The corporate media and the loony right are desperate to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and to present the notion of him leading the Labour party as an apocalypse…
…but they have a problem – how on earth can the guy be smeared? How can fear be invoked? How can the contest be trivialised?
The solutions of the corporate media have been lurid, ridiculous and served only to boost the Corbyn campaign.
All here at Sodium Haze are grateful for the witless support that people like Tony Blair and Alistair Darling have lent the Corbyn campaign – so we have initiated The Golden Corby Awards – to celebrate and recognise the valuable contributions that they have made to Jeremy’s election as Labour leader..
The categories are:
Most hapless anti-Corbyn columnist:
Best contribution to the Corbyn campaign by a media outlet
Most laughable / patronising anti-Corbyn smear
The Golden Corby – Best Contribution to the Corbyn campaign
We have a few suggestions below – but its over to you, our clever readers, to scan the continuum and suggest your favourite gems from the corporate media.
Post your nominations in the comments section below – the deadline for nominations is Monday 24th August at 7pm.
Each winner of the prestigious Sodium Haze Golden Corby Award will receive a gold (coloured) Corby trophy, a certificate of thanks from us here at Sodium Haze and the warm knowledge that their anti-Corbyn articles have helped elect a decent politician to be leader of the Labour Party.
please feel free to put forward your own categories too!
Most hapless anti-Corbyn columnist:
Polly Toynbee (Guardian)
Confidently predicted Yvette Cooper would be the front runner (she is a distant third).
She decided that Corbyn’s arrival had made the contest nasty – when Corbyn alone has refused to smear his rivals and has stuck to talking about policies.
She smeared Corbyn’s policies as ‘impossibilist’, refused to say why and ignored their cross party popularity.
As it became obvious (to everyone else) that Yvette Cooper had no chance of becoming Labour leader she mused whether one of her dreary speeches attacking Corbyn was a knockout blow (while JC was packing out venues up and down the land)
She opined that:
“Labour’s dilemma is that most Corbyn policies are supported by most Labour members.”
…which perhaps explains why he leads the contest!
Corbyn is a dangerous gamble she insisted when polls show that Corbyn would be by far the best choice the Labour Party could make.
Oddly we haven’t heard from Polly for a while… perhaps she has ran out of things to be wrong about.
See also: Jonathon Jones, Martin Kettle – both also from The Guardian.
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Best contribution to the Corbyn campaign by a media outlet
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The Guardian is tipped to do very well at The Corby’s and small wonder – its 24/7 campaign against him has convinced countless thousands to back Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.
The oligarch owned Independent has had its moments and one expects a certain standard of smear and innuendo from the BBC, Daily Express and The Daily Mail – but we doubt that any newspaper has haplessly made as a big a contribution to the Corbyn campaign as The Guardian.
We could list hundreds of examples but we’ll leave that to you…
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Most laughable / patronising anti-Corbyn smear
Managing to be both absurd and patronising to the nth degree is the gift that only Alistair Darling could give us:
His erm article in The Daily Mail comparing Corbyn to Susan Boyle lacking only the headline CORBO IS LIKE SUBO – directly insulted his supporters as unthinking consumers of media trash and deployed the lame ‘Marxist throwback’ stereotype for good measure.
Also strongly in the running are more vitally relevant revelations in The Daily Mail – this time from his ex-wife Jane Chapman in which she outlines that JC used to eat baked beans for dinner.
Also worth a mention are this quite absurd article from art critic Jonathon Jones which includes the line “Clearly, Jeremy Corbyn is no Stalin, or Lenin, or Mao Zedong…” but…
and who could forget Michael White’s terror at the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn’s sandals?
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The Golden Corby – best contribution to the Corbyn campaign
We fear this may be a one horse race. Tony Blair’s decision to wade into the Labour leadership election was a huge boost for the Corbyn campaign and the way he chose to do it was priceless.
Tony decided to tell people thinking of supporting Corbyn that if their heart was with JC that they needed a heart transplant. Strangely people haven’t forgotten the Iraq War…
Tony may have secured Corbyn’s electoral success by himself.
Anyway – post your nominations for a GOLDEN CORBY below – please state the category of award (or invent your own) and include a link if applicable.
Its over to you…
I nominate Suzanne Moore from The Guardian for most patronising…
“So you have your Bennite tea, I shall continue to demand the finest wines known to humanity.”
yuk!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/wheres-the-socialism-that-involves-sharing-lifes-joys
always good to know what plonk Suzanne Moore demands…
I have written to her about that. See today’s open letter.
I followed your link to this ridiculous article. This is the 4th Guardian writer I shall avoid from now on.
And she’s the second one who suggests that Corbyn’s support comes from people wanting to be “pure” socialists. They really have no idea.
who are the other three?
I want to nominate that awful video that was doing the rounds where some journalists and Clive Myrie patronise just about everyone…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhQXnlzshoQ
oh that was early doors – the first golden corby moment almost…
I prefer rabid raving right,not “looney” if you please, or even just rabid right.
its important to get these things correct… 🙂
I nominate Peter Mandelson who came up with a wizard wheeze to halt Jeremy Corbyn in his tracks which was for Burnham, Cooper and Kendall to all drop out of the election. He had to abandon his plans when it was pointed out to him that if they were to do so Jeremy Corbyn would automatically win. Was this one of the architects of New Labour? No wonder they’re floundering when a real live socialist comes along.
So the prince of darkness himself is in the running – a good choice.
MOST HELPFUL SPEECH BY HOSTILE POLITICIAN
Obviously Mr. Blair is probably the winner here with his age of doom prophecies, his anxious concern that even if (even if!) we don’t like him (don’t like has to be British understatement) – we should listen to him.
But Mr. Brown is cosily cuddled up with his old partner on this particular sofa. Brown just can’t let go of the marriage.
Mr. Brown gave us 50 mins – 7,500 words, that’s 16 pages on my word processor. The great majority of it solemnly lectured us about ‘social justice’ as if we as Labour party members have no idea at all what it is. There was a lot of name dropping too, telling us all the big Labour people Mr. Brown has known personally.
I’m not sure any but the most dedicated activist waded through all the sentimental snobbish spam. For those that tried, it’s on page 13 at about 6,000 words, that we get cowardly smears on a mysteriously unnamed person for his ‘alliance’ with Hamas and Hezbollah. There’s also disapproval for an ‘alliance’ with (democratic) Venezuala!
Mr. Brown is making a cowardly attack on Corbyn because he does it without naming him. Mr. Brown always was quite timid, too nervous to go into an election himself so we were handed over to the Tories.
Disapproving of Corbyn’s potential foreign policy is a bit rich coming from Mr. Brown who was in power and actively organised (the money) for the Iraq war. Clearly he has no understanding of peace process which requires diplomats to talk with those they deeply oppose. Corbyn does understand that.
Or perhaps I should be nominating Mr. Brown for the most boring political opponent of Corbyn?
Brown’s speech here:
http://labourlist.org/2015/08/our-mission-power-for-a-purpose-full-text-of-gordon-browns-speech/
works for me!
http://www.capx.co/why-jeremy-corbyn-is-winning-the-labour-leadership-race/
This article may not be as well-known or over-the-top as other articles on here, but it was very sharply insulting to me, especially when he said he couldn’t understand why “otherwise intelligent” young people were backing Corbyn.
thanks for that. Iain Martin is hereby nominated. 🙂
I absolutely have to offer my support to Jonathon Jones in the Graun. He took time off being the world’s lamest art critic to write an article in which he blames Corbyn for the Bolshevik revolution and being a Marxist, whilst denying that he’s a Marxist. It’s a rambling piece of moronic doublethink that actually impressed me, it was so breathtakingly lacking in class.
he was eviscerated in the BTL comments but deserves a Golden Corby as well…
My vote is going to that one. The Jones piece was so awesome i saved it for future reference, an absolute masterpiece only topped by an article i once read blaming the French revolution for the rise of Hitler.
As doublespeak goes, it is a sublime work of art and, even though the competition is very tough, deserves an award.
I have not much to comment on the above post as yet but was just going to comment that I am enjoying the site immensely.
I nominate the Jewish Chronicle, Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Ivan Lewis, and James Bloodworth in the Guardian, for a joint award for the most absurd smear attempt. Their attempt to misuse the holocaust and suggest Corbyn is an anti-semitic holocaust denier ranks as one of the lowest tactics imaginable. Links for all three here:
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/142144/the-key-questions-jeremy-corbyn-must-answer
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/14/jewish-labour-mp-jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-record-ivan-lewis
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-foreign-policy-antisemitism
I was hoping someone would cover this angle – thanks!
Can I collectively nominate BurnhamCooperKendall for most boring political opponent of Corbyn? ; ) Although I’d probably still give it to Brown overall over them – at least their squabbling is funny.
This article does Ok in the ‘patronising’ category:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/aug/17/jeremy-corbyns-appeal-is-enhanced-by-the-united-hostility-of-the-press#comments
Manages to discuss the media criticism of Corbyn while showing basically no self-awareness, assuming that people aren’t listening to the dire media warnings about Corbyn just to be contrary. Especially young people, who cannot possibly think for themselves but merely want change just for the sake of it, apparently (definitely nothing to do with our tuition fee debts, limited access to housing, low wages…).
But imo absolutely nothing could top that Jonathan Jones article. Performance art in its own right.
I would like to nominate Dan Hodges for this bile-ridden junk in today’s Torygraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11808433/Why-are-Labour-Party-members-putting-up-with-the-Corbyn-cultists-claptrap.html
Apparently admiring Jeremy Corbyn means I have joined a cult and that I ‘view a bar of soap as a tool of capitalist oppression’. Who knew?
It is always a great idea to insult voters in order to get them back on side, Dan. Way to go.
On second thoughts, I have a great deal of respect for Glenda Jackson, so perhaps we should spare her the embarrassment of seeing her son collect such a prestigious award.
Dan is not one for the literary rapier is he? Jesus wept…
A bit late to the party, but this one’s hilarious:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/26/labour-women-only-train-carriages-jeremy-corbyn
You beat me to it. It’s so shoddy.