Leveson, Guardian, Campbell, Iannucci: roll up, roll up for the great circus of hypocrisy

So, as covered by the Guardian, Alastair Campbell's diaries 'reveal' that Rupert Murdoch 'pressurised' Tony Blair into war against Iraq.  The same claim was made by Campbell at the Leveson inquiry and denied there by Murdoch.

Conveniently, Leveson's 'grilling' of Murdoch and Campbell didn't include any uncomfortable questions about the actual illegality of that invasion - all consistent with its daily charade of 'exposing media malfeasance' and 'bringing the powerful to book'.   

And here was spin-criminal Campbell, of all people, spilling the beans on Murdoch, implying that he rushed a 'hesitant' Blair to war - as if he needed that vital prodding.

Alongside his 'trusty testimony,' isn't it so reassuringly 'post-confessional' to have Campbell's diaries featured by the Guardian, lending him respectable liberal cover and letting us all see just how 'concerned' he was over Tony's and Rupert's exchanges?

Isn't it all so coyly 'radical' to have this liberal-righteous output now, so safe after the event, the mass slaughter?

Blair, Brown, Campbell and Murdoch - the whole depraved lot - are guilty of the highest war crimes, and the Guardian has nothing, not a singular, solitary word, to say about that elementary truth, most likely because this whited sepulchre of a newspaper is itself deeply complicit in supporting Blair and his crazed evangelical project.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has carried the twitterspat between Campbell and comedy writer Armando Iannucci, just awarded an OBE in the latest honours dispensation.

Campbell berates Iannucci for joining the establishment he proffers to satirise. Iannucci jibes back with a barbed reminder of Campbell's much greater crime of helping to march his country, unsolicited, into Iraq.

Laughably, we also learn of Campbell's opposition to the honours system, as though this helps prove his 'true leftist' politics.

Iannucci's reminder to Campbell over Iraq seems the more damning indictment. Yet, it can't hide his own excruciating excuses for joining the Empire and giving sustenance to an elite institution hallmarked by preening militarism.

All par for the course when it comes to 'subversive' artists.  Dangle the gong and the ego can't resist. Thanks, ongoing, to the poetically-resistant Benjamin Zephaniah for refusing his.

Iannucci protests that this won't stop him poking fun at politicians. I'm sure it won't. If only that finger were extended to peel back the Guardian's own contortions over Iraq and our liberal media's vital role in legitimising Britain's continued warmongering.

And so the circus of hypocrisy trundles on.

Approved comedian Iannucci gets royal kudos for creating Malcolm Tucker. War propagandist Campbell tweets his disapproval and hosts Have I Got News For You. And the Guardian/BBC report all the banter, invective and diary 'disclosures' like dutiful liberal journalists do.

Was there ever a neater illustration of our power-safe 'democracy' in self-sustaining action?

John