So, there I was, about to write a brief comment on the Right Angle piece on SNL, when I thought I’d better double check the facts. Being right wing, I tend to do that sort of thing.
I was going to write about how the scathing British satirical show Spitting Image ended it’s run just as Tony B Liar became Prime Minister, suggesting that, like so much modern “satire” the show was not a sharp pen, puncturing the egos of left and right, but a cultural weapon of the left. In fact, they ended the year before, but at that point the Labour Party had been consistently 15-20% ahead in the polls for two years and the result of the 1997 election was not in doubt, the point stands. In researching the dates something else came up. Spitting Image is coming back!
As Dr Frank N Furter said, well, how ‘bout that? Let’s look at how that fits with my hypothesis. Spitting Image was first broadcast in February 1984, in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s second victory, Ronnie Reagan was in the White House and the commies at home abroad were being opposed with vim and vigour. Spitting Image jumped into this pool and certainly made a splash. The grotesque rubber puppets used to represent the famous figures of the day were something new and maybe shocking at times, the sheer verve and bile of the show matched the merciless physical caricatures. The show drew on the legacy of James Gillray and other 18th and early 19th century cartoonists in both its look and its venom.
The show did lampoon politicians of all parties, national and international, as well as media and sports figures and the royal family. Generally, they were a (very) little bit gentler with the royals than with others, especially the Queen, who often came across rather well. Nevertheless, their political bias was quite apparent, not because they concentrated more on the politicians of the right than the left, that is only to be expected, in the UK and the US the right was in charge, well, in office anyway. No, it was how they portrayed people. They did mock politicians of the left, but they showed them as weak, ineffectual, clownish even, but never bad, never evil.
I have to say I loved Spitting Image. I was fourteen when it started, and the style was just the sort of thing a teenage boy would go for. I was already pretty right wing and becoming ever more political, it was part of the cultural background of my formative years. Its bias didn’t faze me, and it often made me laugh out loud, even when it was attacking figures I admired. As Bill rightly said, the left has a natural advantage in these things, especially when the right is in office.
By the time of the 1987 election I had joined Young Conservatives and spent the last two weeks of the campaign out doing the door to door thing and delivering leaflets. On June 11th, once the polls closed, we all went to someone’s flat to settle in for the night with some booze and watch the results come in. I remember us, gently stewed, sitting around watching the Spitting Image election special. It was getting light, so maybe 4 am, we’d recorded it so we could watch once we knew the result.
It was up to their usual standard but quite bitter. We weren’t worried by that, there’s nothing finer than the taste of bitter leftist tears and after all, their extra special hate figure (and our heroine) had just won a third term in office. We did go quiet at the end though. The final scene was a very well-done pastiche of the scene from Cabaret where the Hitler Youth boy sings Tomorrow Belongs to Me. The singer was a real lad dressed as a city trader, the crowd in the beer garden that gradually stand and start singing the Nazi song were, of course, Conservative politicians. To have them calling us Nazis in such a brazen, open way was a bit much. My friends and I were very much libertarian influenced and loathed national socialists as much as international socialists. There was something else which really got us angry. At the time a good few senior Conservatives were Jewish, some of whom were shown in the scene, singing the Nazi song!
It was an education though, it taught us just how shameless, vicious and ruthless the left is when it comes to attacking its enemies. It showed how little they care about or believe in the principles they espouse. Finally, it showed us that there was no point in trying to be conciliatory or moderate. As far as they were concerned, we were Nazis, no matter how far that was from the truth. As the old saying goes, you’re just as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T3OwB6mARI
As I said, once the political situation was such that Tony B Liar would pretty much have had to fire an RPG at an ambulance full of orphans and puppies on live TV to lose the next election, they shut up shop. They didn’t feel the need to start again when the neutered, compliant Conservatives clawed their way back onto the Government benches, but now, with Trump in the White House, Boris in No.10 and patriots everywhere starting to lift their heads above the parapet, it’s time to dust off the puppets and start up the bile machine once again. Funny that.
There will be venom, toxic humour and sly, one sided “balance”. I don’t doubt it will be funny and that the beams in the left’s eyes will be minimised while the motes in the right’s are inflated and held up for scrutiny. But remember this, the very fact that Spitting Image is coming back is a sign that we’re on the right track, it’s a sign the left is worried, and that’s a good thing.
As Otter said in Animal House “I’ve got news for you, pal. They’re gonna nail us no matter what we do, so we might as well have a good time.”