Martin Amis

Chris Morris lays into the guy:

[…] No matter that Amis coins truly abominable terms like ‘the age of horrorism’ and when criticised tells people to ‘**** off’. Surely we all chuckle at the strenuous ennui of his salon drawl. Didn’t he once accidentally sneer his face off?

[…] Despite his manifest absurdity (he called the World Trade Centre attacks ‘edificide’ and the towers’ destruction an ‘apocollapse’), people take him seriously and if they do then we must.

Brilliant! Hit Amis where it hurts.
I’m sure he minds the above much, much more than being called a racist.

If I have a criticism of Morris, then it is that he gives too much space in the article to reasoned debate. There is little of substance to Martin Amis, and the whole ‘controversy’ could have been dealt with in the following two paragraphs.

To recap, Amis was called a racist because he said Muslims were backward, violent, homophobic, paranoid, boring, retarded and stupid. Hitchens said no, he’s conducting a ‘thought experiment’.

Now Amis should be allowed to wonder aloud about anything. He can suggest Muslims should ‘experience painful discrimination until they get tough with their children’ if he likes. Thought experiments are fine. But if he bundles his thoughts on Islam together and iterates them one after the other as he did when I saw him, he displays not unguarded musing but the forging of an incoherent creed of hate.

[…]If my Shetland pony looks like a high-horse it’s only because Amis is trotting round the paddock on a chihuahua.

[…] With ignorance on his side, Amis can stare east through the salon window and convince us of a single advancing hoard. He’s clever. He might put it brilliantly. He might call it a ‘Meccalanche’ or an ‘Attaclysm’. But when he speaks, think ‘Hamza’.

And that’s Abu Hamza you should think of when Amis speaks.

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