lacking all sense of irony

[realthog]

I've just read the latest tickertape headline on the BBC website:

EGYPT UNREST:
US State Department condemns 'excessive force' used by Egyptian police against protesters

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yep.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It amazes me that even the US State Department should be so blinkered as not to realize this application of double standards. Were they perhaps hoping that turning the heat on another (and obviously very blameworthy) regime would somehow make us all forget what US police are doing to US citizens?

Possibly, I hate to say, yes. The attention span of many of the US public is notoriously short (poisoned water supplies? lemme get a banner! oh, hold that: Kim Kardashian's on the box). I have the very strong sense, though, that just over the past few months many Americans -- thanks in no small part to Occupy Wall Street -- have at last begun to pay attention to their world.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I do hope so.
They do the same here, mind you: the behaviour of Cameron over Libya springs to mind.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

the behaviour of Cameron over Libya springs to mind

I know very little about this. Please elucidate.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, it was the usual. All in favour of supporting Libyan insurgents, lending army advisers, visiting to 'support' the opposition... Then protests at home over cuts and out comes the anti-popular rhetoric about 'lazy' students, the unemployed, people who don't *understand* etc etc.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty familiar. We were in the UK when the riots were happening, and actually in Heathrow waiting to go home when the news came over the telly of Cameron's long-awaited response. I simply could not believe how stupid it was. Anyone more intelligent than a Brussels sprout -- and a particularly stupid Brussels sprout at that -- would have realized the political sense of admitting up-front the possibility that the government had got some things wrong and should do a bit of thinking, dum-de-dum, whether or not they actually meant it.

But not Playgirl centre-spread Cameron. All he could do was sputter about how the rioters would be [drop voice to the level of the guy who does the voiceovers for movie trailers] da-da-da-dum punished as severely as the law permitted. It sounded like something a school prefect would propose as a solution to subversive talk in the lavs.