Richard Littlejohn

I'm jumping on a bandwagon, I suppose, but justifiably.
  Today's post will be slagging of Mail columnist and general cunt, Richard Littlejohn, and specifically, his column yesterday on Jody McIntyre.

  For those of you who don't know, Mr. McIntyre is a student suffering from Cerebral Palsy, and made the headlines recently when a video of police officers pulling him from his wheelchair and beating him surface on Youtube. Littlejohn, in a hilarious set-up, compares McIntyre to disabled character Andy, from Little Britain. Andy, from his wheelchair, asks for things that he later turns out not to like, and is shown by his carer Lou to engage in articulate and sophisticated dialogue off-screen. He is also shown to not actually require a wheelchair, and has apparent learning disabilities. Mr. McIntyre is a 21-year old student who can walk no more than 100 feet. The similarities are, of course, uncanny. The Lou and Andy sketches are a parody on people's conceptions of the disabled. Credit to Richard Littlejohn for completely missing this and taking the sketches at face value, rather proving their point.

(The original article is available here)

Wheelchair-bound Jody Mcintyre has complained that he was beaten and manhandled by police during last week’s student fees protests. (Actually, he hasn't - at the time of writing - launched a complaint. A lot of other people got pissed off when they saw him being assaulted by the police though. Why don't you write another hilarious piece about each protester, based on one physical characteristic?)
But if he’s looking for sympathy, he’s come to the wrong place. (Of course he has. You didn't have any sympathy for murdered prostitutes, after all)
A man in a wheelchair is as entitled to demonstrate as anyone else (What? You've said something sensible? But surely you'll qualify this statement with something stupid). But he should have kept a safe distance. (Ah, there we are. From the video, he was the actually alone, ruling out the possibility of being caught in a wider clash. The job of the police is to protect individuals. Mr McIntyre was legally protesting. This is a right he has, and this right ought to be protected by the police. As such, it would have been easy, should the police have to move him 'for his own safety', to have done so without tipping him out of his wheelchair and dragging him)

 

Don't like it: Wheelchair-bound Jody McIntyre was wrong to complain about being mistreated at the student protests (I don't like it, no.)

Mcintyre put himself on offer and his brother pushed him into the front line. It’s not as if he didn’t know there was going to be trouble. (So he got what he deserved? Because he was at the front of a crowd, and couldn't move away from the approaching police? The fact he chose to be at the front of a group of protesters does not justify his treatment)
He was also at the last student demo in London and persuaded friends to hoist him on to the roof of the Millbank Tower (So? Should the police have beaten him earlier then?). If his brakes had failed and he’d gone over the edge, who would he have blamed then? (He would. And his friends. But no-one's saying he wouldn't. Just wanted to fit in he's a 'trouble maker' did you? A man who - God help us - is politically active!)
Jody Mcintyre is like Andy from Little Britain. (And you're like some sort of stupid prick)
‘Where do you want to go today, Jody?’
‘Riot.’
‘Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather go to hear Bob Crow speak at the Methodist Central Hall. You like Bob Crow.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘So, we’ll go there, eh?’
‘Riot!’
‘Ken Livingstone will be there, too. He’s your favourite.’
‘Riot!’
‘All right, then.’
Five minutes later at the riot . . .
‘Don’t like it.’ (Now that I've calmed down, and am over the hilarity of that side-splitting sketch, I might offer some thought. Firstly, you're stupid Richard Littlejohn. Secondly, temping as it is to repeat the "you're stupid" part, I'll do something else: How is Jody McIntyre like Andy, except that they're both in wheelchairs? Because Andy says he wants to do things, then complains about them, you may say. And McIntyre wanted to protest, then complained.

  Well, I suppose you have a superficial point there. However, Mr. McIntyre's complaints were not that he hadn't wanted to protest. What Mr McIntyre, and others, complained about was that a man with a severe illness was tipped out of the wheelchair he needed to move, and dragged across the ground, causing him injury and embarrassment. From the video footage, it appears that one of the policemen actually had to be restrained by his colleagues, suggesting their intentions were to continue mishandling an ill man.
  Furthermore, your portrayal of Jody McIntyre as Andy suggests that, simply because he is in a wheelchair, Mr. McIntyre is comparable to a mentally handicapped man. Continuing this theme, if Richard Littlejohn had bothered to actually read anything by Mr. McIntyre, he would see an intelligent man, whose writing is - at the least - as capable as Littlejohn's own.
  Mr McIntyre appears a courageous man who does not deserve the patronizing treatment he had received in the media, in your column, or even any accidental insult I have played in my defence of him. The right to protest is fundamental to a democratic state, and should be protected by the police. If Mr. McIntyre did commit a crime, it must be proven and then punished - to suggest that he may have thrown a rock does not justify his treatment in any way, even if proven true.
  Mr. Littlejohn is known as a man who stands up for his values through vile verbal attacks on minorities, immigrants and sex workers. I suspect he would not understand real values if they were to sodomise him with an explanatory pamphlet.

  There we go, always end on a joke...