The Telegraph Fires Julie Burchill

If you follow British journalism you probably know that famed columnist Julie Burchill was fired from her job at the London Telegraph. Her thought crime-- well, let her explain what happened. 

She wrote this for The Daily Mail:

Ten days ago, having read that the Sussexes (in the latest foray of what I coined 'The Grabdication') had named their baby after someone to whom they have brought nothing but grief this year, and that they apparently bought the website lilibetdiana.com two days before the news was made public, I called them out on their sanctimonious virtue-signalling with a pithy tweet: 'What a missed opportunity — they could have called it Georgina Floydina.'

What Woker wouldn't choose to name their child after a martyr to systemic racism rather than after a woman who heads a racist organisation intent on inflicting genetic damage on its hapless members?

When an amusing discussion about the likely first words of the new baby ensued (baby Archie having blessed us with 'Drive safe!' and 'Hydrate!') I suggested 'Free Palestine!'

As you can see already, if you did not know it already, Burchill is a very talented writer. Being a talented writer is a wondrous thing, especially in this world of woke journalism.

But, then the Twitter trolls got a hold of Burchill’s comments on baby Lilibet and threw a tantrum. It’s what they do because it’s all that they know how to do :

Imagine my surprise when I returned to Twitter the following morning to find I was 'trending'. When I was a girl, trending would have indicated something pleasant, like scoring a new chain-belt from Chelsea Girl.

Now it means being hunted by a bunch of inadequates waving their pitchforks in cyberspace to compensate for a lack of bulk in other departments, from the brain downwards.

People all around the world were calling me a racist — I'd even made Newsweek! I've always been an attention-whore, but this orgy was too out of hand even for me.

Apparently, the trolls were especially offended that Burchill called the baby “it.” You see, the correct woke expression is “they.” As it happens, your humble blogger, in several of his forays against the promiscuous usage of “they” did recommend that if we want to neuter children, we should at least use the singular neuter-- it. To be of one mind with Burchill is a special moment:

The fact that I had called the baby 'It' seemed to trigger the snowflake sociopaths particularly, so I put that straight, posting: 'I called the baby it as a nod to non-binary BS — and if you think you can make me respect a violent criminal who once held a gun to a pregnant woman's stomach, you're in for a very long wait. Have a good time with your pearl-clutching life-wasting woo-woo, clowns!'

If you know British journalism, you are surely somewhat aghast at the fact that the London Telegraph, the one that fired Burchill for not being sufficiently woke, is putatively a conservative paper:

It's ironic that a conservative newspaper which castigates cancel culture cancelled me for castigating wokery. (Sounds like a tongue-twister!)

Of all my sackings this is the most illogical; all the people who demanded my sacking would never dream of buying the Telegraph anyway. 

We live in an age of cultural insanity, a topsy-turvy land where men are women, harassment is justice and the Left are jostling to tug their forelocks and call for those of us who criticise royalty to be punished.

As Sex Pistol John Lydon put it: 'I never thought I'd see the day when the Right would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the Establishment and the Left become the snivelling self-righteous ones going around shaming everybody.'

I grew up being told 'You can't say that!' by bourgeois people older than me: as a sexagenarian, little has changed except the fact that the bourgeois bed-wetters are now younger than me.

She concludes, remarking that she is now on Substack, along with other famous exiles from the propaganda media:

Woke is the revenge of the dullard on the wit, the curtain-twitcher on the hedonist, the wallflower on the whirling dancer. I may be sacked, but no sackcloth and ashes for me. I'm looking forward to a gorgeous summer in Brighton, writing for anyone who'll have me.

julieburchill.substack.com