Except that it clearly isn't, because when somebody has a pattern of narcisistic behaviour in his personal life (in spite that being low-level rape under Swedish law), professional life (making Wikileaks more about him than the whistleblowers who were actually putting their necks on the line) and in his asylum (threatening legal action against the country whose embassy he was using as a bolthole) then it is perfectly correct to call him out for his narcissistic behaviour, because that narcisism is why he the Ecuadorians were happy to eject him from their embassy just as it's why there's an open case on him in Sweden More than anything else, though, the Assange arrest is one of those ever-growing number of cases where playing the ball is the wrong course of action because playing the ball means you're engaging with all matter of ill-judged, ill-founded or simply ill-ogical arguments fuelled by emotion and devoid of common or critical sense, for example those crowing that Assange's arrest is a violation of the free press in spite of the fact Assange is not nor ever has been a journalist, or there's those saying it's a miscarriage of justice as the charges have been dropped in Sweden when (as I mentioned earlier) they simply have not, while the Tucker Carsons of the world are mouthing off it;s because he embarassed Hillary Clinton, all of which is complete and utter bollocks but said complete and utter bollocks is the sort of narrative that gives Assange power, while on the other hand calling him the narcisistic prick that he is doesn't give him power nor does it lend credence to any Narrative That's the problem with thinking that you should only ever play the ball: that's what flatearthers and anti-vaxxers are hoping you do, because not only does that give them the opportunity to spin it that they're getting through to the disbelievers but the whole point is they know full well what the answers will be and have prepared answers - but if you play the man that's where their arguments fail. Case in point, a few weeks back I had some antivaxxer on my timeline keep repeating this stat that "only" 85 out of 100,000 people die of measles which prove that vaccination is utterly pointless, and they kept repeating this stat over and over to anyone trying to debate them rationally - but when I came right in and pointed out that this stat means that applying this stat to the population of the UK means you could fill the stands of the Etihad with measles-ridled corpses while applying that same statistic to the world population would mean over 6m people would have died, and he immediately went from smug assurance because he knew the answers to disjointed nonsense because he could not engage with the fact he had it spelled out to him that he was condemning the equivalent of the population of Sao Paolo to death based on "only" 85 per 100,000 And that's the thing that should have been happening in politics years ago. Playing the ball has Boris Johnson stand in front of a bus promising £350m a week to the NHS is we leave the EU and nobody suggesting this promise is clearly complete and utter bollocks looking to trigger an emotional response in prospective voters, playing the man has him literally run away and hide from Channel 4 News' Michael Crick in the middle of a press event rather than address the difficult questions that Crick posed to him
I'd agree with this to a point, but if I posted pictures of either kitchen floor on Twitter or the 10 o'clock news I'd get a lot further than writing about them on a blog. It's just the world we live in today. Coupled with who holds the power and whose kitchen floor is being **** on, means only certain things get any attention. That's why even imagery will only get you so far. The incident with Khashoggi brought more outrage than if it had been just a write up on Wikileaks, but even then because the power is held by a U.S. and U.K ally fck all will be done about it ultimately.
Actually I think it's feckin funny and beautifully childish. No it won't impact massively but frankly anything that makes a bigger fool of that lying seditious cockwomble is fine by me.
Another example of why playing the man and not the ball is what people should do: playing the ball is what Robbie Gibb spent nine years doing at the license fee payers' expense and, as with flatearthers and anti-vaxxers anyone attempting to engage him was met with prepared answers and attempt to spin any engagement into the usual tubthumping session - but play the man by exposing him as the charlatan he always has been exposes what Farage actually is, and he can;t actually fight back from it because he's not playing his game anymore but being dragged into yours
Let's start with "And here is my first candidate for my party to represent the common man, Annunziata Rees-Mogg!"
It was just pointed out that he (or his Russian sponsor) has already invested in significant marketing collateral promoting the website. Vladiboy won't be happy
Tuesday: Labour suspend prospective councillor Bob Murray over a series of bigoted comments on Facebook about gassing travelers and asking where he can find gas canisters, and almost as soon as the story goes public the Board of Deputies issue a statement Wednesday: Tory housing tsar Roger Scrotum Scruton gives an interview in the New Statesman where he dusts off the old antisemitic trope of "the George Soros empire" as well as makes bigoted comments about the Chinese and says Islamophobia does not exist, and the Board of Deputes' response is...to do **** all, actually I can't think why people would suggest the BoD's have an agenda...
Now there's a surprise - not! Guess which fascist trollope has jumped on the 'Muslims behind Notre Dame fire' bullshit narrative?
Plenty of the alt-right commentators (read: Twitter trolls with a verification tick) are saying the same, as a quick Twitter search has revealed the following all saying the same thing Glenn Beck Michael Savage Jesse Lee Peterson Mindy Robinson And this is what they all sound like
"The Titanic was sunk by a suicide attack from a jihadist iceberg. I don't think you'll find out about it."
