:06-04:002012-10-08T05:12:32-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/ My show is at eight o'clock in the evening, and by that time the surface of the stage has a clammy, mucous quality about it. This prevents me from moving around too much for fear of slipping and falling headlong into the front row. Admittedly, that could be quite funny, but slapstick isn't my forte and I bruise like a little girl.
I'm not complaining. Some of my most exciting experiences in Edinburgh have taken place in dark, wet rooms. There's something quite exhilarating about watching comedy in an apocalyptic bunker. There's that "all-in-this-together" spirit, a determination to enjoy oneself in spite of the discomfort. I should imagine this is very much how it felt at the time of the blitz.
Under such circumstances, you're relying to a degree on the goodwill of your audience. But a couple of nights ago I found myself in a situation that could only ever really happen at the Edinburgh Fringe. It left rather a sour taste in the mouth. Not unlike that time at Pizza Express when, midway through a green salad, I noticed an infestation of creeping things in my radicchio. (I still fully intend to seek vengeance for this, I just haven't got round to it yet.)
Let me set the scene. My flyerers and I had been working the streets of Edinburgh for a good few hours. I realise that my phrasing carries an implication of prostitution, which is not too far off the mark. One of my flyerers, Thomas, actually offered sexual favours to a group of Australian backpackers as an incentive to see my show. You might call it desperate, I call it an ingenious marketing strategy.
In any case, after three hours of begging and general degradation, we were a mess. To make matters worse, I was nursing what Eric Linklater once so memorably termed a "three-dimensional hangover". We were tired, miserable, and our hands were crosshatched with paper cuts. Still, the show would be starting in less than fifteen minutes, so the end was very much in sight. It was at this point that we found ourselves caught in one of those Scottish monsoons you may have read about in the National Geographic. I called out to my flyerers to take cover, my mouth filling instantly with rainwater as I did so.
I abandoned my flyers and sought refuge in my venue. After all, the show was due to start very soon and I needed to do a quick sound check. It was at this point that my technician informed me that there was a seventy-five percent chance that there would be a power cut at some point during the next hour. Apparently, Scottish Power were digging up the street so that they could play Cat's Cradle with the cables, so some of my show was probably going to have to take place in complete darkness. This is all very well if you're an extreme performance artist, but I can't think of anything less conducive to comedy (with the exception, perhaps, of Roy "Chubby" Brown). I'll bet that blitz analogy doesn't seem too hyperbolic now, does it?
And so, when the audience entered, they were positively sodden with the rain, and were visibly miserable. It looked like they were shuffling in at gunpoint for some kind of Stalinist show trial. This, I thought to myself shrewdly, is not ideal.
But Fate was about to issue another of its wanton bitch-slaps. As I was welcoming more audience members at the door, seven or eight rather burly middle-aged men marched past me, their faces masks of pure rage. They ignored my greetings and took their seats on the second row, some finding consolation in their pint glasses. In their wake, a young barmaid entered, clearly agitated, and told me that she had just had a blazing row with these men and that they were "likely to cause trouble".
Some more commotion outside was the prelude to yet another spectacular entrance. A young man, drunk to the point of idiocy, was shepherded in by one of his friends, who told me that he would "be absolutely fine" before guiding him to a seat. I was not so reassured when the venue's security guard came in to tell me that this drunken man had been barking at strangers in the bar, and that it might be prudent to have him ejected. Not wanting to cause any more problems, I decided to let him stay.
And so the show began. I took my place in the spotlight, and looked out at this poor, drenched collective. The entire second row glowered at me, still seething from their altercation with the barmaid. The drunken man started to make noises, not wholly dissimilar from the anguished cries of a dying sow. I announced that there was a very real possibility that we would be plunged into darkness at some point during the next hour, thanks to the machinations of Scottish Power. Needless to say, the atmosphere was tense. I could practically chew on it.
Perhaps I am gifted with a form of clairvoyance, but I felt fairly sure that this would be a tough gig.
Welcome to Edinburgh.]]>Starbucks: Where Everybody Knows Your Nametag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17251892012-08-02T19:00:00-04:002012-10-02T05:12:06-04:00Andrew Doylehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/
It's also one of the few places where I can make a coffee last for a whole afternoon and not be asked to leave. This is a policy of Starbucks; it's a home from home. Sometimes I even put in my earplugs and have a nap, safe in the knowledge that the people who work there are far too spineless to ever register an objection. Just to be sure, I sleep with one hand in my jacket pocket to imply that I'm armed.
I suppose I shouldn't be redrafting my Edinburgh fringe show two days before my first preview. I've been in Edinburgh for four days now, and have been fairly permanently ensconced in one of the city's many branches of Starbucks, working away on my laptop. This is the problem with being a stand-up comedian. It's an isolating process. People often assume there's an element of glamour to the whole thing. There isn't. Unless your idea of glamour involves being on the receiving end of drunken death threats in some damp attic above a pub in Yeovil.
I suppose I shouldn't be in Starbucks at all. I suppose as a socialist I shouldn't be advocating this global capitalistic leviathan. In my defence, I'm trying to bring down the system from within. Unless all the comfortable chairs are taken, in which case the revolution can wait.
Anyway, this particular branch is in Edinburgh's New Town, the very hub of champagne socialism. Even the infants are reading The Guardian. I find kids in coffee shops annoying at the best of times, but if you get too close to these ones they start hassling you about climate change.
Why do I keep coming back here? Maybe it's the siren on their logo with the Mona Lisa smile, coaxing me like some bewitched sailor onto frappuccino-sodden rocks. Are Starbucks really trying to broaden their clientele through literary allusion? And, if so, why choose something that so clearly suggests that you're falling into a trap?
But then, why shouldn't my creative process take place in Starbucks? I heard that JK Rowling immured herself in her local café to write that thing about wizards. My show has nothing whatsoever to do with wizards, incidentally, but that's because I had a Catholic upbringing and I absolutely refuse to endorse the occult. The Pope would be livid.
Instead, I've written a show about a near-death experience I had in Suffolk. One day, whilst out walking along the River Stour, I found myself caught waist-deep in wet clay by a sea wall, with the tide coming in and not a coastguard in sight. It was genuinely terrifying. I thought I might never taste an extra-shot sugar-free hazelnut soya latte ever again. And no one should have to go through that. Not even Mugabe.
Today hasn't been my most productive. I've had to stop because three fashionably dressed youths with cut-glass accents are encroaching on my personal space. They are the very definition of banality. One of them has just actually used the phrase "OMG" in conversation. If she's going to take the Lord's name in vain she should at least have the courtesy not to abbreviate.
In my experience, three-letter acronyms almost invariably signify something unpleasant: IRA, PVC, MFI. And, of course, anyone who puts LOL in a text message should be put to death without trial.
I've made a decision. I'm going to last the whole festival without stepping foot in another Starbucks. Yes, I'll miss all those artificial flavours and artificial smiles. But my dependence on this horribly corporate, faux-domesticity has to stop. I'm getting the hell out of here.
Maybe one more skinny blueberry muffin. Just for old time's sake.]]>