Chris Morrris article - The absurd world of Martin Amis

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Tinfoil hats at the ready, everyone...

[Borboski]

I don't know, they look the same to me.







OK I'M JOKING, JOKING.

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't think Hitchens knows "more" about Islam, or (much more importantly) understands it better than Morris. You've had three pages to prove people who think that wrong and haven't done so yet. There no articles from Harry's Place you can put up here in the place of actual critical thinking on your part?

[chocolateboy]

<Mike Yarwood>And this is me...</Mike Yarwood>

[Borboski]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,,2220237,00.html

A short coda from the 1 Dec, Amis really setting the record straight.

There's a nice passage here which rings well with what I've been feeling about the array of shoddy journos which bang out pieces on this (Morris included):

Anyway, it is a miserable chore even to imagine these writers at work, dourly assembling their diatribes, hopscotching and cherrypicking from a press interview here, a TV interview there, an essay, a short story, some gout of alphabet soup in the Daily Mail, distorting this, suppressing that, and fudging the other. They are not interested in arguments and ideas, but in staking out "positions", in sending "signals", and in flirtatiously seeking the approval of the likeminded. This isn't the first time I have been accused of racism ("anti-Semitism" in 1991 for the novel Time's Arrow); and it is a calumny like no other. It paints a cross on your front door.

As usual, bizarre content, including when he was a little boy his dad took him to meet a black man...

And this is great:

What you say about something is never your last word on any subject. But what you write should aspire to be just that: your last word. To paraphrase and slightly adapt Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions): I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished man of letters, I talk like an idiot.

Ronan Bennett thinks like an idiot.

[its not cool to be weird]

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished man of letters, I talk like an idiot.

Nah, he thinks way too much, and his use of language is appalling. Some good points in his original article though, and much of the response has been knee-jerk accusations of racism as is only to be expected. He should be praised for not giving himself an easy ride and publishing in the Telegraph.

From when I first read the Geefe columns I felt that if Morris really wanted a new direction for his career (personally I think we need more TDT and the like than ever before) he should go into either journalism or writing books generally. Well what a disappointment this article was. Its not so much that his points are wrong (his general point about Amis focusing too much on Islam as an ideology was fair enough), but that its poorly written (just not funny at all, it reads like a rant) and launches such a weak attack. His arguments are petty, attacking Amis' pomposity, and when he brings up an argument that might be the result of his actual research he just gives a load of generalising guff and rhetoric.

Amis' article could have done with a reasoned rebuff, not that it should have been big news anyway the man's an arse (good work Eagleton getting in the papers, done him some good no doubt). But Morris was emphatically not the man for the job. I hope this suicide bombers thing is more subtle and mature in its approach.

[Famous Mortimer]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7210085.stm

An interview from Amis where he refutes the racism charge again. The thing is, he still talks as if the attack on the Twin Towers was year zero, as if nothing had happened before that, as if that was the first attack in a previously non-existent war and retaliation was deserved. So he may not be a racist, he just has no conception of recent world history.

[its not cool to be weird]

I felt his original article showed a reasonable awareness of the development of the ideology of 'Islamism', which must count as recent world history, although it is certainly true he attaches undue importance to the World Trade Centre bombing. His comments were in no way racist and he is right to defend himself. The accusation was the last spasm of a former tactic by our self-appointed social engineers to decry any who challenged their naive theories as racist. But it generally doesn't stand these days. That said, he's still a twat, and has a very skewed view of British Muslims.

[Borboski]

I wonder if he really says he respects Islam and the Prophet Mohammed?  Why does he?  I think that's a tactical point rather than a real one, I bet his approach is more of the lines of "respecting a religion in the same way one respects a man's belief that his wife is beautiful".

[its not cool to be weird]

Its one of those 'Great Man' things I'd guess, like Thomas Carlyle listing Mohammed amongst his 'Heroes' whilst being a major Christian. I don't have much respect for either myself, but try saying that in public.

[Garfield And Friends]

I bet his approach is more of the lines of "respecting a religion in the same way one respects a man's belief that his wife is beautiful".

Or indeed possibly some other partial qualification, like respecting the oppositions' potency.

[marwood]

well, if people are still discussing Amis, here's a long article from yesterday's Independent, which I found interesting enough to read in its entirety, despite the fact that it's by Johann Hari....
http://tinyurl.com/366k62

Amis's cognitive dissonance seems to squat in the room, like a physical presence. With the right lobe of his brain, Amis tells me he loves our multiracial society, and he says it with vigour and rigour. I don't for a second think he's lying. But then, with the left lobe he passionately praises a writer who seems to me to be an outright racist, one who damns virtually all Muslims as secret Sharia-carriers and brags that the "white" birth-rate is still higher in the US. It is as though Amis has been fractured by the kerosene blast of September 11 into two people – and they aren't talking.

He is proud to have opposed the Iraq War, where he says "we have created a fresh kind of Hell".

_{(while Hari did not oppose the Iraq War, and has been called a "cheerleader" for it. To be fair I believe he has offered a kind of apology for this.)}

As I stumble out into the Primrose Hill drizzle, I feel like I have been watching a boxing match in Amis's brain.

In his brain, no less.

[Borboski]

To be honest Hari's apology is half-baked - it's more of a handwringing because of the shoddy post-war reconstruction efforts.  His logic is such that if/when Iraq is turned around, he would conclude that it was a good thing after all.

His main point at the time was that he listened to Iraqi liberals/the left and they said that they thought, on balance, the war would be a good thing.  In his mea culpa, in March 2006, he even demanded a full and immediate withdrawal - which I imagine he would in turn now retract.

To be fair to him he did post on his site the response to the 06 article by an Iraqi:

Your article in the Independent today, 20/3/2006, was really disappointing to all of your admirers. You let them down. You changed your mind and switched from pro-war to join the anti-war campaigners, means that you gave in bowed to the aggressors. So instead of blaming the terrorists for this mass killing in Iraq at the hand of the terrorists, you put the blame on Bush and Blair for liberating Iraqi people from the worst dictator in history. If your new stance is right, then it was wrong to stand up against Hitler in the WW II, because that war caused humanity 55 million casualties. So it was better not oppose the Axis sates. Is that fair? Is this is the justice that we are looking for? If the tyrants were left to do as they like because of the possible revenge from their followers, then our glob will be place for the tyrants only and the whole planet population will be living like sheep.

Abdulkhaliq Hussein

[its not cool to be weird]

This is what you get for reading the Independent.

[Munday's Chylde]

I didn't understand a bloody word of that article :-(

[its not cool to be weird]

The least cool of all drinks

What a little turd.

[olafr]

one who damns virtually all Muslims as secret Sharia-carriers and brags

I read that as:

one who damns virtually all Muslims as secret Sharia carrier bags

[Twibbie]

To be honest Hari's apology is half-baked - it's more of a handwringing because of the shoddy post-war reconstruction efforts.  His logic is such that if/when Iraq is turned around, he would conclude that it was a good thing after all.

Wasn't his point that whereas he originally believed that the war would be good for Iraq because the non-humanitarian aims of the US would have effects that coincided with the humanitarian aims of those who wanted change in Iraq (i.e. virtually everyone), he retrospectively thought that in the wake of the carnage and human cost that ensued it was daft to have believed that the war as it was conceived would ever have gone well?

[Uzi Lover]

His recent decline is evident, but is Chris Morris turning a bit thick? I remembered reading how in a confrontation with Martin Amis about the increase of anti-Semitism, his retort was "Yeah but what about Israel?". Something on the level of your average 16 year old SWP supporter. But this article linked boasts an even simpler understanding.

"I was firmly told this by an ex-Mujahideen who fought in Afghanistan 20 years ago. He was an Islamist. I strongly doubt he was murderous."

Yes nice one, Chris. It is sad how a man who's made a career out of satire has turned into the kind of muddled liberal other comedians would satirise themselves.