"SILLIEST, SLEAZIEST":

Mind the gap (Julie Burchill, November 1, 2003, The Guardian)

I think I've mentioned before my absolute loathing of what I think of as "hipocrisy". Old-fashioned hypocrisy is bad enough, but my pet hate, spelt with an "i", is far, far worse. Basically, it's what Our Side does; and as we think of ourselves as the opposite of hypocrites - because we're hip! - it's twice as bad. Traditionally, we enlightened types like to think of hypocrites as Those People Over There - the ones with the net curtains and the narrow minds and the lights-out sex lives. These are the people who are really, really weird, so the story goes, not juvenile delinquents and illegal Albanians - because they're doing weird stuff in secret, and only pretending to be normal. And to cover up, they work twice as hard at condemning other people. They say one thing and do another; they are hypocrites, and they are bad. [...]

It seems to me that far too many liberals believe that once you've ticked the Brotherhood Of Man box on your spiritual census, this gives you the right to be as big a bastard as you choose to be in your private life. [...]

It is partly my suspicion that if you scratch a member of the Brotherhood Of Man, you're likely to find a woman-hater, which makes me suspicious of the current alliance between socialism and extreme Islam. Being anti-racist is admirable, but if one is not equally anti-sexist, then it makes a nonsense of the argument, and leaves one woefully wide open to accusations of hipocrisy of the silliest, sleaziest kind.

Racist murders are vile and their perpetrators should be banged up for life - but, equally, so are "honour killings" and the people who commit them. (BTW, isn't it encouraging that one hears of so few white fathers these days who kill their daughters for marrying black men, delightfully common though such multiracial unions are?) I don't like the idea of members of the BNP being school governors, as I heard a Muslim parent protesting on the Today programme - but knowing how the practice of Islam frequently downgrades the education of girls, I wouldn't be altogether happy about a hardcore Muslim being in that position, either.

Do as you would be done to; pot, kettle, black. This issue is quite delightfully simple. And if you want it to be complex, it's because you just know that your argument wouldn't stand up to the stark light of day. For the truth, as the sexy old Situationists used to say, loves nothing more than to stand naked.

Life holds no more disgusting spectacle than the anti-human Ms Burchill calling other people hypocrites for being bastards in their private lives.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2003 9:21 AM