A Letter to The Spectator on Charles Moore, Jonathan Ross and Rod Liddle
Gerry Hassan
January 25th 2010
To the Editor,
Am I missing something in my understanding of Spectator coverage?
For month after month Charles Moore (Spectator, passim) rightly berated the BBC for employing Jonathan Ross for however million and stated that he would withhold one of his TV licences as a result of the Ross-Brand scandal, inviting readers to do the same.
Jonathan Ross then leaves the BBC and not a squeak from Mr. Moore. Has he started paying his TV licence again? And why the strange silence for several weeks?
Also given The Spectator’s interest in championing decency and standards, as well as opposing anti-semitism I look forward to a future Rod Liddle free Spectator after his latest outburst. Championing his right to smoke at Auschwitz (along with numerous racist remarks) and his touching defence in The Guardian with the profuse word of the ‘c’ word, should be enough to banish Mr. Liddle from these pages.
Does Melanie Phillips finding anti-semitism everywhere really know that there is a crazed anti-semite writing in these pages? And I hope we don’t get some spurious defence about Mr. Liddle’s huge talent etc; the same defence of vulgarity and odiousness which the BBC trundled out with Ross and Brand, and which Charles Moore and others rightly saw as humbug!
