The unsavoury Richard Littlejohn

The main part of Richard Littlejohn's Tuesday 20 October column is an attack on the BNP. He spends part of it recalling the time he had a show on Sky News (yes, really) and of meeting various BNP people.

He says:

I put it to [Nick] Griffin that what set the BNP apart was the large elephant not in the manifesto, namely that it is the 'Wogs Out' party.

Yes, one of those odious 'Wogs Out' types. Not like Littlejohn at all, who in his dishonest look at the Bolivian immigrant who was(n't) saved from deportation by his cat story writes:

If the couple are determined to have a family life, they can have one in Bolivia.

'Wogs Out' indeed.

He moves on to talk about the time in 2004 that he 'moderated' a discussion between a BNP supporter and the Independent's Johann Hari:

The researchers had also invited an excitable teenage 'cultural commentator' from one of the unpopular papers by way of balance.

He managed to work himself up into such an hysterical, nasal lather of sweaty indignation - squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance - that he succeeded only in making the BNP man seem reasonable.

Of course, referring to him as an 'excitable teenager' is a way of belittling and patronising him so he doesn't have to admit the fact that Hari utterly humiliated him. He showed him to be a complete liar about the benefits asylum seekers get (Littlejohn wrote £117 per week, rather than £33 they actually recieved) and Littlejohn had absolutely nothing to say in return.

Enjoy - and savour it - here.

Hari's point was that the constant lies and exaggerations spread by Littlejohn (and others) about immigrants and Muslims gives the BNP a platform on which to build. The way Mail stories on these subjects appear on the BNP website within hours of being published by newspapers - including the cat story - is clear evidence of that.

But look again at way Littlejohn describes Hari.

'Squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance'. That is the infamous scene where Beatty's character is raped by another man.

And it is surely no accident that Littlejohn uses that reference solely because Hari is gay.

In a Tweet a few days ago, Hari revealed:

The BNP on their website call me "the notorious fat homosexual Johann Hari". I am considering changing my name to this by deed poll.

Attacking Hari and pointlessly raising his sexuality - clearly Littlejohn is appalled by the BNP.

Coming so soon after the infamous Jan Moir article, the Mail should be careful about insidious little homophobic remarks from their columnists. It would seem to raise similiar problems under Clause 12 of the PCC code, which deals with:

prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's...sexual orientation

and

Details of an individual's...sexual orientation...must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

Not only that but he sounds like the school bully, pathetically settling old scores now he has thought of a response five years later.

And, on the subject of Moir, Littlejohn is bizarrely quiet. There's none of the spluttering outrage he aimed at the BBC over the Sachsgate affair. Whereas then he complained that Ross and Brand had been allowed to:

bully and ridicule an old man and his granddaughter in the name of 'entertainment'

bullying and ridiculing a recently dead man and his mother in the name of entertainment is, apparently, fine.

All he says is:

Forgive me, I know I really should get out more, but who is Stephen Gately?

Hilarious. The man is a fool.

(Hat-tip to Killer Whale at the Mailwatch Forum for the Wogs Out comparison)