Pigdogfucker

A Tory councillor has got into some trouble for making the following statement:

“There are all different sorts of w*gs here, I don’t differentiate between them but treat them all as though they were English”.

Now, I don’t approve of the sentiment of treating wigs as English. They’re a shamefully foreign innovation, pushed by effete Frenchmen and ginger Scots. I’m glad to see Mr Cameron’s modern Conservatives taking a stand against the wiggy menace, doubtly emboldened by Dave’s fine head of proper English hair, and kicking the speaker out of the party.
Nonetheless, it’s a sad day for free speech when a local newspaper is so offended by the connotations of the word “wig” that it feels obliged to censor it from publication. I may disapprove of wigs, but I’d defend to my death your right to mention them…

It’s illegal to name the boy who was photographed making a gun gesture at David Cameron, because he’s only 17. This didn’t stop the Sun; hopefully Rebekah Wade will be arrested (again), thown into prison, and then brutally murdered.

Making David Cameron briefly look like (even more of) a twat will almost certainly be the greatest achievement of this boy’s life. That’s quite pathetic. More pathetic is the fact that immediately after he made the gesture, the plods arrested him, searched him, found a pathetic amount of cannabis (£5 worth is barely even enough to see…), charged him, and locked him in the cells for two days until he could be taken to court.

It’s not exactly hard to make the comparison with another daft youth who was caught with cannabis, not arrested, not charged, and not sent to prison, is it?

One of Pigdogfucker’s most cherished running features is the one where we call people who bring libel suits “stupid litigious cunts”. Today, it’s the turn of American golfer (or “cunty cunt”, as that phrase can be translated) Fuzzy Zoeller.

Mr Zoeller tried to sue Wikipedia after his entry was defaced. Because America is a bit more sane about libel than the UK, this was laughed out of court – so instead, he’s suing the company that owns the IP address from which the defamatory copy was posted.

Repeating the copy would be defamatory – but I believe it’s perfectly acceptable to wonder whether Mr Zoeller has stopped beating his wife…

Semi-relatedly, “intellectually powerful” libel solicitor Mark Lewis has made himself (and his client) look like a bit of a tit by trying to sue veteran Northern PR blogger Stephen Newton.

Oliver Pritchett has a (very) slightly funny piece in the Telegraph mocking people who sign petitions.

Matthew at The Future Is A Foreign Country has a petulant rant about Mr Pritchett’s piece, pointing out that the freedom to run over children and drown the Maldives is a vital human right and that people trying to defend it shouldn’t be mocked.

Matthew loses.

If someone I loved were killed by a drink-driver, I’d be justifiably pissed off. And if that drink driver were to be let off with no or very trivial punishment, then I might even be justified in using my spurious victim-fame to try and address whatever went wrong.

However, if the system were to work, and said drink-driver were to have their life utterly ruined by being sent to jail for six years, I hope that I’d have the basic fucking decency to keep quiet or to feel some pity for the poor stupid bastard – rather than going on the record to say that he should go down for even longer.

In short, I hope I’m less of a dickhead than Alyn Hopkins:

“Six years is what I expected because they are too lenient. This is not real justice – he took my son’s life and there is no way of bringing him back. The punishment does not fit the crime – let’s hope we can change some of the laws.”

Ten to one on that even if the poor sod had been hanged, Mr Hopkyns would be pointing out that in a fair world he would have also been drawn and quartered…

Read Flyingrodent on the ‘being total pansies about crime’ epidemic. Do it now.

If I were a school caretaker from Cambridgeshire, I’d be justifiably pissed off about my two most famous colleagues. On the other hand, maybe I wouldn’t… maybe there’s actually a conspiracy by Cambridgeshire caretakers to take over the world using nothing but paedophilia and bombs…

Note to readers and lawyers: Miles Cooper has not been convicted of any offence and therefore should be treated with the same restraint as the gentlemen arrested on July 21 2005, the gentlemen arrested on August 10 2006, and everyone else who’s been accused but not convicted of serious terrorism-related offences.

Is it legitimate to call Michelle Malkin “a slitty-eyed cunt-whore”? NB the question is “legitimate”, not “funny” or even “deserved”.

It’s an interestion question; Crooked Timber has a good if worthy thread on it. The best comment, however, is this one:

I remember a withering editorial in Socialist Outlook in the late 80s which took someone to task for calling Nigel Lawson a “clever fat Jew”. It said that the complainer had “managed to comment on the only 3 things about Nigel Lawson that are unobjectionable”.

I once read this Dutch bird’s diary, hoping it would be all rampant hardcore sex and drug taking, but all she seemed to do was hide in the attic and be very quiet.

No, this isn’t about that one. It’s the heavyweight Neil Clark vs Oliver Kamm match…

I’m no fan of Mr Kamm, but he did well in fighting Mr Clark’s libel suit last year. For those who frankly can’t be arsed, Mr Kamm suggested that Mr Clark’s book review was crap and questioned whether Mr Clark had read the book in question. Anyone who sues for libel in such a situation thoroughly deserves horsewhipped, to use some Scottish idiom.

Subsequently, an utterly mad bunch of bastards have accused Mr Kamm of supporting antisemitic genocide and hating Israel. Given that Oliver Kamm is a famously outspoken defender of Israel and the neoconservative agenda, this is weird – and indeed the curator of the accused site, Ted Belman of IsraPundit, is one of the most crazy paranoid lunatics I’ve ever encountered on the Internet in any context [*].

If I were not only Jewish, but also an advocate of the whole “antizionism masks antisemitism” thing and a supporter of neocon adventures in Iraq, then Mr Belman’s assertions would be more or less the most bizarre things I could possibly imagine – but nonetheless incredibly hurtful. So I can sort-of understand Mr Kamm’s logic:

I confess I hadn’t considered at all a circumstance in which I might be depicted as a supporter of Nazism, genocide and ethnic cleansing…. Given the recklessness of IsraPundit’s charges, the repulsiveness of its politics, and the gracelessness of its non-apology, I did consider the possibility of referring this one for legal advice. On grounds of my belief in free speech and of the evident stupidity of the charges, I am very unlikely to take that course even in this case.

However, this would seem to be a prime case of the “don’t send emails in haste that you’ll regret later” rule, since Mr Kamm did actually send Mr Belman an email saying:

I would ask that you now either substantiate your contributors’ allegations against me or publish a proper retraction within 24 hours. I am taking the liberty of forwarding this exchange to Dr Hoare. If I have heard nothing from you by this time tomorrow, I shall in addition forward it to my legal representatives, Charles Russell LLP of London.

Sorry Ollie, but given your stated commitment to defending online free speech from legalistic bullying, the latter sentence loses you points.

[*] if anyone, pretty much irrespective of their ideology, believes you’re one of the most crazy paranoid lunatics they’ve ever encountered on the Internet in any context, you really ought to start reevaluating your writings…