Ken Livingstone-themed blog post - 1 comment
One disadvantage of posting late on an issue is that all the clever titles have gone, so "Beyond our Ken" is a no-no, and perhaps John Shuttleworth's Can you ken Ken? is too obscure to use.
Anyway, I find Norm's piece the most persuasive so far, on the issue of Livingstone's buttonholing by an Evening Standard reporter, and his supposedly anti-semitic, but definitely crass, comments:
I think there's a certain amount of hot air being spoken on the subject of Ken Livingstone's suspension, though I do not myself defend the suspension. The hot air concerns elected politicians being deposed or removed by unelected officials, a type of action that apparently 'strikes at the heart of democracy'. Have those who say this kind of thing not come across judicial processes? Or the notion of impeachment?It does seem a pointless sentence to hand down, which weakens London's government for no important purpose. On the other hand, decentralisation to a Mayor and Assembly can hardly be said to have succeeded if, as some have suggested, the Mayor's temporary absence causes a complete breakdown in decision-making.
And yes, we all hate the Evening Standard - quite rightly. Luckily for me, as I have no interest in either Princess Di conspiracies or what Cherie Blair earns on the lecture circuit, I'm able to live my life without its interference.
Here's another anti-Livingstone piece you might have missed, from the even less pleasant Spiked.
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1 comment so far...
It is obviously undemocratic that the Mayor has been suspended just for being rude to a journalist (who was allegedly foul mouthed towards him).
I don't accept that what he said was in any way anti-semitic. That is just a ridiculous accusation.
Norm has come up with the most convincing argument for anti-semitism, he explains the claim thus;
"First, whether the words Livingstone said to the reporter are to be construed as anti-Semitic or not isn't a question of what was in the Mayor's mind when he said them. Words and symbols have public meanings and these can't be read off from the intentions of those who use them. The cartoon showing Ariel Sharon eating a baby was an anti-Semitic cartoon, whatever the intention, and despite the denials, of the cartoonist, this because of long traditions of anti-Semitic pictorial caricature of Jews feeding off non-Jewish babies; that drawing George Bush as a monkey the way Steve Bell does, though unfunny, falls within acceptable norms of lampooning, but would not do so if Bell or any other cartoonist were to draw an African leader in the same way"
The problem with applying this to Ken, is that the jobsworth - 'concentration camp guard' comparison had been made by Ken BEFORE Finegold told him he was Jewish and there is nothing anti-semite about using the 'nazi guard' comparison to call a non-Jew a jobsworth (although it may be over the top). Once the comparison had been made and Finegold revealed himself as a Jew, there was no need for Ken to withdraw the remark because it was clear that there had been no anti-semite intent and the jobsworth comparison still stood. I think in some ways it is racist to even make the claim that it is anti-semite. It's like, as Sartre puts it, a form of "anti-racist racism".
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