Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Hipsters: Still Reliably Disgusting

Shorter O'Neill: Admire the sophistication of my refusal to condemn even outright insanity.

Like night following day, any outbreak of sadistic lunacy will be followed by the MSM's hipster contingent paying generous tribute to their own courage in refusing to condemn the killer. Free clue: it's only courageous if everyone else in the chattering class bubble isn't saying the exact same thing. For an MSM opinion writer to denounce the man on the Clapham omnibus as an unsophisticated brute is about as brave as George Galloway's warm up man denoucing Israel.

Hey, 'devil child' may lack nuance, but at least it also lacks any pretence to bogus insight. Meanwhile, O'Neall wants Dangerous Dan to get 'help and education'. Like what? 'Not Murdering People 101'? A quick course of aromatherapy? Colonic irrigation?

Hey, at least give us a hint here hipsters!

But no: their point is an essentially fradulent one. They want to contrast their own support for Therapy Nation versus the supposedly punative nature of the mob, but what's so sophiticated about their position? The science behind the rehab industry is about as reliable as a UEA climate model. O'Neall even cites the Bulger killers himself - the rehab industries' own flagship case, where despite a blank cheque and a policy of turning a blind eye to a string of offences, 50% of them still ended up back in jail anyway.

Hey, can you imagine how bad the figures are on the cases they don't want to talk about?

This is another case where conservatives have let liberals set the terms of the debate. It's not imprisonment versus rehab, it's the certainty of public protection versus pseudo-scientific garbage. Supporting the clowns and charlatans in the rehab industry is no more an intellectual position than believing your horoscope, and at least Jonathan Cainer doesn't want to set the Mad Axeman loose.

4 comments:

JuliaM said...

"But there is a very important difference between child killers and adult killers. For the most part, children who kill are unstable not evil..."

Eh? You sure, Brendan?

I thought the bleeding hearts had been caught labelling the adult psychopaths as 'unstable' too, on many an occasion!

North Northwester said...

I confess, I'd feel a lot better about imprisoning kids for their own sake (instead of simply for our safety, which has a great deal of appeal of its own) if I thought the powers that be had something to teach them and make it stick if the child-care professionals Inside had something more robust in mind than "There, there, it's not your fault; just you play nice from now on."

How about starting with very simple concepts as recommended in all the liberal primers, like: Ouch. Stop. Right. Wrong?

Nah. Never happen. X-Box and time out for bad behaviour is WAY a better strategy.

Anonymous said...

O'Neill a liberal hipster?

The Spiked crowd are notorious contrarians who challenge virtually every 'liberal' idea there is. "Far Leftists who believe in the free market". George Monbiot wrote an article exposing them.

Not that he's right in this case but you undermine you point.

Anonymous said...

The Spiked crowd are the ultimate entryists. To them the true war is the culture war, all other objectives secondary.

So O'Neill is the ultimate liberal hipster. he and his ilk can talk tough to scare regular left liberal lightweights but their supposed embrace of the free market fools right liberals easily enough.