Shot by Both Sides has died of its wounds

Sadly, Arthur Silber (“The Light of Reason”) is also laying down his keyboard.

I’d prefer “humourless”, Tom, but there we go. Think about the words “perspective” and “sense of”, and try to form a sentence. It was a weblog, for goodness sake!!

If it’s “smug” to be shocked by calls for the Board of Deputies to be gassed – as John Band did recently

It’s certainly smug to lift that quote entirely out of its original context and present it as though it was the be-all and end-all of John’s post – and then use this out-of-context quotation as a defence of your position.

As for Eric, if I remember rightly, his last post on SBBS was to take considerable umbrage at John’s piss-take of the Daily Mail’s likely reaction to the 7/7 bombings and their effect on house prices. A fortnight later, the Express ran the front-page headline ‘BOMBERS WERE ALL SPONGEING ASYLUM SEEKERS’, thus not only vindicating John’s satire but suggesting that he didn’t go anything like far enough.

I think he’s a decent bloke who became increasingly unhinged – after realising being a shock-jock blogger creates traffic and noise. He most certainly isn’t anti-semitic.

Everyone thinks of things that are funny, in the Chris Morris sense, then draws back. On SBBS latterly it felt like he had lost control of a monster.

Good luck to him on The Sharpener.

Superb, it fits the fact you and Bertram spent a lot of time there.

I know you are, but what am I?

Not anti-semitic, just really pathetic attention-seeking.

By the way I wouldn’t characterise women as humourless because they don’t laugh at jokes about rape.

By the way I wouldn’t characterise women as humourless because they don’t laugh at jokes about rape.

I’m assuming you didn’t watch tonight’s Nighty Night – which contained more jokes about rape in the space of half an hour than I think I’ve ever encountered on television before.

(Mind you, I suspect rather fewer of them would have got through the BBC taste-and-decency filter if the script hadn’t been written by a woman, but that’s another issue entirely)

“…calls for a bunch of Jews to be gassed”

fucking bad luck for Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Miller, Jackie Mason and Rodney Dangerfield, to name only the ones in my record collection.

Did you -once again- pull that out of your ass? Citations, svp.

Eric, Do you just want to abuse people here, or what?

Not really, but dsquared started it with his quote.

Perhaps I should have called for John to be gassed.

That would be funny.

Anyway in dsqaured desire to call me a monkey and Chris Bertram’s childish attempt to have a go at the pro-war left an important issue seems to be being missed.

On Shot by by both Sides it currently says:

For those of you who lied, twisted, cheated and bullied until the least worst choice available to me was to close the site, congratulations.

And on Backward Dave’s site it says:

Perhaps there’s no higher acclaim that being blackmailed by envious anonymous cunts.

While I had my disagreements with John B, I still think he was a decent enough bloke and do take exception to people who may have used blackmail and anonymous threats to force him to stop blogging (not even to merely apologise for the post). Certainly his site had become formulaic and merely offensive most of the time, but it was not a site that should have been effectively “banned”.

So what is going on here?

A subtle distinction, but an important one. He called for the Board of Deputies of British Jews to be gassed, but – ignoring the obvious fact that it wasn’t meant at all seriously – that they were Jewish was incidental. Viz. “Send the Board to the gas chambers, that’s what I say (no, not for their ethnicity; for their fatuous whining. And obviously, the people who complain about Bob Geldof saying ‘fuck’ on the telly should be ahead of them in the queue….)”

Logically extrapolating from the attempted justifications in the comments here (and by some of the more self-righteous idiots in the comments section of Harry’s Place), it would seem that wanting to gas people who complained about Geldof swearing is fine. As long as they aren’t Jewish. Which, in my humble opinion, is significanly more patronisingly racist than anything I’ve ever read of John B’s.

Shot by Both Sides was a satirical site – not always satire of genius, but satirical nonetheless. John’s whole persona on that site was, from everthing I can tell, merely that – a persona, an exaggeration of some of the worst excesses of the internet. To take that into the real world is less than pathetic. It’d be akin to trying to get Swift booted out of the Church for writing “A Modest proposal” – after all, if he wrote that the children of poor Irish people should be used as food, he simply MUST have meant it…

Talk of the devil and (s)he will appear. I enjoyed sparring with John B and will miss his site.

I don’t think that nosemonkey’s defence of the gassing Jews remark is particularly convincing. The Bob Geldof part of that remark doesn’t make the Jews part OK. Surely I don’t really have to explain why.

But tracking John B down and threatening to destroy his career? Making him take down his archives? That is vindictive.

It is also scary.

I meant, and should have said, BBBC commentariat. For what my opinion is worth I don’t think you’re a crank at all, Nathalie.

I think the contemporary PC rules stipulate that one is fully entitled to make ethnic/racial/religious jokes about one’s own race/ethnicity/religion, no matter how tasteless; otherwise it may be considered extremely offensive. I think there was even a Seinfeld episode built on this phenomenon.

Thus Swift’s Modest Proposal is well within the boundaries.

This John Band guy should’ve declared himself Jewish (at least temporarily) and make all the gassing jokes he wants; otherwise it’s way over the line. Must follow the rules.

Well, keep blogging at the Sharpener mate.

Good luck.

I sympathise with J.B., of course- though, as a BBBC poster sometimes it can be hard to find oneself indirectly or directly insulted.

But one thing I would add is that the problem I found with SBBS is the incredible unevenness of the so-called satire. Sometimes J.B. would be reasoned and reasonable, sometimes not. Sometimes he would affect a persona, sometimes not. One felt, as a reader, somewhat manipulated- and that wasn’t a question of literary intention, but something baser. I can cope with that, of course, but allied to the self-description of one who takes a middle course (shot by both sides), and reaps the benfits of surfing through the ‘mainstream’, it had a somewhat incendiary quality.

I feel, to put it bluntly, that SBBS exploited the very qualities of evenhandedness and reasonable good-blokishness that it affected to respect. It drew people in and then slammed doors in their faces- ha ha. Moreover it seemed to regard this quality at an evidence of intelligence and worthiness.

Well, just quibbling. I don’t agree with anyone who might have damaged John B. with his employer. I believe that we’re probably damaged by such tactics too. On the other hand I won’t pretend that I thought SBBS was anything other than intelligent and stupid- mixed in an unfortunate and destructive ratio. I have preferred JB’s more considered pieces at the Sharpener anyway.