2010 in Dicks

2011 has started and seems disappointingly familiar, but it gives us all a chance to look back at the year just gone. And I felt that I'd look back at all the dicks who have made the world slightly worse. And where better to start than...

THE CONSERVATIVE-LEAD GOVERNMENT: We all knew it was coming. There was no way that New Labour could hold on any longer, but the popularity of the Liberal Democrats (a phrase that is as laughable now as it was last January) just kept the Tories from a majority. And then gave them the MPs they needed anyway. Much of the anger has been (rightly) directed at Nick Clegg for backtracking on virtually every promise that made him so popular in the first place, but let's not forget that to bend to the every whim of the Conservative Party, there needs to be Conservative policies to begin with. So whilst Cameron and Osborne are happily pissing on everyone, let's not take out all of our anger on the guy pointing and laughing.

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: This was the year when Paul Chambers was convicted for an illegal use of irony, but at least he was fortunate enough not to end up in hospital at the hands of the police (allegedly, of course). Surely the worst injustice of the year is of the rape victim jailed for eight months for retracting her genuine allegations. Though she has since been released, she still has to fight for her children. The husband had all the charges against him dropped, begging the question: How can they convict someone of falsely retracting allegations of sexual assault, and yet not convict the (therefore genuine) rapist? It saddens me that the organisations that are suppose to protect me -- the police and the CPS -- have shown themselves to be thuggish and shockingly misguided.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Not for his work with WikiLeaks, an organisation which I support and I believe has done a remarkable amount of good work in revealing what it has, but for his entirely dick-ish remarks following the recent allegations against him. Sunny Hundal has compiled a brilliant piece on whether the accusations of conspiracy stand up, but regardless of his guilt or innocence (neither of which have yet been proven in court, and I would not like to speculate on it), he has recently said some phenomenally unpleasant things, such as claiming he fell into a "hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism", that Switzerland is the "Saudi Arabia of feminism", and that these women had got into a "tizzy" about something as trivial about the very serious subject of STDs. WikiLeaks would do very well without him.

KAY BURLEY, ADAM BOULTON AND BEN BROWN: 3 journalists, two working for Sky and one for the BBC. Boulton and Burley provided us with such shoddy journalism that people were compelled to shout at them in the street, but then at least you would expect that of Sky "News". Ben Brown's treatment of Jody McIntyre was a different matter, with the supposedly "impartial" BBC doing all they can to pin blame on a victim of a violent and horrific incident. The official statement from the editors completely misses the point. Would they really interview anyone in the same way? Is Crimewatch an interrogation of the victims, ascertaining whether they were "rolling towards" the criminals, perhaps? It was not a balanced view, but a disgusting display of victim-blaming.

NADINE DORRIES: I have tried several times to write a post about Dorries, about her 70% fictitious blog that she uses to make personal attacks on her constituents, but every time I begin I realise that Tim Ireland has said it earlier and better than I ever will (and been the victim of some vicious and nasty smearing as the result), so I'll just point you in his direction.

DANNY DYER AND ZOO MAGAZINE: Oh how we laughed back in May when Danny Dyer joked about cutting women's faces. Except we didn't, because it was deeply unpleasant. Dyer initially claimed to have been misquoted, but has since offered this apology, in which it becomes clear that the problem was that he was quoted, albeit an off-record aside. He has since resigned, and released the film Pimp to huge box-office takings of £205. Zoo magazine, however, which approved and printed the column, continues to be published to a wide readership.

THE POPE: An inevitable inclusion on this list, the Pope currently feels more like the head of SPECTRE than the Catholic Church. Accusation after accusation after accusation of child abuse and subsequent cover-ups have been leveled at Catholic Priests (too many to link to, but the length of this Wikipedia article is startling in itself), and yet all Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his lot have done is attack homosexuals, secularists, and women. I said back in September that

I will never be able to put into words the horror and sadness that I feel, knowing that there are millions of people who hold this hateful, bigoted, misogynistic homophobe in the highest regard possible.

Since then, the Pope has claimed that paedophilia wasn't a big deal in the '70s, and that child pornography is increasingly seen as "normal". Am I really expected to moral advice from a man who opposes the use of condoms more than child pornography?

So, that's why he's my Dick of 2010. Until the end of Monday you can vote for five dicks here (Cameron, Osborne, Dorries and Dyer were my other choices, by the way).

Happy New Year!

The New Atheism

This is something I've been meaning to say for a while, something that riles me more than almost anything: The myth of "New Atheism".

I fail to see just how there can be a "New Atheism". Atheism is the same as it has always been, namely, a lack of belief in God and, subsequently, a distancing of oneself from any religious organisation. That's it. What people mean when they say "New Atheism" is "more atheists", or perhaps "more vocal atheists". I don't see why this is such a problem – people have been expressing faith far more vocally for years.

And then you get to the big points: Atheism is a religion as bad as any other, and Richard Dawkins is its leader. And they're all smug.

writerJames wrote a brilliant piece about that "smug" notice, but suffice it to say that most commentators using that term are not being awfully humble themselves. You can basically describe anybody who has an opinion that they feel strongly enough about to voice as “smug”, and so it just becomes a convenient way to belittle an argument without going through the exhausting process of actually conveying a rational argument. I think the Pope is unbearably smug, but that doesn’t render his arguments invalid (there are far more things that do that).

The issue of Richard Dawkins is curious as well. A very important point to make right now would be that DAWKINS IS NOT ATHEISM. Dawkins is an atheist. This would be (I would have thought) a pretty obvious distinction, were it not for the fact that so few people seem to be able to make it. I hold Dawkins in very high esteem, but he is not my Pope. I do not feel compelled to agree with him because he is a representative for a perfect being. In many ways, he is more similar to an actor or musician – I enjoy his work, but were he to suddenly offer opinions that I continually disagreed with I would feel no more compelled to stay with him than I was with “Heroes”.

It seems to me that people outside of atheism are more obsessed with Dawkins than those within. Perhaps that is doing them an injustice, but he is undeniably the go-to guy whenever an atheist story drops. The Atheist Bus campaign and the idea of arresting the Pope were all attributed to him simply because when the ideas arose, journalists went to him asking if he approved. Any hint that he did resulted in them becoming Dawkins’s plans.

Things reached a nadir when Stephen Fry was accused of leading an “Atheist Hate Campaign”. I find it incredible that anyone could believe that Stephen Fry could lead a Hate Campaign. But, of course, this was shoddy, scaremongering journalism that was wrong on every count. As Fry’s wonderful blog describes (and, just as a side note, is it possible to describe anything Stephen Fry has done as anything other than wonderful?), he was a signatory of a letter, not a leader. This letter began with the phrase:

“I’ve no objection to the Pope coming to visit Britain, he is welcome to do so…”

It is sheer religious privilege that makes atheists the enemies. Our arguments challenge their beliefs and question their actions, as all worthwhile arguments do, and as a result we are accused of bullying, and labelled no better than racists, misogynists and homophobes – all things promoted, at one time or another, on religious grounds.

5 Minutes with the Pope

I've been meaning to do a blog on the Pope UK visit for some time now, but this article in the New Humanist has finally inspired me to get around to it. So, if I had five minutes with the Pope, this is what I would like to say:

Pope Benedict, may I assume, for a second, that there is no God -- the primary justification for your actions and your position of authority. If this is the case, you have made women second class citizens and homosexuals outcasts for no reason. You have helped to spread HIV/AIDS by condemning condoms on the basis of a myth. And people in your organisation (and, if many reports are to be believed, you yourself) have covered up child molesters to protect the reputation of a lie. Given these countless millions who have suffered or have been killed, how is it that you can be regarded as a figure of moral authority, and how can you say, with the complete confidence that it would require, that you have acted justly?

I believe that this is the closest I can come to expressing my disgust at the actions of the Catholic Church, but I will never be able to put into words the horror and sadness that I feel, knowing that there are millions of people who hold this hateful, bigoted, misogynistic homophobe in the highest regard possible.