I stopped reading The Guardian after I started meeting people who wrote for it. I found them to be, more often than not, upper middle class friends of friends with very little knowledge of their subjects, no sense of sociologicall context, history, and, worse of all, a terrifying trust of PR people and officials in general.
Then on Saturday I thought about starting again, as The Independent on Saturday isn’t very good, and I did always like The Guide, even if the guy who writes about the music in it is either mad, or diligently evil.
I think I was considering this on Friday night/Saturday morning. But then I came across this on their website - a shockingly un-reseached, snide, and dangerous little slab of “columnism” regarding Charlie Sheen’s recent comments regarding the 911 Commission whitewash, from their Saturday edition.
I was quite outraged, and nearly wrote them an angry letter, before remembering that the best course of action in the circumstance was not buy The Guardian. And anyway, men with infinitely higher capacities for reason were already at it, clattering with steamy outrage into typewriters and keyboards the world over. One of them wrote this:
With regard to the piece of “journalism” by Marina Hyde carried in your paper on Saturday March 25 th (A Right Charlie). I am incredulous that you let such a slip-shod poor piece of attack-dog gonzo journalism past your proof readers.
Not only was it tosh bordering on libel against Charlie Sheen, it was astoundingly badly researched, and written.
Has Ms Hyde ever actually gone beyond the spoon-fed “narrative” held forth by the erstwhile business buddies of Mr Bush that made up the 911 Commission? I very much doubt it. Has she even read that same narrative (the 911 Commission Report), giving her grist for her nonsense? If she had read it, and she should, as it seems to be the unspoken architect of her scepticism, for this is where the most of the “civilised” main-stream media have taken their cues, she would have remarked herself upon how unfinished and bizarre most of its “explanations” really are.
Far from Mr. Sheen being “insane”, it is the authors and believers of this half-baked and incomplete tome who are a sandwich short of a picnic. Any sane person who has read it, and I have, is immediately struck by the massive contradictions and glaring omissions from this critical analysis. Ever stop to think why that may be?
But no, Ms Hyde limits her bile to easy targets: The Famous and Slightly Mad. In her dissection of Mr. Sheens mental state and capacity, she touches upon a subject she clearly knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about. And in that she exposes not only her ignorance, but also your newspapers inability to get beyond the “nut-job conspiracy theorists” explanation of the discrepancies.
Had she looked even just under the surface of her absurd claims, she would see a whole host of not “insane” people lining up ready to rebut her, and the official line on 911, with FACT; not theory, but FACT.
Addressing her particular hatchet-job piece; lets look at the evidence:
1. Paul Craig Roberts - Under Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan:“This administration is run by criminal psychopaths” His words, not mine. - He’s clearly not insane or a member of the bonkers celebrity world.
2. Morgan Reynolds - Former chief economist for the Department of Labour during President George W. Bush’s first term : comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is “bogus” and that it is “more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7”. - Again, a much respected member of the GOP, and not insane.
3. Kevin Ryan - Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the company that certified the steel used in the construction of the World Trade Centre: called on Frank Gayle, director of the government team that has spent two years studying how the trade centre was built and why it fell, to “do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.” - He’s not insane, either.
4. Gwen Rigell of Booker Elementary school, the school George Bush was at when he “saw first plane hit WTC” when asked if Bush had watched this on a TV in their school (he was THERE when the first plane hit, not watching TV as Ms Hyde believes): “Absolutely not. There was no TV in the corridor or anywhere near that classroom”(not to mention that the footage he allegedly saw didn’t even exist at the time). She said that he knew from his people that the first plane had hit, and was told by Andy Card during his time in the classroom about the second plane. After he left the classroom, he was whisked into another classroom (their green room if you will) where they had a TV. However, this was the first opportunity he had to see any footage. - She’s clearly not insane, either. She’s a school teacher!
5. Andreas Von Bulow – Former German Defence Minister – A long time sceptic of the official lies, he said: “Well, it’s all admitted” (the discrepancies in the official line being exposed and confirmed by many a more credible person than Ms Hyde). “So for me, since the official version- it’s not credible at all, it’s totally incredible. The second solution for me is a covert operation. And this is a way to influence, to brainwash the American people into long, long, ongoing conflict with the Muslim world” - He’s not insane. He was a member of a much respected German administration.
I could go on and on. The list IS growing every day. Full of not insane, normal people who just want the truth, or at least some balanced discussion of the truth. This story will not go away. It is the greatest single act of murder perpetrated on American Soil. When more of the truth comes out, whatever it may be, and it will, “journalists” like Ms Hyde, and papers, such as yourselves, will all look very silly indeed.
Why are you ignoring facts? In whose interests is this collective inability to provide balanced news? Hmm. Let me think…
You get the point here? Whilst it is, of course, possible to dismiss all of these experts in their fields with blithe claims of insanity, surely it is just as easy to give them some real column inches to discuss their theories, or are you as scared as the rest of the “press” of openly contradicting the official lies, and thus shattering the paradigm of millions of people and perhaps getting an MI6 tail in the process?
Are we all that scared?
Ms Hyde is just another in a long line of bad journalists who make their dollar by insulting and denigrating other people, partly because they don’t actually understand what they are talking about, and partly, I suspect, because she herself is probably in need of a good story. Clearly no research was done, bar perhaps looking in the latest issue of Heat Magazine, but then, she’s a columnist, what should we expect?
I’ll tell you what we, as a nation, should expect from our newspapers (the non-Murdoch ones, at least): We demand that the “news” outlets of this world stop being too scared to even LOOK AT the ideas and suggestions put forward by a growing number of experts, and at least suggest that we should not, blindly, believe everything we are told by anybody in authority. I mean, come on. Are your memories that short? We have been lied to by successive governments and political parties for years, why is it so hard to believe that it’s happening again
No one is saying, categorically, that these stories are true, far from it; but plenty of people are saying, categorically, that the official stories are clearly not true.
Come on Grauniad, sort it out. Lets have some real, balanced, probing, exciting journalism. Christ, if all papers were like you lot of sorry apologies for news outlets, there would have been no Watergate story; no expose of the sleaze purveyed by successive govts. of all colours (bad example, I know, as you yourselves were heavily implicated in spinning the Hamilton affair) and no expose of the lies purveyed by this govt. in particular in pursuit of war.
But then, that would be taking things a little far, wouldn’t it? Your corporate paymasters wouldn’t like that kind of attention, would they?
So, we just tell the nation to ignore any “insane” people out there who just want to know why things are being lied about and covered up: drink beer; go back to sleep; believe what your press tells you…
I had stopped buying your tattered rag a couple of months ago for exactly the reasons set out above; that you no longer carry objective news. However, I was going to dip my foot back in the water to see if it had changed. I had thought that your collective consciences might have got the better of you and you may have decided to become a real newspaper again. Alas, it appears not. My wishes were clearly naïve.
How insane of me.
Yours truly,
Jake Eyre
Quick one: my pal Marvin, who used to be called Marvin The Martian and now isn’t, has a new website and a single out this week.
I wanna refund!
Boy, 
Rah, that would be the 18 year old Zef then.
