Comedy bore

This story (£) is so replete with opportunities for mockery that I would have dismissed it as a spoof, had it not appeared in the august pages of the Times. Apparently the 'godfathers of modern comedy', aka the team behind '80s television series The Comic Strip, are to get back together for a one-off production, scheduled for the autumn. The subject of this long-awaited comedy special? Why, it's 'Tony Blair and the aftermath of the Iraq war':

The Hunt for Tony Blair, a 1950s-style film noir spoof, sees the former prime minister charged with murder and on the run from the police.

According to Jay Hunt, chief creative officer at Channel 4, who commissioned the programme, 'it promises to be a very daring and utterly irreverent romp':

Comic Strip defined comedy for a generation and it's a real coup to have the team back tackling one of the most controversial subjects of our time in a way that only they can'.

'Daring'? 'Irreverent'? 'Controversial'? The 'Tony Blair war criminal' line has been the tired cliche of 'Comment is Free' columns and North London dinner table conversation for half a decade, as well as the stock-in-trade of the anti-Blair mandarins and Daily Mail writers who refuse to accept the conclusions of  a string of public inquiries. In other words, it's the establishment view: nothing 'controversial' about it. And nothing new about it either. The Iraq war was in 2003, for heaven's sake.

In other words, the subject is as dated and washed-up as the Comic Strip veterans themselves, who include Rik Mayall, Robbie Coltrane and Jennifer Saunders. By associating themselves with this project, the scourges of 'Thatch' now appear as outmoded as Les Dawson.

One might ask why they couldn't find a more 'controversial' focus for their comic rage in the contemporary political scene. Aren't there enough oppportunities for political satire in the u-turns and fallings-out of the Cameronians and Cleggites? And with everything that's happening in the Arab world, wouldn't it be more 'daring' and 'irreverent' to satirise Assad or Ahmadinejad, rather than the easy target of a prime minister who left office four years ago? Or is this comic targeting of Blair yet another example of the fashionable faux-left habit of responding to real abuses of power by looking in the other direction?

And what does it say about the once 'cutting-edge' Channel 4 that it's promoting this predictable project by a group of has-beens, which is designed to confirm rather than challenge the prejudices of its audience, as a major television event?

Rally to restore what?

I'm a regular viewer of The Daily Show (or at least, the edited, day-late version we get over here) but I sometimes think the acclaim for Jon Stewart as the liberal saviour of political television is overblown. We often find ourselves switching off at the first commercial break. Stewart's opening monologue/rant can be hilarious, but the fake news reports involving other cast members are frequently juvenile and embarrassing, allowing a single 'joke' to run on far too long. And Stewart's 'interviews' with politicians and other assorted celebrities tend to be wasted opportunities: frustratingly brief bouts of comedic joshing in the interests of book or movie promotion.

Having said all that, I wished Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's 'Rally to Restore Sanity' (held yesterday in Washington's National Mall) well, even if I agreed with some commentators that its effect on the Democratic vote, so close to the mid-term elections, might not be entirely positive. I didn't watch all of the coverage, but I found these comments on the event instructive:

Here's P.Z.Myers expressing disappointment that the rally turned into a plea for 'moderation' in political tone, rather than anything more substantial:

I don't want moderation, especially when the only people who will listen to Stewart and Colbert are the people on our shared side of the political aisle. I can understand where they're coming from; people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Andrew Breibart are poison, Fox News is a propaganda organ without bounds working for the far right-wing, we've got evangelical Christians demanding the installation of a theocracy, and on and on and on. But who, exactly, do Stewart and Colbert regard as the equivalent of Beck and Limbaugh on the left? Is it Rachel Maddow? Amy Goodman? Keith Olbermann?

In other words, the rally could be seen as reinforcing the sense that has pervaded not only this mid-term election campaign, but the first two years of the Obama administration, that Democrats and liberals haven't found the language or the courage to fight back against the lies and insinuations of the Republican right. Myers concludes:

I was left cold by the fuzziness of the event. It could have been great; instead of embracing an apolitical perspective and saying nothing at all about values, it could have been a rally for moderation that emphasized the actual values that moderates hold: we believe in tolerance for people of different ethnicities and religious views and sexual preferences, we believe in building an egalitarian social and economic infrastructure, we believe in privacy and personal freedoms, etc., etc., etc., and they could have held to the theme of the rally by advocating rational argument and unified, organised activism within the system to advance those goals...but they didn't. There was no purpose given other than a generic insistence that we all get along nicely.

As for that plea for a focus on 'tolerance', it would have helped if the rally organisers hadn't included a performer who has expressed the most outrageously intolerant opinions. Appearing onstage in the National Mall was Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, who is on record as supporting the fatwah against Salman Rushdie and wishing the author dead.

So, as well as reflecting the US left's failure to find a positive political message with which to hit back at the Tea Party movement, the rally also demonstrated characteristic liberal naivety towards Islamism (some of this naivety was on display in the rush to support the Ground Zero 'mosque' in reaction to rightist intolerance). Someone with Yusuf Islam's views should not have been invited to appear at a rally in favour of moderation and tolerance: his opinions are the exact mirror image of the rightist extremism of Glenn Beck et al that the event was organised to oppose.

Update

Also recommended: the other Martin (Meenagh) on the rally and the congressional elections.

And via Pootergeek, confirmation from Nick Cohen of the culpability and duplicity of Mr. Islam/Stevens.

Britain: brilliant, not broken

As we were waiting for our luggage at Heathrow on Wednesday morning, I thought I glimpsed a familiar, goateed figure slipping through Customs, head down and collar turned up, trying hard not to be recognised, his trolley being pushed by an Air Canada employee.

I was fairly sure it was Eddie Izzard, but others in my party weren’t convinced – or impressed: my son spotted La Roux in the same place last year, a much more memorable sighting in his opinion. Now I’m persuaded I was right, since Izzard has tweeted about a recent appearance on CBC’s The Hour, promoting his forthcoming Canadian tour.

If it was Eddie, then his flight - like ours - must have been one of the last to land before UK airspace went into lockdown. I'm glad he made it, otherwise we might have been deprived of his new election broadcast for Labour. After Gordon's turgid performance last night, Izzard's video has cheered me up no end. With its reminder of the fundamental moral divide between the parties, I hope it attracts a wide audience, especially among those tempted to think Cameron is some kind of born-again social democrat - rather than, as Eddie reminds us, one of Thatcher's children, in a new suit.