They've noticed it across the pond. Denis Boyles in National Review Online eviscerates the newly politically correct, appeasenik and imbecilic Spectator magazine. Here's a flavour:

'In recent weeks, the magazine's writers have excoriated the Coalition as "international vigilantes" and ridiculed Blair for warning about the dangers of terrorism (the item appeared within hours of the bombings in Madrid, alas). The magazine claimed that "the war on Iraq has done nothing to damage Islamic terrorism: quite the reverse" and then proclaimed in an editorial titled "We Are Not at War" that terrorism would never be defeated anyway. This shrill little crescendo peaked in last week's big peacenik issue, featuring a piece by Rod Liddle headlined "Things Were Better Under Saddam," a concept that not even Mrs. Saddam would buy. "As a result of our actions," Liddle claimed, "many more people have lost their lives (or, for that matter, been maimed or made homeless) than would have been occasioned by another ten years of Saddam's rule." Liddle had no source for that clever stat, but it doesn't matter. He just types it; The Spectator just prints it...The week's cover story: "The Sound of Rockets in the Morning," by Andrew Gilligan. The defense and diplomatic correspondent argued that in Iraq, a disaster's right around the corner because the U.S. is inept. Baghdad's tense — on edge — he wrote. At an airline office, where he went to secure a seat home again, "The scene...is like Saigon, say, two weeks before the fall: not quite open panic just yet, but not far off it." You can be sure that Gilligan's reporting from Saigon back in '75 was lots better than his reporting last year from Baghdad, when he missed the arrival of the U.S. Army.'

The real sting, though, comes in this par:

'Lately, there's very little in The Spectator that hasn't already appeared, often and at great length, in the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, or, for that matter, in the Telegraph, where Johnson writes a weekly column filled with helpful references to The Spectator. In fact, the magazine is so non-contrarian, that for the last several months, The Spectator has fallen in step with the The New Statesman — the earth-shoe of political mags, home to some of the planet's most trite leftwing ideas — where an issue almost exactly like The Spectator's may be read this week, last week, apparently any week.'

A clone of the dire, vicious and utterly tedious New Statesman, eh? Ouch! But whatever has happened in Doughty Street to bring a once sparklingly intelligent, well-written and sane antidote to the rest of the media to this sorry state?

Posted by melanie at April 23, 2004