Thursday 16 September 2010

Brendan O'Neill withdrawn after 'inexplicable' rant

The Catholic Church today sought to distance itself from controversial comments in the progressively radical "Spiked" e-zine, alleging that Britain resembled a Third World country marked by a new and aggressive atheism. Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, described the comments as 'inexplicable'. At the last minute, Brendan O'Neill has withdrawn from the Papal visit. A Vatican press official insisted that O'Neill's absence was purely due to health problems.

In the bad old days, angry authoritarians who wanted to raise their blood pressure by reading incoherent rants about the state of the world had to make do with the thoughts of Richard Littlejohn and Jan Moir. This was all very well, but it did tend to make the reader look like an unstylish, beige-cardie-wearing middle-aged fuddy-duddy. Fortunately, with the new generation of  professional contrairans like Brendan O'Neill and Seamus Milne, a new demographic can now get that edgy, radical, free-thinking hipster look while still enjoying the comfort of blistering tirades against liberal free-thinkers and grovelling respect for reactionary and/or authoritarian institutions.

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