Beyond the obvious, there was something deeply troubling about David Starkey's appearance on Newsnight on Friday.
Giving a master class in excruciating ignorance the aging historian, almost bent double with his portentous fervour, delivered his assessment of the riots: 'the problem is that white people have become black.'
It made me wonder if nothing - not the finest education (he won a scholarship to Cambridge), towering intellect, nor great professional success is enough to protect a man from growing old and simply losing his grasp on the world.
Here was a man who has built a career as the country's most prominent authority in analysing the facts of the past to help us better understand the present, ranting about patois and implying that the entirely of black culture is encapsulated in 50 Cent videos. When fellow guest Owen Jones described his comments as 'career ending' afterwards, you almost hoped he was right for Starkey's case as much as ours.
But in his failure to detect any nuance behind the behaviour of young people beyond some pernicious cultural influences, Starkey didn't just let himself down, but the rest of us, too.
As part of rare sub-section of celebrity intellectuals, he had a responsibility to rise above the knee-jerk commentaries of the press and the simplistic emotional responses violence always stirs in the public. He ought to have landed a blow for rigorous, rational analysis, not spoken like a slightly more eloquent Richard Littlejohn.
There is always a point to be made about the limitations of ten minute TV appearances, and the tendency of the medium in general to cut, copy and paste people's comments into narratives we can all comfortably cheer or boo. The so-called high-brow areas of broadcasting can be as guilty of this as Big Brother.
But this didn't feel like a man being set up by a sneaky journalist, or not being given an opportunity to make his point. This felt like a respected intellectual in yet another foam-flecked television appearance delivering what could be the final blow to his reputation. He mentioned his role in the programme Jamie's Dream School in which he was challenged to mentor a group of teenagers, but appeared to have learnt nothing from the experience.
In it, he only got anywhere when he stopped lecturing and talking down to his class of insecure, angry young people and started listening to them instead. We saw a glimpse of the curmudgeon's humble, human side as he confronted the limitations of his wisdom in a situation he didn't fully understand.
In other words, he stepped back and tackled the situation with inquisitive calm of an intellectual, rather than the stubbornness of an arrogant old fool. It is a shame Starkey hasn't applied that same approach to this troubling and confusing chapter in our nation's history. We could have done with it.
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Greg Jenner: It's Time Dr Starkey Got The Chop
Nabeela Zahir: 'My Tram Experience' Race Relations in Modern Britain
Roifield Brown: The Black English
Michelle Holmes: The Miseducation of Britain
Frankly, I find Tony Sewell's column on Starkey much more intelligent and credible than Parker's childish dismissal. Sewell is a black academician and head of a charity that encourages black youth to attend University, and finds merit in Starkey's points even when he (like me) was startled by his incredibly poor ability to convey the point.
Sewell's column is definitely worth a read, folks: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026053/David-Starkey-Newsnight-Gangsta-culture-poison-spreading-youths-races.html
Perhaps he'd decided that his best tactic was the sound-bite - if so, clearly an error in judgment. The result was, in my opinion, a series of statements almost as disrespectful to the intellect of the listener as they were insulting to those he seemed determined to accuse.
I have been rather disappointed at some of the predictable responses to Dr Starkey's comments however. Because I believe that one of the kernal concepts he was trying to exploreand get accross (allbeit incredibly argue was that race and culture aren't necessarily the same thing. For his adversaries you see I felt that for them this concept was somehow sort of a matter of faith. They were, listening particularly to the other male contributor, rather welded to the notion that culture and race are inextricably linked and that because all races have moral equivalency - since biology is a physiocal fact and unavoifdable, so must all cultures be viewed in the same way.
Intelligence, financial wealth and profession are foundations of strength and pride for many a people. To find a person who has these 3 in abundance and is not prideful is rare in deed. What did a certain Jewish Rabbi say in the 1st century?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
This is not a warning against wealth, but the foolish of dependance on wealth, intelligence or profession.
David Starkey take note.
Mr Starkey reminded me of an educated Alf Garnett: he sounded irritated and angry, desperate to make his narrow views heard. Alas, how the mighty have fallen.