Charlie Sheen vs The Guardian

I received an email from someone I haven’t seen for ten years on Monday (Hello Simon).

He mentioned something about seeing my name and url on Page Two of the Guardian

What!?

A quick recce to the corner shop and ten minutes later, sure enough, there I was reading a quote from this blog in the ‘Today on the Web’ section.

(Note to self - next time you start a blog don't use your name as the url - there are some strange people out there)

I had to visit the corner shop because, marvellously, the Guardian’s ‘Today on the Web’ section appears only in the print version of the newspaper, not the on-line one.

This probably goes part way to explaining why the increase in traffic as the result of the plug turned out to be, roughly, nada. Yup, still three hits a day and holding.

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Coincidentally, the Guardian was already on my mind as the result of a grubby little hit piece it published on Charlie Sheen on Saturday.

For anyone who doubts that the mainstream media, all the mainstream media, including supposed liberal and progressive rags like the Guardian, is owned and controlled by people with a shared, vested interest, this makes for a cracking read.

As I mentioned in a earlier post, Charlie Sheen came out last week during a radio interview on the Alex Jones show and voiced his doubts about the ‘official’ account of what happened on 9/11 . This interview was then picked up by CNN’s Showbiz Tonight and has been bouncing around the Internet ever since.

The mainstream British press has barely covered the story

Except for that editorial-style comment in the Guardian.

And, whether you buy into what Sheen was saying or not, the Guardian article is patently bent, composed as it is of

• 25% selective use of out of context quotes
• 75% ad hominem attacks

It also takes advantage of an opportunity to call Sheen insane. I thought that was a nice Soviet touch.

Obviously, it doesn’t actually address the substance of what Sheen was talking about at all.

So, unfortunately, the sparkle of me getting quoted in a national daily newspaper is kind of tarnished a little by the fact that the newspaper in question is, as most newspapers now are, a great big steaming pile of shit.

The fact that the pile of shit is studded with occasional gems doesn't detract from the overall shittiness of the entire ensemble.

Bummer

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Going back to the Sheen story for a minute. On one hand it is gratifying to know that some, just some, of the genuinely unanswered questions about that day are being aired in the mainstream media. On the other hand, the manner of that airing is a little worrying

• I wouldn’t trust Alex Jones as far as I could throw him, and he’s a chubby fucker
• Why did CNN finally decide to run with a 9/11 sceptic story, when it and the other news networks have been ignoring or maligning 911 scepticism for years, and why did they choose a celebrity gossip show?
• Why Charlie Sheen? Let’s face it, he is perfect fodder for distracting, ad hominem attacks

I’ve just read that Ed Asner is about to wade into the fray in support of Sheen. Whoopie fucking doo. I now have to edit a section from my previous posting from…

It’s a strange world we live in where the most scathing criticism of the repressive actions of our governments is made in a legal soap opera featuring William Shatner or the only mainstream airing of 9/11 issues is articulated by a has-been movie actor sandwiched in a show specialising in celebrity gossip.

To…

It’s a strange world we live in where the most scathing criticism of the repressive actions of our governments is made in a legal soap opera featuring William Shatner or the only mainstream airing of 9/11 issues is articulated by a has-been movie actor sandwiched in a show specialising in celebrity gossip and the bloke who played Lou Grant in the Mary Tyler Moore Show

Yippee kay yeah, the Information Dam is about the break and the Truth will finally be set free, rah! rah!

Not