25 February 2011

Wikileaks spoof

The review of this book by always brilliant Soothscribe Brendan O'Neil on Spiked is one of those very, very rare reviews that actually makes me want to go out and buy it full price. The following says it all. 
Churnalism is when journalists are "reduced to passive processors of whatever material comes their way". Er, hello?
Sometimes, the best way to deal with a weird political story is by parodying its protagonists. These two authors have done a brilliant job of that. Wikileaks is really a story of an incoherent American elite effectively farting its own secrets into the public arena, where they were then lapped up by hackers who are the close cousins of David Icke in their conspiratorial outlook and by hacks who no longer know how to find "the truth" and so they wait for it to land in their laps, scribbled on a napkin, like a modern-day version of the all-knowing Dead Sea Scrolls. 

By dressing up this rather sad and sordid shebang as a James Bond-esque escapade involving brave spectral whizzkids and fearless journalists with macchiatos in one hand and cop-outsmarting mobile phones in the other, "Leigh" and "Harding" brilliantly ridicule the life out of the Wikileaks myth and nonsense. Buy this book if you like a laugh.

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