Monday's Musings

Maurice Saatchi graciously spared the time to honour Today listeners with his thoughts on political philosophy. At one point he patronisingly said to the interviewer Sarah Montague, who is no fool, "Have I lost you?"
Here is one of his startling insights that will have them re-writing the politics textbooks:
"Elections are intellectual battles and the winner is the one with the best case."
If you put 'Discuss' after that you could use it as a question in a politics exam. But probably only at Key Stage 1 because it's such transparent nonsense.
Labour must be delighted that a top Tory adviser is dispensing advice from the Olympian heights of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Of course, Lord Saatchi was one of the masterminds behind the Tories' recent triumphant election campaign.
Maybe he was responsible for that intellectual battlecry 'Are you thinking what we're thinking?'
Or did he get that one from Aristotle?

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It was interesting to hear the new Archbishop of York talking about being stopped by the police. Talking from personal experience.

He's black, you see.
As a curate he was stopped seven times for no apparent reason, apart from the obvious one.
As Bishop of Stepney he was stopped late at night in his car. The policeman was very rude to him. But then when the policeman saw the dog collar he smiled and said 'Whoops!'

It was also good to hear the new Archbishop condemning homophobia but sad that like so many clerics he cannot see that insisting that homosexuality is inherently sinful is a green light to homophobes and a justification, intentional or not, for homophobia.
Interviewed on C4 News, his message to gay men and women seemed to be: 'Hey guys, it's no big deal. We're all sinners. Homosexuality is just another sin like adultery.'

If, like many gay men, I were in a loving, faithful, long-term relationship I'd find that pretty galling. If you're going to be damned anyway, even for being faithful, you might as well have a bit on the side.

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I learn from Victoria Coren in the Observer that, had Michael Jackson been found guilty, Radio 2 were going to ban his music. Why just Radio 2? Do BBC listener profiles include attitudes to under-age sex for the different channels?
On the broader point of banning his music, Coren cites some rather tame analogies from the world of literature, though strangely doesn't mention Lewis Carroll. She might have done better to mention some of the examples I quoted here recently of 'age-inappropriate' relationships by pop stars - people like Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Bill Wyman's relationship with the 13 year old Mandy Smith.
Of course, none of these people were convicted of any crime. If they had been, would the BBC ban their music? Have they banned Gary Glitter records since his conviction? Have they banned records that were produced by Jonathan King? I think that, after his problem with internet pornography, Pete Townsend was put on the Sex Offenders' Register. Have they banned records by The Who?

Once you start down this road of banning music, literature or anything else because of the private life or opinions of the artist, where do you stop?

Tangentially related to this, there must be many intensely homophobic, maybe Evangelical Christian, gentlemen and their good lady wives who enjoy listening to their old LPs of Cole Porter or Ivor Novello. Or like an evening at the theatre to see a revival of one of those safe, respectable, middle-class plays by Terence Rattigan.

But the need to separate the person from their profession goes beyond the arts.

There are many gay doctors. I knew quite a few at university. So if I need to cheer myself up I remind myself that every day somewhere in Britain a raging homophobe is dropping his underpants in front of a gay doctor.