So, farewell then, Johann Harvey…I mean HARI

Johann Hari: The Non-Return

I guess I’m kinda sad that Johann “Harvey” Hari will not be returning to “The Independent” (dread term, as its former, most well-respected columnist Wallace Arnold would say). I was looking forward, perhaps over-gleefully, to seeing exactly what the Great Plagiarist would come up with that would in any way atone for his previous frauds to his loyal followers. Equally, I wanted to see how the Independent (“It once was. Are you still?”) would once again weasel its way around the fact they let him get away with these frauds for so long: indeed, would promote him way above his journalistic capability – which many seasoned journalists had called into question before the balloon finally went up – his intellectual honesty or  his educational ability (Tim Worstall was calling him out on his inept economic analysis long before his plagiarism came to light).

But, having returned from his New York journalism re-education camp…sorry, I mean retraining course…(hang on, he never had journalism training in the first place, so how does that work?) he has decided to cop out. Fleet Street Blues puts it kindly: “Fair play to him for falling on his sword…”  Well, far enough, except that it was a sword he fashioned himself from the ploughshare used by more honest, less ambitious and glory-seeking journalists than he.

Is there a lesson to be learnt from the Johann Hari affair? Yes, there is, and it is, in the portentous tones of Laurence Rees, it’s “A Warning From History”. The rise of Hari roughly coincides with that of Tony Blair and New Labour, and it’s difficult not to recall Peter Oborne’s verdict on the relationship between truth vs falsehood during that regime, in The Rise of Political Lying:

It is not unreasonable to speculate that the prime minister has a strong tendency to fall victim to a common conceptual muddle: the failure to understand the distinction between truth versus falsehood and truth versus error. Tony Blair, and many colleagues, consistently seem to feel that they are lucky enough to have been granted a privileged access to the moral truth. This state of grace produces two marvellous consequences. It means that whatever New Labour ministers say or write, however misleading or inaccurate, is in a larger sense true. Likewise whatever their opponents say or write, whether or not strictly speaking accurate, is in the most profound sense false.

Hari’s apologists (Polly Dutt-Pauker, Caitlin Moran etc) have all tended to forgive the Blessed Hari’s venial sins – misrepresentation, plagiarism, making up direct quotes – because he represented a Cardinal virtue: a “moral” truth, though not one supported by anything so mundane as facts, reality or common sense. It’s as though he and they have taken the example of Evelyn Waugh’s Shumble, Whelper, Pigge and Corker in Scoop and learnt exactly the wrong lesson. But then right-wing satire is always a bit too subtle for the lefties’ more clod-hopping tastes.

So Hari is off to write a book

“on a subject I believe is important and requires urgent action. To be done properly it needs international travel and …in depth focus…”

Hmmm. “The Ethics of Journalism – An International Study”, perhaps? The Plagiarist’s Progress, perchance, following our hero from the City of Destruction (a rather ungenerous way to describe the Independent, but I wouldn’t know; I’ve never worked there), up Hill Lucre, to the House Beautiful and  down into the Slough of Despond and the Valley of Humiliation? A novel called…oooh, I don’t know, something along the lines of  “The Fabulist” perhaps, about a reporter on a respected national publication who throws it all away by making stuff up? Oh, that’s already been done (and had the Hollywood treatment, too).

Maybe it’s a biography of Polly Dutt-Pauker he’s thinking of doing. Now that would require in depth focus – and international travel, of course (and Tuscany is so beautiful this time of the year, too).

Good luck, Johann, whatever you do. Just stay away from journalism, all right?

And now you’re out of the way, you snivelling little creep, it’s time to go after bigger buggers. Time to turn up the screws on Simon Kelner. Stay tuned, fact fans.

Getting ready for the return of Hari

Johann Hari: The Return

Well, 2012 is upon us for better or worse. Amidst the many pundit predictions of what will come upon us in this coming year, I noticed one curious omission: none dared foresee what should befall us with the imminent rearrival of Johann Hari in our midst.

After all, Independent editor Chris Blackhurst has publicly stated that Hari will make a return this year, after the secret “investigation’ by Andreas Whittam Smith (whom many serious commentators believe actually moonlights – with the aid of a silly beard , a joke-shop mitre and a crook he may well have nicked from a children’s nativity scene- as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Certainly, the way Her Majesty can scarcely control her giggles whenever that bearded loon opens his mouth suggests she is in on the joke. I rest my case).

Might I humbly suggest that Hari be given a gentle reintroduction into the rough and tumble of Fleet Street, by perhaps being given a mentor, as advocated in the Confederation of Business Industry handbook of Following EU Directives/slavishdevotion/edict01235.87-98/englischepigs-humbling-of.

And might I even more humbly suggest – this being totally against the whole Fleet Street ethos for 200 years or so – that this mentor come from a newspaper other than The Independent? It’s just that, surely, on his first awkward steps on the rocky rehabilitation road since his re-education stint in the Guantanamo  of the liberal US media, Hari might welcome the guiding hand of a fellow spirit, one who supported him through his bad times, who felt his pain, albeit at a distance, and knows his tactics better than he does.

Here, in my one and only prediction for 2012, is how I reckon that tricky first Hari interview with a Celebrity Interviewee might go:

Polly: Well, I’m awfully glad to meet you, Mr Celebrity Interviewee. I am Polly Dutt-Pauker (for it is she). Here, let me give you one of my cards…

Celeb Interviewee: Well, thank you Miss Dutt-Pauker…

Polly: Mssss! Have one of my cards…

Celebrity Interviewee: Sorry, Ms Dutt-Pauker, but you see I have an important interview with a chap by the the name of Hari and I don’t have time…

Polly: (Gaily, in a politically-pointed way) Oh, hah-hah-hah. I see, in your mean-spirited conservative-voting fashion you do not quite understand my educative progressivism. Allow me to introduce you to my good friend Hari… (indicates space to her left)

Celeb Interviewee: (goggles) Well, I’d be very pleased to meet Mr Hari…

Polly: And you know he’s very pleased to meet you. And more than pleased that you meet him.

Celeb Interviewee: Well, if I could see him…

Polly: See him? Well, Mr Celebrity Interviewee, if you had availed yourself  of the very fine spectacles available from our famed National Health Service, whose hospital-contracted infection rate is second to none in the western world, you could quite clearly see that my good friend Hari is right here beside me.

Celeb Interviewee: (goggles) But I can’t see him…

Polly: Hah-hah-hah. You right-wing, proletariat-crushing bankers are such a tease. Of course you can’t see him, he’s a future we must all bring about, not matter the cost. I know: I mentor him on economics, as I do on so many others. I hope you are are broad-minded enough to recognise and accept that Hari is a Pooka.

Celeb Interviewee: A…Pooka?

Polly: Yes. That’s Pooka with a P, not an F. Say hello, Hari.

Celeb Interviewee: Well, I can’t hear him, either…

Polly: Have no fear! I assure you that not only is Hari a dear friend, but he knows everything you’re about to say, even before you say it! It’s amazing how he can divine your thoughts even before you’ve thought them. Well, goodbye – I must leave you in Hari’s capable hands! I’m off to Tuscany, where I hear the au pairs are blooming lovelier – and cheaper – this time of year! Did I give you one of my cards?

So happy together

Where’s the beef?

Day 3 and the duck story is still at stage 4, going on stage 5.  The Baby Farm that is BBC News wishes it could get beyond that, but unfortunately they, as always, rely on the Guardian to provide the facts of  a huge Watergate-style corruption-going-all-the-way-to-the-top scandal. Fat chance! Personally, if I wanted to investigate a huge Watergate-style corruption-going-all-the-way-to-the-top type scandal, I’d out-source it.

Maybe to someone like honorary Open University doctor Mary Louisa. I know it’s hot in Tuscany at the moment, but heat rash doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll rabbit on about the Scott Trust Ltd being an offshore tax dodge or anything. Richard Murphy would have a fit if she did, and we can’t have that. But who knows? Maybe Our Pol could come up with something useful for once in her sad, deluded life. That would be one-up on her dad.