In 1996 Pat Buchanan was running for President and concluded a speech by saying: “And, together, we will chase the purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came.” In 2002 he thought the ‘culture wars’ were virtually lost to his opponents favour as children now experience “a culture they were born into and have known all their lives. Public homosexuality, pornography, abortion, trash talk on TV and in the movies, and filthy lyrics in popular music have been around since before they can remember.
An earlier post compared the attitudes of Neil Clark with the American conservative Pat Buchanan. In 2003 Clark wrote in Buchanan’sThe American Conservative: “if Pat Buchanan announced he was standing for president again, I would be on the next plane out to join his campaign team.” This is fantasy, the anti-communist Buchananite right would be unlikely to appoint someone with Clark’s politics, but I would not have thought it was hypocritical until recently.
On YouTube one can find a multi media presentation of a modern dance production of something called “The City of the Lame” given in Budapest during April 1999. A Mr Jones has been paralysed and is keen on “fisting” Nurse Hermione, who is caring for him. He also uses words like “fuck” and “boobies”. Quite shocking for “moral and social conservatives“, but not for the rest of us, or it now seems for Neil Clark who appears as Mr Jones and whose voice is heard on the soundtrack. Clark was living in Hungary at the time and he also participates in another section.
One would suppose that someone who attacked Roy Jenkins for wishing to relax censorship laws a few months before ingratiating himself with Buchanan was being genuine, but perhaps not. Presumably this ‘double act’ is an attempt to maximise an income from journalism, though conclusive prove is impossible to find.
Clark has argued for journalists to be transparent where they have a financial interest in matters they write about. He criticised Stephen Pollard on these grounds three years ago when Pollard commended the NHS for cutting spending on homeopathy. "Now, it may well be true that" homeopathy is nonsense "and that the writer honestly believes the words he has written", he wrote, but remained opaque as to why he choose to attack Pollard on this issue. No need to worry though, Neil Clark is a man of great integrity and incredible honesty, but his wife works as a herbalist.
