A couple of years ago I went to Krakow. I visited some salt mines, which had been sculpted and carved by erstwhile miners. Empty caves had been transformed into cathedrals, opulent and glistening in brilliant synthetic light; a monument to the ambition of humanity.
And then, as I walked from one mine to another, I noticed something in the lowlight: a crude doodle in black marker of an ejaculating phallus. That doodle, so inappropriately scrawled against a backdrop of genius, was more a metaphor for humanity than any of the mine’s carvings.
If social commentary is that Polish salt mine, Richard Littlejohn is its phallic graffiti. He represents an unseemly but apparently inevitable element of public life; the ultimate internet troll. That doesn’t mean we should make light of the damage his ‘journalism’ sometimes causes.
For me, the nadir of his career was his piece on the prostitutes murdered in Ipswich, in which he wrote: “It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in [the victims’] chosen field of “work”, death by strangulation is an occupational hazard. That doesn’t make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.”
Yet as nasty as that is, sometimes I am glad Richard Littlejohn exists. Sometimes I read his columns and think, “thank God for you, Richard”. Yes, he may be offensive and cavalier with facts, but I appreciate his uncanny habit of exposing the worst elements of ourselves. His columns, probably unintentionally, have the same effect as switching the lights on during an orgy: they make everyone look around and guiltily ask, “what are we all doing?”
Take today’s Littlejohn missive, for example. His response to the crisis in the eurozone was to write a piece, accompanied by a cartoon of Angela Merkel sporting a Hitler ‘tache, in which German politicians romped around to his self-penned Nazi song. Whilst this is wildly offensive, it took me back to a Channel 4 news report I watched last night on the same subject.
The report, analysing Germany’s current position on the European Central Bank, made its point by sending a reporter to the Reichstag and reeling off some facts about the country’s situation in the run-up to World War II. I was uncomfortable with the report’s jingoistic unease at Germany’s position in the European economy — I felt there was an implication that the country would, true to form, get drunk on power and cause us all a load of bother again.
I wanted to take to Twitter and express my discontent (take that, Channel 4!) but I feared I’d be dismissed as a hand-wringing lefty, taking things too seriously. I needn’t have worried though, because there in the Daily Mail this morning was Richard Littlejohn; merrily jazz-handing away to his own imperialistic bigotry. When Channel 4 was subtly hinting at the return of the Blitz, Richard Littlejohn was writing a musical about it.
I’m grateful for moments like that. Littlejohn is the media’s id: he says what the rest of the press is dancing around, and he says it proudly. It may not be noble, it may not be nice, but at least you know what you’re dealing with. At least you know what you’re up against.
So until we can get to a stage where Channel 4 is reporting on Germany without saying ‘old habits die hard’, I’ll be perversely grateful for Richard Littlejohn’s unrestrained, overpaid career. It’s not so much “telling it like it is” as “telling it like it shouldn’t be”, and I don’t see the point of Littlejohn fading away until the sentiments he espouses so grotesquely have faded away too.
Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a freelance writer living in North London, contributing mainly to the Guardian. You can follow her at @MissEllieMae
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