Perhaps the American spellings, and the pricing in dollars, account for this:
For more than three decades, Melanie Phillips has
served as Britain’s political conscience. Followed by members of the Royal
Family as well as by homemakers, ubiquitous on radio and television as well as
in the print media, Melanie Phillips is widely regarded as an indispensable
force for good in the battle to restore western civilization.
Melanie Phillips’s relationship with her millions
of followers has always been conducted through traditional media outlets, such
as the BBC, the Daily Mail and the Guardian. Now, she is reaching out
beyond broadcasting and the world of print to connect directly with her many
supporters.
Asked why she had launched her own media company,
Melanie Phillips said: “Speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy
and giving voice to those on the decent, commonsense, middle ground who find
themselves marginalized by the gatekeepers of public discourse. That’s the
mission of my new venture.”
No, no, Melanie, don’t you sell yourself short with English reticence.
However, her book list looks rather good, and I might very well buy some of the titles on it. Frederic Raphael’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, For Example: The Drama of the Eternal Outsider looks utterly fascinating. Nor custom stale his infinite variety.
Phillips is an important voice on issues such as drugs and education, and even I, in the most profound disagreement with her about the neoconservative war agenda and its assault on civil liberties at home, have long detected a certain misogyny and anti-Semitism in the sheer ferocity of the abuse to which she is subjected. Gentile men who are just as wrong on those issues rarely receive anything comparable. Sometimes. But rarely.
Several other commentators could usefully branch out in this way. Owen Jones, perhaps. Richard Littlejohn. Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee. Simon Heffer. Peter Hitchens. Rod Liddle. Katie Price. Seriously. I have seen her column a couple of times, and it is no wonder that she was brought in to replace Toby Young, as we were splendidly reminded by the running order on last week’s This Week. I still wish that Maurice Glasman had taken the column before it was offered to Young, though. Imagine his book list, each with an introduction by him.
As for the comical merchandise, what might that of certain other bastions of nominally British neoconservatism look like, and why? That of Oliver Kamm, say? Or of Douglas Murray? Or of David Aaronovitch? Or of Con Coughlin? Or, indeed, of Toby Young? In the case of Damian Thompson, it goes without saying that there would have to be cupcakes.
Private Eye is already advertising a Melanie Phillips sat nav. It cannot make left turns, and it does not recognise Palestine. But one wonders what the American purchasers of Melanie Phillips umbrellas, T-shirts and coffee (note, not tea) mugs would make of some of the unretracted views of their heroine. She is in principle in favour of a Palestinian State, and although she maintains that they are within their rights, she disapproves of the Israeli settlers on the West Bank. She decries the evisceration of civil society during the 1980s.
But in view of the Messianic language above, and following Phillips’s identification of any and everything on the neoconservative hate list as an expression of anti-Semitism, perhaps we shall see the conversion of neoconservatives to some sort of Judaism, identifying the philosophical, theological and ethical resources of Judaism as providing the necessary weapons against such things. Those who declared themselves Jews in order to provide a spiritual or ritual framework for their neoconservatism would be most unlikely to trouble the Orthodox.
However, her book list looks rather good, and I might very well buy some of the titles on it. Frederic Raphael’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, For Example: The Drama of the Eternal Outsider looks utterly fascinating. Nor custom stale his infinite variety.
Phillips is an important voice on issues such as drugs and education, and even I, in the most profound disagreement with her about the neoconservative war agenda and its assault on civil liberties at home, have long detected a certain misogyny and anti-Semitism in the sheer ferocity of the abuse to which she is subjected. Gentile men who are just as wrong on those issues rarely receive anything comparable. Sometimes. But rarely.
Several other commentators could usefully branch out in this way. Owen Jones, perhaps. Richard Littlejohn. Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee. Simon Heffer. Peter Hitchens. Rod Liddle. Katie Price. Seriously. I have seen her column a couple of times, and it is no wonder that she was brought in to replace Toby Young, as we were splendidly reminded by the running order on last week’s This Week. I still wish that Maurice Glasman had taken the column before it was offered to Young, though. Imagine his book list, each with an introduction by him.
As for the comical merchandise, what might that of certain other bastions of nominally British neoconservatism look like, and why? That of Oliver Kamm, say? Or of Douglas Murray? Or of David Aaronovitch? Or of Con Coughlin? Or, indeed, of Toby Young? In the case of Damian Thompson, it goes without saying that there would have to be cupcakes.
Private Eye is already advertising a Melanie Phillips sat nav. It cannot make left turns, and it does not recognise Palestine. But one wonders what the American purchasers of Melanie Phillips umbrellas, T-shirts and coffee (note, not tea) mugs would make of some of the unretracted views of their heroine. She is in principle in favour of a Palestinian State, and although she maintains that they are within their rights, she disapproves of the Israeli settlers on the West Bank. She decries the evisceration of civil society during the 1980s.
But in view of the Messianic language above, and following Phillips’s identification of any and everything on the neoconservative hate list as an expression of anti-Semitism, perhaps we shall see the conversion of neoconservatives to some sort of Judaism, identifying the philosophical, theological and ethical resources of Judaism as providing the necessary weapons against such things. Those who declared themselves Jews in order to provide a spiritual or ritual framework for their neoconservatism would be most unlikely to trouble the Orthodox.
Yet they and the average Reform rabbi or
congregant would hardly be each other’s obvious best fits, either; on the
contrary, although it still struggles to be heard, there is at present a quiet
revival of Reform Judaism’s classical definition of Jews as a religious
community rather than as an ethnic group, and of its classical rejection of any
return to Palestine as surely as of any restoration of animal sacrifice.
Orthodox Judaism’s classical position is that Zionism is a blasphemous
pre-emption of the Messiah.
So, without necessarily involving the lady
personally, will we be seeing new, Phillipsian synagogues springing up? We are
about due some fresh expressions of the entrepreneurial popular religious
revival that is very much a recurring theme in our history. Might this be one
of them? Then again, though, if at all, then only in America?
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