More tinkling cymbal
But that’s not all, of course. Odone has more to say than that. Odone has a lot to say.
First of all she complains that Channel 4 chose, to present a show on paedophile priests, a guy who is “an avowed atheist” and who has “no knowledge of the contemporary Catholic Church,” as if both are obvious disqualifications for presenting a show on paedophile priests. Her thinking seems to be that you have to believe in god and be an expert on the Catholic church in order to present a tv show on a concentration of child rapists in a particular profession. In other words her thinking seems to be that only someone who starts out with some sympathy for clerics in general and Catholic priests in particular can do a good job of presenting the subject. But that kind of sympathy is just what has allowed rapists to hide behind the robes of the church for so long. Sympathy is not what’s wanted; what’s wanted is the kind of stony unsympathy that Johann Hari so beautifully demonstrated on the BBC a few weeks ago. You don’t want people who will make allowances and excuses, you want people who will say this is criminal and outrageous and has to stop right now.
Then she goes on to complain that Peter Tatchell is presenting a show on the pope.
How appropriate, huh? Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, getting his hooks into his favourite hate figure. Who cares that in doing so he will be offending the more than four million Catholics in this country?
Ugly, isn’t it – “his hooks.” Who is accusing whom of having a hate figure? And then the self-pity about offending Catholics – because Peter Tatchell presents a show on the reactionary head of a reactionary church. If the four million Catholics don’t want to be “offended” then they should have a better church. (Yes, that’s irony. They can’t have a better church, of course, because they don’t get to decide. But this is why their being “offended” is so beside the point. They aren’t the church, they didn’t create the church, talking about the pope is not talking about them. They’re to blame for sticking with it; others are not to blame for saying what’s wrong with it.)
As for Channel 4, there is a very clear way for it to show itself to be in good faith, rather than bad: it must commission a programme on gays presented by Anne Atkins.
That’s simply disgusting. “Gays” are not the pope; “gays” do not tell millions of people what to do; gays are not the Catholic church or any other church, gays have no institutional power over other people; a programme on gays would not be the same kind of thing as one on the pope, so there is no need to have a homophobic presenter for the sake of “balance.”
Milk of human kindness eh.
She also had one of her turns over Sean Hughes “an avowed atheist and had no knowledge of the contemporary Catholic Church” presenting a show about paedophile priests.
Hughes, like myself, grew up in a Catholic family in Ireland. He clearly HAS sufficient knowledge of the catholic church. We know that because he’s become an atheist!
“First of all she complains that Channel 4 chose, to present a show on paedophile priests, a guy who is “an avowed atheist” and who has “no knowledge of the contemporary Catholic Church,” as if both are obvious disqualifications for presenting a show on paedophile priests”
By the same logic, Channel 4’s failure to have a paedophile presenter meant the presenter was unqualified. Going by the astonishment of senior catholics at these revelations it is quite obvious that they too have “no knowledge of the contemporary Catholic Church” and the acrivities of somr of its priests.
Has anyone ever worked out what purpose Odone serves, other than making everyone around look good by comparison.
I recall the cretinous review she wrote from the Observer on Why Does God Hate Women. She clearly got confused (nothing new for her!) and thought Ophelia and Jeremy were talking about a god that actually exists. The idea that religion is what people do in its name went right over her head.
God, would you believe it – I’d forgotten that Odone reviewed the book. I thought it was a different Catholic hack. I should have at least declared an interest…except that given that I’d forgotten, maybe the interest wasn’t there. Or maybe it was, but there was so much objective reason to dislike that piece that it made no actual difference.
Since I did forget, I am enabled to marvel all over again that a left-ish paper like the Observer would give that book to a reactionary Catholic bigot to review. When did the left decide that it was left-wing to fasten its lips firmly to the buttocks of all Mainstream Religions? And why wasn’t I consulted?
Great. Her argument is that the media should not be giving people a platform to express themselves on things they detest, which certainly ought to disqualify her from having her say in public about atheists.
Ah but that’s not her argument – her argument is that the media should not be giving other people a platform to express themselves on things they detest.
I most humbly and abjectly apologise for having so missed the point – the real point. If only Odone’s line were followed, there’d already be laws in place to prevent the oafish musings of such feeble-minded folk as myself from landing where somebody might be able to read them. We must have patience.
Quite. All she wants is a Catholic monopoly on reporting and commentary on Catholic matters. Moderation itself!
Only tangentially related (but I need to let off steam and she was mentioned here), but Anne Atkins did a particularly irritating ‘Thought’ for the Day this morning, which is nicely summarised and skewered here.
Though if you really must listen to the original it’s here (even the two-line summary on the BBC’s site is irritating beyond comprehension).