Microblogging 10/1/11
I'm off for a bit. Have fun without me. I will. In the meantime...
You're not having my DNA. I'd love to be able to trust the authorities with my DNA, but I really don't think I can; I'd say there's a reasonable chance it might 'accidentally' get left on the system. It won't solve this ongoing murder inquiry because the guilty guy isn't going to go strolling into the cop shop with his gob open, demanding someone shove a cotton bud in there. I don't think it is only the guilty who have something to fear, I'm afraid.
I don't think Sarah Palin is responsible for the gun attack at the weekend. Responsible for edits on her Facebook page that mean criticism of her is deleted and criticism of a nine-year-old dead kid stays up (albeit a comment with heavy, heavy irony, yes yes I know)? Well I don't even know if she's responsible for that. She's a big fan of guns and yes, put targets up on political opponents, but there's a bit of a bus ride from that to saying she was advocating someone go and shoot them. Which isn't to say she's not despicable, because she is; it's just that she's not responsible for that, and I think it damages the cause of liberals to say that she is.
We're all allowed to talk about stuff that's far away. You might say, oh well what do you know about US politics? Why are you allowed to comment? To which I would answer, well shall we all just give up then, unless we're sitting across the road from something? Shall we all just remove ourselves from any meaningful debate unless we can see what's going on with our own eyes? I'm just down the road from the Bristol murder and many thousands of miles from a shooting in Arizona; but that doesn't mean I can only talk about one of them.
'He's not that type of player' is the kind of thing you hear all the time about some footballer who's just gone ploughing into to someone's ankle with their studs up. Oh, Steve Gerrard didn't mean it, he's a good player. Oh, Paul Scholes didn't mean it; he just hasn't learned to tackle despite all those years of being a professional footballer. Oh, Howard Webb must have taken a bribe to give those decisions. No. Gerrard deserved to get sent off because it was a dirty tackle; that's the top and bottom of it.
K*nn*th T*ng is a truly awful human being, but I don't want to see him banned from Twitter, or anywhere. If anything, seeing such a bumwipe campaigning for anorexia is exactly the sort of thing that should make any right-thinking person reach for a slab of Dairy Milk. His miserable craving for minor celebrity is probably being satisfied by being a hate-figure, though, so the best thing to do is ignore him. Or force-feed him cake. Actually, just ignore him.
Anyway, look, that's it for now. I'm off.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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January 10th, 2011 - 13:52
DNA testing would work well in this case were the following to be the case:
a) individual voluntarily submits DNA sample
b) DNA sample compared with sample from crime scene
c) No match found, so
c1) Individual eliminated from investigation
c2) DNA sample destroyed
d) List of possible suspects narrowed to those who’ve not voluntarily eliminated themselves for this crime
But even if this were the advertised procedure, nobody would trust it any more.
January 10th, 2011 - 13:58
Like.
January 10th, 2011 - 14:43
Look forward to having you back soon. Enjoy your break.
January 10th, 2011 - 22:23
Re Kenneth Tong – your point would be fine if everyone could read and assess his ravings in a rational manner, but there are many people out there who probably can’t, including anorexics and those in recovery for whom his statements could be a trigger.
January 11th, 2011 - 17:59
I won’t say that you can’t blog about US politics; but as a US citizen who has lived in England but still wouldn’t feel comfortable giving voice about intricacies about its politics (though I do love reading yours!), I’ll respectfully disagree with your bit about Sarah Palin.
I live in a VERY conservative area of the States, albeit in a slightly more liberal island of it, and it’s one of those things where if you aren’t immersed in it, it’s very hard to understand the impact of the constant “SHOOT ‘EM UP!” messages coming at you from every corner.
Now, I don’t mean to paint all conservatives as gun-toting loonies, and it’s true that politics in general likes to couch things in military terms. HOWEVER. Sarah Palin and her fellow pundits (Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox and Friends, etc.) make their living telling their devoted followers that they ought to fear their government. About everything. Health care? Death panels. Abortion? The government wants to murder your already-existing child. Fixing the local roads? The government doesn’t trust you to drive, and probably wants to murder your children. It’s CONSTANT.
What do they also do? They encourage their constituents to go around armed to the teeth. The government doesn’t want you to have fully automatic weapons as a private citizen? AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS, HMMMM?
And on top of all this, they gleefully talk in great detail about how they’d in all seriousness strangle Michael Moore (Glenn Beck), how we ought to skip impeaching Obama and go straight to killing him (Rush Limbaugh) and yes, putting up a map with literal gun sights on individual citizens.
And then a politician almost dies due to gun violence.
The back-pedalling, by the by, has been extraordinary. If they truly didn’t think that their actions in some way contributed to the current political climate or Giffords’s shooting, then they’re doing an awfully good impression of someone who does.
So yes, I’ll go ahead and hold Sarah Palin and the other loud-mouthed pundits (not just her in isolation, mind you) at least partially to blame for Giffords’s shooting. You reap what you sow, after all, and they’ve been sowing this kind of paranoia and dissension since they first stepped on the national stage. If they’re going to shoot their mouths off about “reloading” and “taking back their country” like we’re on the fucking frontier instead of in 2011, then they can damn well step back and ponder how they might have contributed to the mindset of a paranoid, delusional man who hates his government.
But, you know. I love reading your blog. Do keep that up.
January 11th, 2011 - 23:53
“You’re not having my DNA.” The Express is full of shit as usual.