{"id":565,"date":"2006-03-06T23:01:51","date_gmt":"2006-03-06T22:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2006\/03\/06\/melanie_phillips_soundbite_of_the_week"},"modified":"2025-10-10T21:58:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T20:58:46","slug":"melanie_phillips_soundbite_of_the_week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2006\/03\/06\/melanie_phillips_soundbite_of_the_week","title":{"rendered":"Melanie Phillips soundbite of the week"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the style of the "Donald Rumsfeld soundbite of the week" the BBC's Broadcasting House programme used to have on a Sunday, in which the public was left to laugh at Dumbsfeld tripping over his tongue, I present Melanie Phillips' latest bizarre genocidal-conspiratorial outburst:<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet, if you pare away the partisan politics, the message that the combination of big oil and politics has had a lethal impact on global order is surely correct. It\u2019s just that the film miscasts the principal villains and victims. After all, why else has Israel been left to swing in the genocidal wind for more than fifty years<\/strong> if not for the fact that oil runs global politics?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An Oscar for national self-loathing<\/a> (a comment on Syriana, in which she also wheels out Amir Taheri with the "America-hating helps recruit terrorists" nonsense)<\/p>\n

Also, check out this piece<\/a> in today's Media Guardian, regarding columnists who also have blogs – including David Aaronovitch and, of course, Mel. Here's her explanation for why she keeps a blog:<\/p>\n

\nPhillips makes no bones about her main reason for blogging: unlike her commentary articles for the Mail, which usually take up a single page, her blog has no such restrictions. "[Blogging] is so seductive because it offers you literally an unlimited amount of space to say what you want," she explains, "and there's so much to say for someone like me."\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She forgets to mention that her blog contains such nonsense that it's too extreme even for the Daily Mail<\/em> …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the style of the "Donald Rumsfeld soundbite of the week" the BBC's Broadcasting House programme used to have on a Sunday, in which the public was left to laugh at Dumbsfeld tripping over...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-melanie_phillips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-97","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42549,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/42549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}