I'm not sure about this - it either demonstrates a heroic dedication to 'citizen journalism', or the peculiar kind of derangement that can grip you if you get involved with Twitter. Imagine if it had been Stephen Fry...
Meanwhile, this bizarre affair continues. Reading the guy's posts, you can see he wants to do some serious reporting about the state of things in Israel/Palestine - but every morning, as soon as he pops up on the Today programme, all they want to talk about is the fllippin' donkeys - how very English. You can hear the poor chap's frustration increasing with every report... But why is a supposedly serious news programme pulling this stunt in the first place, and presenting it as re-enacting a historical event - the journey of Joseph and a pregnant Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem? Most theologians (and all historians) agree that it never happened, but was shoehorned into Luke's gospel to bring the story into line with Jewish prophecy - the 'census' being an ahistorical device to explain the narrative. But even the sceptical Humphrys raises no questions - except about the donkey, of course...
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ReplyDeleteI've got no time for all these religious myths - a load of bunkum is the phrase I think I am searching for
ReplyDeleteI suspect the poor guy needs better bargaining skills. Most of the donkeys he seems to end up with must be the oldest and slowest in the Middle East. At this rate he'll be lucky to reach his destination before the Messiah arrives back for second helpings.
ReplyDeleteActually this sounds an ideal assignment for John Sargeant. Send him and his dancing partner to pirouette down the 200 miles of scrub that is the fault line of history, nay civilisation, etc. There's never any real news from this area except for "It's the same, only worse" but at least the presence of Sargeant all a'twirl would give food and fashion editors the chance to tell us what Joseph "may" have eaten or Mary "may" have worn. John Humphreys can ask him all about blisters.
What never comes across is the pong, donkeys honk a lot, there's a sanctuary across the hill from us and wide detours are in order whilst out walking, 25 of them generate an awfull lot of smelliness'.
ReplyDeleteSo if the carpenter wandered far with his missus on a donkey no wonder she was a virgin. The bloke who allegedly eventually did the deed obviously had lost his sense of smell.
Back in time there was an excellent holy land travelogue with John Bonney, whatever happened to him?
Twitter only exists for Stephen Fry to tell us about what he's doing! It's a strange business. I dabbled in it for a short time only to realise that it's far worse than blogging. It's all about people talking about themselves. I've never read anything so tedious... Which is why I used it to tell nothing but lies. Though nobody seemed to notice the difference. Disappointing.
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