Several letters to the Evening Standard regarding their old-woman-in-residence, Alexander Walker. A film critic who fancies himself as a moral guardian and who harbours, in the classic phrase, "delusions of adequacy", he's at his funniest when he's purple-faced and spluttering about the latest Hollywood beat-em-up.

What sparked my letters of complaint was his persistent campaign against the movie Crash from the moment of its Cannes premiere, alleging that its moral degeneracy would infect its audiences and (bizarrely) that it would inspire countless copycat incidents of motorway mayhem; "bringing orgasm onto the high road", he hysterically shrieked. It actually read like a vicious parody of an arrogant, patronising pro-censorship fool, but sadly he was partly responsible for Westminster Council's decision to ban the film (I live in Central London, so it did affect me), and I was afraid it might start influencing other high-minded public officials to do the same. So I fired off several anti-Walker letters, more to make myself feel better than in any expectation that it would make any difference. After all, nothing's going to penetrate the thick hide of a critic who dismissed the delinquent-teen movie "Kids" out of hand as completely unfeasible because there was no sign of any parents enforcing discipline.

>Several letters to the Evening Standard regarding their old-woman-in-residence, Alexander Walker.

Never got upset about A Clockwork Orange, though. Something to do with being a "close personal friend of Stanley Kubrick's"? Surely not.

Walker also got hysterical about Fight Club, I seem to recall.

Difficult to know what to do with something like this - there are so many similar idiots out there: Zoe "I am a slag - call me it, that's my life" Williams, absolutely everyone who writes for the Daily Mail, Kathryn Flett's hopeless childish TV column in The Observer, PHil Hogan, India Knight, AA "Oh but he's so controversial - shaaaaat up!!!" Gill. The media's full of 'em. What can we do? Anything?

Good on you, though, Mogwai! Incidentally,does anyone know what Walker thought of Life Of Brian when it came out? Because he doesn't half smugly go on now about how groundbreaking it was, and how plenty of over-sensitive souls got upset about it.

So was the Not! sketch accurate? Did Walker actually call it "a tenth-rate film" in '79?

I've just wasted ten minutes of my time reading about how people wasted ten minutes of their time.

I apologise for that.

The Daily Mail's always good for a laugh. Remember the James Bulger/Child Play 3 controversy. "Ban this sick filth now" type nonsense because one of the dad's of the murderers collected bad horror films, and his son 'probably' watched the video. Moral panic succesfully created - another good job

I wasted ten minutes writing to the Daily Telegraph, to correct a reference to the BBC 'losing the recording' of General De Gaulle's address to the French Nation in 1940. As I pointed out, they never bothered to record it in the first place.

Which has nothing to do with comedy... er, unless you count 'Allo Allo', which sent-up the zany antics of Gaullist resistance fighters. The most tasteless show ever.

To be fair, I'm not sure any topic should be considered so sacrosanct that you can never joke about it. (Hitler strongly disapproved of anti-Semitic jokes because "people cannot fear that which makes them laugh"...)

'Allo 'Allo managed to be offensive simply by virtue of being incredibly bad - oh look, another man pretending to be a woman by shoving balloons up his shirt! Oh my fucking sides, as Paul Merton might just possibly have said.

Hitler may simply have been wrong about that. He was wrong about other things.

Of course Hitler wasn't *ideologically* right (before anyone starts). But as a dictator of a huge country, he managed to get pretty much everything right for nigh on a decade. It's not pretty but it's true. He appealed to people's basest instincts and as a result was consistently right on the money. Saying he was "wrong" in the way he ruled is like saying Rupert Murdoch is "wrong" in the way he runs media organisations - we don't *like* it, but damn it, it *works*. "It's impossible to underestimate human nature", as someone probably very famous but whose name at present eludes me said.

This is actually a v. powerful myth. If you watch 'The Nazis - A Warning from History' docu, or read any recent research on Nazi Germany, underneath the apparently ordered and neat surface, Hitler was a very poor leader, who had little grasp of the minutiae of policy details - which he often led to his underlings. These underlings were often left unchecked to fight power battles for Hitler's favour. The economic miracle Hitler apparently performed was simply down to massive re-armament and systematic incursions into other states' territories, culminating of course in WW2, which, as soon as Hitler invaded Russia (and declared war on the USA) was bound to destroy Germany in every possible sense.

Murdoch was and is a far better businessman than Hitler could ever be, but then Murdoch is only interested in taking over the media, not the world (and whatever one thinks of RM his economic power base does not rest on the seized assets of Jewish businessmen!)

A few points:

1. When I said Hitler was wrong, I actually meant he made mistakes or misjudgements. I wasn't going into the issue of moral right/wrong, which I hope think we need to argue about.

2. Apart from military & foriegn affairs, which Hitler did not make up all by himself, the actual business of Nazi government seems to have been simply delegated to civil servants and industrialists. They never had any domestic policies, apart from the racial and authoritarian ones.

3. The German recovery occurred before any major rearmament (which did not start till 1936) or foreignoccupations (1938). It was just due to a recovery in demand after the Great Depression. Countries wanted to buy German goods again, they were a major manaufacturing country, that's all. The Reichbank, led by Schacht (who later opposed Hitler) had something to do with it, but I've never studied economics.

All the above can be found in serious history books eg. AJP Taylor, William Shirer, Alan Bullock.

"I wasn't going into the issue of moral right/wrong, which I hope think we need to argue about."

Sorry, should read: "...I hope we don't need to argue about".

I don't have any major quarrel with your points, Jon - but rearmament did have a role to play alongside other public works projects in putting Germans to work and 'pump-priming' the economy.

I meant to imply that day to day 'domestic' policy was carried out by Nazi party officials and civil servants. As for the incursion into other territories, I was thinking of the re-ocupation of the Rhineland (1935-6?) and the anschluss with Austria (1937, I think...)

Anyway, the point is that Hitler's apparent economic success was built upon the moral and racial injustices we all deplore. You can't separate one from the other, and I think your points back this up too.

Phew! Never thought the SOTCAA forum would get this heavy!

The Rhineland was part of Germany, they just put troops in, which they weren't allowed to under the Versailles treaty(1919).

The Anschluss was in early 1938, and followed by a long build-up against Czechoslovakia (intended to be a serious invasion) that was cancelled when the West caved in at Munich (September 1938). The remains of Czechoslovakia were occupied in March 1939, followed by a build-up against Poland, that resulted in WW2.

Ta!

(sorry Jon, couldn't think of a more erudite response!)