Crick and Mason: class traitors!

Stephen Glover, and Kevlin MacKenzie are cross at the fact that Michael Crick, Newsnight’s political editor, and Paul Mason, the same programme’s economics editor, went on strike at the BBC and voiced their support for the industrial action. Apparently, the two Newsnight reporters have fatally compromised their professional neutrality.

But would Glover and MacKenzie be spitting poison at these two journalists if they had criticised the strike? Would that have demonstrated that they were too right-wing to do their jobs objectively? Would that have indicated a dangerous bias from the two journalists in favour of the Coalition? I think we all know the answer to that question. And I think on the basis of the answer we need not take the hyperventilating of Glover and MacKenzie too seriously.

What’s also interesting about the Glover and MacKenzie view is that they seem to believe Crick and Mason are guilty of some sort of class  betrayal. “I wonder how much each gentleman is paid” says Glover, “my guess would be upwards of £90,000 a year.” MacKenzie calls them “middle-class tossers”. Is this relevant? Only if you believe that it is the natural order for the poor to strike and for the wealthy to condemn strikes.

It seems to me that Glover and MacKenzie are the ones interested in resurrecting the class war.

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• JohnBEllis

  I’ve not come across Mr Glover, but perhaps Mr MacKenzie should be careful with his epithets, given that he’s typical to the point of caricature of any number of “middle-class tossers” sounding off to their silver-haired cronies and blue-rinsed wives in lounge bars and golf clubs across the south of England …

• Dorothea

  What? When did you last see a woman with a blue rinse? All this class stuff is bad enough but you might at least get your stereotypes right: “Blue Rinse” was a shorthand for women who went to the hairdresser too often because they had nothing else to do. I haven’t seen one of those since about 1980 Most middle class wives these days are working to help pay for the mortgage and the children’s education: and if they are rich enough not to work, they are more likely to be blonde and botoxed than blue-rinsed.

• JohnBEllis

  The “class stuff”, if you read the article, derives from Kelvin MacKenzie, not me.

  As for hair, having little these days, I don’t claim expertise. But I still see blue, though I agree that a sort of metallic blondey-red seems to be more common these days.

  And Kelvin MacKenzies look-alikes – and sound-likes, with the same notions though usually with less sharp wit – still inhabit the golf clubs and lounge bars with their spouses or partners. The ones I’m thinking of are rather past the age of paying school fees, and I suspect the mortgages are history too.

• dumbganda

  MPs have to declare their interest in a debate or vote. Company directors, civil servants, and all business professionals have to declare their interests in any transactions which involve a personal conflict. Given the BBC’s daily hysteria on the budget cuts, it is just a simple professional ethics that these people declare their interests. They should put on the screen on Newsnight or whenever these people appear that they have a personal interest in the budget cuts, and the freeze on license fees on the BBC.
  Anything less than that smells of unethical and unprofessional conduct which is not acceptable in our modern age.

• Old Git Tom

  Well McFrenzy started it, so how’s about “Potty-mouthed poop-scoop for a dirty dingo”? By way of response? OGT

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