The Chant of the Barbie Dolls

I was at the Wolseley of Piccadilly at the weekend enjoying, on the whole, the
grandiose delightful art deco lacquered interior, and the food as well (apart
from a disappointing bouillabaisse and an overly familiar aussie waitress), with
my parents, girlfriend, sister and her fiancée, and my brother in law to be, a
celeb magnate extraordinaire. Shortly after my mother asked him - "well, where
are the celebs?", he pointed out none other than a besuited Dermot Murnaghan
ascending the lofty marble staircase to one of the more secluded dining areas of
the establishment, which used to be, I'm told a car sales showroom. The layers
of metaphor and appropriateness are piling up thick and fast, and I'll explain
why.

First off, the idea that a news reader is a "celebrity", with all of it's modern
connotations of vacuity, lack of talent, and banality, as opposed to, say, a
"thorn in the side of the establishment", or a "beacon of hope for the
oppressed",  or "the scourge of the criminal element", "a crusading champion of
consumer rights", says a lot about journalism and society. Why a news
reader/journalist warrants a secluded, exclusive table in a restaurant
presupposes anyone would be bothered accosting him. To be fair, I might, but it
wouldn't have been to tell him I think he's a lovely boy and would he mind
autographing my large print copy of the Reader's Digest.

In any event, this appearance precipitated an old argument between myself and my
sister about the nature of journalists, and their choice of careers. I
maintain choosing journalism as a career puts one at the heart of a system that's
perpetuating the myth that we do have a free press, and that's responsible for allowing
much of what happens in the world that we don't like, to happen. My sister's argument,
which I have to say I always find weak, is that as I work for a corporate investment
bank I'm in no position to cast aspersions on anyone's choice of career when it comes
to complaining about the state of chassis the world is in. She feels she gets to
say that because she's a teacher and left the moral low ground behind her the day
she quit her job at UPS.

Fair enough you might say, except for 2 critical points: first, journalists,
whatever they are, are just as much a part of the corporate morass as anyone. They
have to simper and smile at their bosses jokes and demands as much as we do.
How anyone in their right mind thinks that makes for valiant, independent
free-thinking fourth estaters hell bent on holding real power to account (never
mind the pathetic bit of authority your boss has for ordering up coffee and
biscuits for special team meetings)is beyond me.

Second, just look at the performance of the US and UK media in the run up to the
Iraq invasion - if that doesn't tell you about the servility of the corporate
media to state power, then I suppose nothing will.

So, in this beautiful, grandly converted restaurant and erstwhile car show room the
idea of Murnaghan as a dodgy, not to be trusted, second hand car dealer, flogging
clapped out lies that travel no further than off the property before collapsing
into a pile of junk and rubble, or at least allowing them through the door,
appeals, at least in the light his performance this morning on BBC Breakfast News
(Mon 23rd April).

At about 08:05, BBC Breakfast News aired what I think was a pre-recorded "interview"
with Tony Blair and Murnaghan. Yet again, Tony Blair, completely unchallenged by
this stalwart of robust independent journalism, passed off three blatant, baseless
allegations in as many minutes. It was said of Nixon that he could "lie out of both
sides of his mouth at the same time". Tony Blair it seems is managing something
similar, only from multiple orifices.

First, Murnaghan suggested that Saddam Hussein had "kept the lid" on sectarian
violence, and that kept Al Qaeda out of Iraq. Blair replied to the latter: "I'm
not so sure that he did".  This claim, which even Dick Cheney and George Bush no
longer try to push (in fact, they try to distance themselves from those original
comments) is now being recycled by Tony Blair, without so much as even the
faintest, meekest protest from our journalist friend. Would Murnaghan have been
going out on a limb to challenge this, when no credible security source has
never supported the notion of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda?

Second, Blair also claimed that Iran was directly responsible for causing the
violence in Iraq. Again, this is the rehashing of an old BBC story which has had
no basis whatsoever in reality - there is no evidence for this - despite the US
army searching desperately for it.

Finally, Blair conflated the idea that Saddam Hussein had killed "hundreds of
thousands" of his own people with the idea of ongoing violence in Iraq, like the
ghost of Saddam was returning to plant roadside explosives and detonate suicide
bombs. Again, this was left completely unchallenged: there is no evidence that
"hundreds of thousands" of people died as a direct result of Saddam's
oppression. Thousands, certainly, according to Amnesty International, may be
even tens of thousands - he was a vicious and brutal dictator after all. I mean
why do you think the US and UK gave him the job of running Iraq in the first place?

On the other hand there is superbly documented, scientific evidence to suggest
that over 655,000 Iraqi's are dead as a direct result of the invasion in 2003,
not to mention the million or so excess deaths from the 10 years of sanctions
from 1991 to 2001. I should have thought that could have been mentioned, but no,
it literally seems that Fawlty Murnaghan wont "mention the war".

All of this Murnaghan was happy to let slide, maybe, and this is quite shocking
to contemplate, because he didn't even know that Blair was engaging in bare
faced, unsubstantiated claims, with no evidence at all to back up his wild
statements. Or maybe he did know, and just preferred to simper his way to the
end of the interview where he could say "thank you VERY much Prime Minister".
After all, he's probably got a mortgage or two, a life-style to maintain, and kids
to privately educate.

And I suppose you have to consider that ordinary plebs, those of us not elevated
to the lofty rarefied stratosphere of BBC News Readers, with all their
sophistication and "nuanced" ability to understand the "subtleties" and
"complexities" of the world, and deal on an equal footing with the wealthy and
the powerful, probably can't even get a table at the Wolseley!

# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 3:17 PM