January 02, 2002

You think you have a

You think you have a thesis, but you don't know what it is...

...do you, Mr. Jones?

I mentioned Terry Jones's silly anti-war Observer piece in passing as an example of British "isolationist" tendencies, intending to come back to it later for more comment. Fortunately, Damian Penny and Tim Blair have saved me the trouble. Both have sliced, diced, skewered, roasted, creamed, pulverized and finally reduced Mr. Jones to a fine powder, blowing twin puffs of Python dust into the blogosphere. Tim Blair's treatment is, as usual, hilarious, especially since he includes links to illustrations of the man himself in the course of making his points. Damian Penny concludes thus:

I will, however, say that if Terry Jones can't think of a single good reason for Britain to be involved in the war on terror (the stability of the fucking world has a lot to do with it, not to mention the dozens of his countrymen who died on September 11), his involvement in the writing of Python sketches must have been minimal at best, since he's way too stupid to have had anything to do with such comic brilliance.

The thing is, Terry Jones is a clever man, a brilliant comedian and writer, and what's more, by all accounts he knows a lot about history. I don't think it's possible that he could really believe that Britain would be free from danger from Islamist terrorists if only Tony Blair hadn't joined the US in the Afghanistan campaign, as his article implies. He can't really think that the interests of his own country and of the world would be served by turning away from the war on terror and hoping that the problem of Islamist terrorism will go away on its own. In fact, his anti-war stance is just that: a stance, a pose, an "attitude," and above all and excuse for the sort of glib, contentless sarcasm of which Observer and Guardian readers can't seem to get enough. (He's an entertainer after all, and he knows his audience: you don't get called back for an encore if you write pro-US editorials for the Observer.)

The truth is, guys like Jones (e.g., Ted Rall, Michael Moore) are only able to propound such views because they know quite well that there's no chance whatsoever that their silly proposals (such as they are) will ever be put into practice. They have the luxury of making their jokes, casting their aspersions, rolling their eyes and wallowing in their precious irony, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to answer for the consequences. Terry Jones suggesting that Britain pull out of the war on terror is like Ralph Nader proposing that "if" elected he would decimate the military, eliminate free trade and triple the minimum wage: everybody knows that (a) it would be a disaster that (b) will never ever befall us. So everyone who is so inclined can have a great time. Yeah, it's irresponsible. But that's entertainment.

Posted by Dr. Frank at January 2, 2002 02:09 AM | TrackBack