Say what you like about Tommy Boy, but he does a great - if inadvertent - job of illustrating the latent fascism that underpins much modern libertarianism. Here he is trying to explain away the Bulger/Venables case without referencing the elephant in the room.
The thing with it all is this: the knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal, tabloid-addled, drunken, dirty, illiterate, sewer-dwelling, Ford driving, football watching, coupon clipping Untermensch...... were right. They - we - always believed two things: Venables & Thompson are violent felons and should be treated as such, and the legal system could not be trusted to do so.
As luck would have it, Venables was declared rehabilitated and released from yoof custody (aka Playstation Prison) approximately one second before he was due to be moved to an adult prison, then - as we now know - he embarked on an odyssey of drug-fuelled criminality, much of it in the city he was specifically barred from visiting.
Meanwhile, the Certified Super Smart Set are busy explaining that Goodison Park is 'on Liverpool' but not 'in Liverpool'. Besides, who'd have guessed that a convicted killer would react badly to a snoot full of Bolivian marching powder?
The bottom line is that John Venables was 'too big to fail'. By hook or by crook, Venables was always going to be classed as rehabilitated, and he was going to stay rehabilitated, no matter how many felonies he committed.
From the start, this was supposed to be the flagship case for the supposedly enlightened, and definitely privileged, to throw in the face of the unsophisticated masses with their stupid ideas about 'public protection', 'deterrence, 'vindication' and other childish nonsense. They wanted the success of this case to be the metric by which we judged their claims to sophistication versus the ignorant moralising of the peasantry.
Hell, if they'd managed to keep the fraud going just that bit longer, they'd doubtless be trying to cram a BBC docu-drama about it all down our throats. But now it's all gone horribly wrong, and the truth about the rehab industry has leaked out (it's exactly the sleazy farce the right always said it was), they think we shouldn't talk about it, otherwise lynch mobs will rampage through the streets and eat your neighbours!
It's genius, Jim, but not as we know it.
The thing with it all is this: the knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal, tabloid-addled, drunken, dirty, illiterate, sewer-dwelling, Ford driving, football watching, coupon clipping Untermensch...... were right. They - we - always believed two things: Venables & Thompson are violent felons and should be treated as such, and the legal system could not be trusted to do so.
As luck would have it, Venables was declared rehabilitated and released from yoof custody (aka Playstation Prison) approximately one second before he was due to be moved to an adult prison, then - as we now know - he embarked on an odyssey of drug-fuelled criminality, much of it in the city he was specifically barred from visiting.
Meanwhile, the Certified Super Smart Set are busy explaining that Goodison Park is 'on Liverpool' but not 'in Liverpool'. Besides, who'd have guessed that a convicted killer would react badly to a snoot full of Bolivian marching powder?
The bottom line is that John Venables was 'too big to fail'. By hook or by crook, Venables was always going to be classed as rehabilitated, and he was going to stay rehabilitated, no matter how many felonies he committed.
From the start, this was supposed to be the flagship case for the supposedly enlightened, and definitely privileged, to throw in the face of the unsophisticated masses with their stupid ideas about 'public protection', 'deterrence, 'vindication' and other childish nonsense. They wanted the success of this case to be the metric by which we judged their claims to sophistication versus the ignorant moralising of the peasantry.
Hell, if they'd managed to keep the fraud going just that bit longer, they'd doubtless be trying to cram a BBC docu-drama about it all down our throats. But now it's all gone horribly wrong, and the truth about the rehab industry has leaked out (it's exactly the sleazy farce the right always said it was), they think we shouldn't talk about it, otherwise lynch mobs will rampage through the streets and eat your neighbours!
It's genius, Jim, but not as we know it.
1 comment:
"Meanwhile, the Certified Super Smart Set are busy explaining that Goodison Park is 'on Liverpool' but not 'in Liverpool'. "
/facepalm
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