Apocollapse
Martin Amis, ‘demented flasher’
November 25, 2007 14 comments
The sublime Chris Morris on the ridiculous Martin Amis:
Surely we all chuckle at the strenuous ennui of his salon drawl. Didn’t he once accidentally sneer his face off? …
Despite his manifest absurdity (he called the World Trade Centre attacks ‘edificide’ and the towers’ destruction an ‘apocollapse’), people take him seriously and if they do then we must.
Read the whole thing.
Previously in “Martin Amis”: Any ethnicity, Functioning insanity.
Great post there. I love this line:
“What sort of braincrash is a ‘moderate totalitarian’? I doubt it could even walk.”
You should recruit Morris for Unspeak.
That’s entirely the wrong way round. The Day Today and Brass Eye were, now I come to think of it, massive influences on my book.
(For non-UK readers who don’t know of Chris Morris, he is our greatest living broadcaster.)
Watch this.
Yes, I know about him, but he hadn’t done political stuff for a while afiak.
How is it that the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ site has managed to accumulate one of the largest collections of reactionary trolls in the world?
Any article mentioning Islam can guarantee a long line of them, many claiming to be groaning under the yoke of Islamist tyranny in various parts of England and scorning metropolitan cosmopolitans for not feeling their pain.
Anyway, good to see Amis called out for his racism again, which was starting to become more than a little annoying, and by the great Chris Morris no less.
It’s an interesting phenomenenon, isn’t it? I have no clue as to why. Perhaps they haven’t discovered that the blog of “Melanie Phillips” now has a comments section?
Without wanting to come across as paranoid as they are, I think it has something to do with Little Green Footballs.
The same happens on the website of the left-liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz – after every article comes a torrent of racist, reactionary abuse. I think the aim is not to persuade people (after all, who, really, is persuaded by “Islamofascist”, even when written in CAPS LOCK!!11!! frothing-at-the-mouth style?) but to simply make reasoned debate on the topic impossible, thus allowing the most strident position (that espoused by Amis, Hitchens and co.) to win out by default.
I have to say I’ve not found Mel P’s new comments facility to be the great leap forward for Melology that it appeared to be. Somehow everything I’ve ever submitted has failed to appear. But they could go off to Samizdata, or Harry’s Place, or wherever.
I think that’s probably the case, actually. I imagine many people wouldn’t dream of reading CiF comments for exactly this reason, and so any useful debate that might have been provoked by the article is lost.
Me too!
Thanks for the pointer to the Morris article. It was even worth giving the Observer a page view to read it. It was beautiful. Attaclysm!
On a side note, I’m always surprised on my (rare) visits to the Daily Mail’s website by how many of the commenters are (or claim to be) from the US. Does Melanie have a similar transatlantic constituency?
“Attaclysm” is wonderful, yes. I love how efficiently Morris ridicules Amis’s lust for neologism by simply being better at it.
Watch this.
Dear god, that’s hilarious. I can see hours of work time draining away already…
sorry if this is a little off the track, fellows…
UK Guantanamo four to be released http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7133760.stm
apparently, the poor buggers are ‘residents’ now… they’re not even being detained, for goodness sake! they’re actually choosing to live there!
they’re not even being detained, for goodness sake! they’re actually choosing to live there!
“Residents” would be gruesome Unspeak if the BBC meant “residents of Guantanamo” but as far as I can see they’re referring to the four men’s immigration status in the UK.