Stephen Glover: Dimbo

We’ve noticed before that Stephen Glover is not the brightest light in the columnists’ galaxy: his printed matter is mostly dark matter. He never gives up being dim, and it does encourage the laughter of all of us down at the Café Coup de Poing.

Latest is his defence of Paul Dacre in the Indy last Monday (17 November) – and see M. Apache below, who has to admit that he holds what Stephen calls the “liberal default” position on the Max Mosley success story. (Implication: I think, but my opponents have their opinions wired in.)

His argument is that “liberals” like to support Mr Justice Eady on privacy, but they don’t know that Eady is illiberal on other matters. He comes up with two cases in which Eady has come out for “wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen” to the detriment of investigative stories by Rachel Ehrenfeld (2005), and the Wall Street Journal (2003, judgement overturned).

Two simple points here, Steve.

1. If Eady was wrong on those two cases (and he probably was), it doesn’t follow, in logic or emotion, that he was wrong about Max Mosley. He can be right about one, and wrong about the other two, without affecting our view of the Mosley judgement. Nor does this information make Dacre right about the supposedly “arrogant and amoral judgements” that he believes Eady is making. Default liberals need not be bothered by Glover’s new info about Eady’s past activities.

2. Glover’s conclusion is pure Dacre: Eady is “developing a privacy law off his own bat” and “develop[ing] a privacy law single-handedly”. In keeping with his dimbo status, Glover hasn’t noticed that his argument about Eady’s two “bad” judgements undermines the argument that Eady has an agenda that he is pursuing single-mindedly. Dacre, who is probably a bit brighter than Dimbo Stevo, has noticed the difficulty, and is careful to say that Eady has “again and again” found against newspapers under the Human Rights Act. This means he doesn’t have to think about differently-based cases in which Eady has come out against a newspaper and a publisher. Dacre’s case that Eady is an obsessed monomaniac is undermined by Glover’s brilliant research into these cases!

Come on, Stephen – sharpen up!