It’s been a busy old week for those wicked old word weasels, but I don’t want you thinking that we haven’t noticed what’s been going on over here in Lesser Blogfordshire, and that our word-weasel radar isn’t functioning properly. We know what you are doing, oh you crafty weasels, and, as usual, we can see right through it. We always do. You’re dealing with minds that are so mind-snappingly cynical nowadays that we can spot a bit of weaselage almost as soon as it pours from your mouth or your pages. There’s no longer anywhere you can hide from our stupendously finely tuned radar any more, because we can hear you and we know precisely what you mean, even if you don’t realise it yet yourselves.
Basically, we know that if we can see that the weasel’s mouth is flapping, then we know that there are lies coming out of it.
I will therefore make no excuses, or spin my own reasoning in order to try to please you or persuade you otherwise, when I find myself once more returning ever so swiftly to the subject of those weasel words once again today. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder whether our musings and mutterings might, at last, have found their purpose in exposing the word weasels and their web of weasel words for precisely what they are. Feel free, if you so choose to do so, my loyal pair of readers, to expose any further word-weaselry you discover that fails to knock upon the edges of my perception, and expose them upon these very pages, for the discussion will be more than welcome.
For the weasels are on the run at the moment. Toad Hall is to be perhaps freed of the weasels and the stoats and the ferrets, at least for a time. Of course, we can be utterly sure and know for absolute certain that they’ll regroup and come back stronger and harder than ever before, but in the meanwhile we should rejoice in our slight victory over the weasel wordsmiths and take whatever comfort we can whilst we can.
It’s been interesting to see the pack turning on itself and, in the process, revealing to us its own weasely underbelly. The inference being that they thought “We might be bad, but we’re not as bad as they are…” before indulging in a lot of fence-sitting until they saw what the majority of the ordinary people had to say and then deciding that they’d better go along with that. The weasel quisling always instinctively knows which way the battle is turning and knows upon which side his bread is buttered. He knows that to be seen to side with the wrong side will find him tarred with the very same brush he wields so purposefully (My! My mixed-metaphors are on fire today! It must be all those tabloid headline writers dashing for cover…). However, can it really be believed that one particular smaller-sized paper of a notoriously right-wing hue (although without a red top…) is taking the moral high ground mere days after itself cynically blaming the teacher’s strike for the tragic death of a young girl? Surely not…
Because one of the most robust strongholds for the warriors from the ranks of the word-weasels has been smashed to ruins. The people have decided that they will not tolerate an organ that trumpets its support of our brave soldiers, cries weasely tears over the tragedies as they unfold and then allegedly spies upon their grieving relatives to get more juicy stories, more scandalous tittle-tattle and more outraged and outrageous headlines. We know your real agenda. We know what you’re about. You can dress it up however you like, but we can see beyond your weasel-worded façade and see the pretence hidden oh-so-poorly behind it. The second of two-weasel-faces disguised by the mask of the first. We know what you did. You pretended to care, but you couldn’t care less. Profit is everything, moral value less so. As long as you got to feed your own wicked ambitions it didn’t matter who you stepped over to get there. But now you’ve been caught by your own traps, by the same kind of deviousness that you once so proudly executed yourselves. You are tangled in the very weasel-webs you wove and those of us tiring of such brash and blatant scandalmongery must now rejoice for a moment in the fact that these empires built on exploitation of human misery might very well be beginning to crumble and a brave new world might be upon us, even as we already start to be appalled at the means and manner in which it came about. We
However, those of you who, it seems, so nobly exposed the heart-rending tales behind the victims of bombs, as long as we never asked you what your sources were, or gave false hope to the parents of the missing when it was your own activities which helped to convince them that she was safe and well somewhere, you still get little sympathy hereabouts. We shall not easily forgive you pretending for all that time, for all those years, and throughout all those other tragedies, that you gave a toss when all you really cared about was saying what you thought people wanted to hear in order to sell your spite, whilst sneaking around behind their backs trying to get more gossip, more insight, more of that most precious of newsroom commodities, the spiteful tittle-tattle to share in the so-called “public interest”.
But then it is also we ourselves, that very interested public, all of us who inhabit this sordid society, who are also to blame. We encouraged you with our constant yearning for more and better insight. We bought your oily rags. We consumed your ill-gotten tales. We lapped it all up and rarely asked ourselves how you had found these things out. Rarely did we say “enough is enough” rather than “tell me more...” We kept on demanding more of you, and more, and more to feed our own dark and hungry souls. It’s interesting that so many are now claiming to hate the tabloid press, but somebody’s obviously been buying the things for all those years. Still there’s one less now, but its replacement is all ready to pounce.
A fresh lick of paint, a new name, and a whole new stack of weasel words just waiting for the public so desperate to fill that newspaper-shaped hole in their Sunday mornings with something much the same.
As if we’d forget… but the sad thing is, we probably will.
That’s the pity behind the power of the word weasel. How can something possibly be “exactly the same” when it’s obviously dressed up so differently? You can justify anything to yourself, and convince yourself that you’re totally in the right if you simply choose to ignore the wickedness beyond the surface detail. A nice glossy, shiny new look can hide a multitude of old sins if you can persuade enough of us that it didn’t really matter, did it? We will believe you, because we do. People, I’ve said it before, can be idiots. They’ll tell you that they can understand the problems people had with that paper, and why people are getting upset, but still decide that it doesn’t really matter because they only get it for the TV guide anyway, and “what harm can it do…?”
The TV guide, and all those nipples on show, obviously.
Maybe this is why my own failed experimentation with mocking the tabloid press failed so spectacularly recently. How can you possibly spoof something that’s already a tragi-comic spoof anyway?
Nevertheless, as I said at the start, the word-weasels have had a busy few days. The whole “Opera North” fiasco has weaselage plastered all over it. I start to doubt the sincerity of everyone once my weasel-radar is pinging, and it now leaves me wondering about whether it was all just a bit of a publicity stunt, but I cannot just dismiss it as another storm in a teacup. Not yet. For that way the weasels win.
“Oh, it’s not really important! You can just ignore it!” they cry, and their biggest, most powerful weapon remains the apathy of the rest of us. Meanwhile, the corporate weasels of BAe and Bombardier and their political weasely allies are still weaving their own weasel-words to justify the ruination of so many livelihoods, and the illegal downloading weasels are trying to maintain their innocence in committing what they see as a “victimless” crime. Even my own pension plan has been touched by the weasels this week and found to be buried in another web of words.
We must remain on our guard, weasel spotters, because they’re everywhere.
Keep ’em peeled!
No comments:
Post a Comment