(continued from Vol. VI.)

Things were winding down at The American Bar and I was trying to figure out a way to stick ShredofTruth.com with my hefty bar tab, when in walked a photographer from The Times.  He was there to get some shots of Nancy Wake’s old haunt for an obituary running the next day.  (I’d link to it here, but (a) it’s behind a paywall, and (b) it’s a Rupert Murdoch paywall.  Plus (c), you know, fuck him.)   He took some shots of the bartender, my new friends Graeme and Barbara, and pictures of Nancy Wake on the walls.  This d00d was a total pro:  affable and efficient.  Not hard to look at, either, if you know what I mean.

So I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and just let the man work in peace, could I?  Nope. And I was glad I didn’t, because of the amusing exchange that ensued.  (And by “amusing,” of course, I mean “amusing to me.”)

Photographer:  (Asks us all to move a little to get out of his shot.)  I want to get this right.

Iris:  You want to get this right?  Wait, don’t you work for Rupert Murdoch?  Hahaha.

Photographer:  The man is a personal hero of mine.  Don’t talk about him like that.

Iris:  Hahaha.

Graeme:  Oh, I see you’re using a bounce flash, very good.  I’m an amateur photographer myself.

Iris:  Of course he’s using a bounce flash!  What, do you think Rupert Murdoch hires hacks?  Oh, wait.  Hahaha.

Graeme and Barbara:  Hahaha.

Graeme:  Iris is a blogger.

Iris:  (Hands her card to the photographer.)  Here’s my card.  You will hatemy blog.

Photographer:  That’s the name of your blog?  “You will hate my blog?”

Iris:  No, but as far as you’re concerned it might as well be:  I’m a lefty.

Photographer:  Oh.  Well, you know we have a saying: “Blogging is the Internet equivalent of the pub bore.”

(He might have said “pub whore.”  It’s just so hard to tell with those ridiculous accents!)

[Photographer thanks everyone and starts to leave.]

Iris:  Bye!  I am totally scooping you on my blog!

Photographer: (From outside the back door)  Copyright!

Iris:  Sue me!  (Mutters under breath: “Motherfucker.”)

Oh, these Brits.  They sure are witty.

I would soon be on a plane bound for New York, but not before getting a harsh reminder of why I had come to London on my Murdoch mission in the first place.  I had been collecting various newspapers to see the coverage of the riots, and one was a Murdoch tabloid, The Daily Mail, that I hadn’t read yet.  I took it with me to read at the airport as I waited to board the plane.

The Op-Ed section starts on page 14, and is dominated by a big, bold headline: How the Liberals Ruined Britain.

Yes, that’s right people.  The riots are the fault of feminism, single mothers, immigrants, educational failure (because everyone knows how much liberals abhor education, amirite?), and every other phantom bogeyman inhabiting the dull, dark recesses of the right-wing mind.  Also, FYI, what is required to fix Britain is “a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality.”  Obviously.  Because nothing violent ever occurred in the name of that most peaceful and benevolent of religions, Christianity.

It will never stop.  But as long as Perry Street Palace remains standing, at least it will not go unmocked.

END TRANSMISSION.

__________
Many thanks to ShredofTruth.com for cross-posting Perry Street Palace’s London Dispatches.  Sorry about the enormous data roaming charges, and the even more enormous bar tabs. (Those are in pounds, by the way, not dollars.) But I’m sure your readers will agree that no price is too steep for this kind of hard-hitting, investigative journalism.  I look forward to my next assignment!

-Iris.