Thursday, October 09, 2008

Quentin Letts, does anyone take you seriously?

I spotted this rather infantile article recently here ;

It looks to me like the Daily Mail are plumbing the depths yet again, looking for a reaction, adding no value, contributing to the very thing they are supposedly exposing. They should run a poll, "would the UK be better off without the Daily Mail?", but I doubt they would have the guts. The subject of this piece was "The 50 people who wrecked Britain" which alarmingly represented an extract from a book of a similar title (I can't imagine how boring that must be!) the irony and arrogance on display were Jeremy Clarkson'esc enough for me to think that this must be parody, but depressingly it was not.

At number 25 we have Kenneth Clark, for apparently outlawing dangerous dog breeds, apparently Mr Letts thinks that this is a "bad" thing, ironically in the side bar of the very same page of the WEB site is a story about an 18 month old baby being bitten and dragged along the street by an escaped bull terrier named "asbo" by his moronic owner.

In the lead in to the article itself we have the following statement, "We all have our own little list of them - the fools, knaves and vulgarians who have helped dumb down Britain and promote the trite and the tawdry in national life." then at number 30 we have the Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins. Now in what way is the holder of the chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford, best selling science author and acknowledged leader in his field responsible for "dumbing down" anything? On further inspection it would seem that Mr Letts objects to Dawkins Atheism, apparently Mr Letts is arguing that people are better off living in a world of superstition, lies or false promises rather than in what the rest of us like to call "reality". Of course I doubt is Mr Letts actually believes the fairy tales himself, probably far to "sophisticated", but perish the thought that anyone should steal the fantasy from the huddled masses that he stands astride.

At number 28 there is even a weather announcer; wrecking Britain?, what on earth is this numpty prattling on about, I think Mr Letts needs to get his head out of his rear end and look a little closer to home to find the answer to his question.

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