On the 19th of July, Jonnie Marbles tried to fling a shaving foam pie into the face of Rupert Murdoch, while he and his son were in attendance at a Committe Select Hearing. With tempers running high over the “#hackgate” scandal, which had at this point been running for three weeks, the hearing was seen as the moment when the Murdochs would finally be brought to task.
Towards the end, activist and part-time comedian Jonnie Marbles made his move, ultimately coming a cropper to a Volleyball spike from Wendi Deng. The response on social networking sites like Twitter was enormous, but quickly started to turn ugly. Jonnie was perceived as having somehow saved the Murdochs… worse still, he was seen as having conceivably generated sympathy for the devil. Twitter did what Twitter does best: It promptly lost its shit.
I watched the fallout with interest, and increasing irritation. When Jonnie’s “dox” were posted publically, I wondered if the perpetrators knew that they were doing what Rebekah Brooks had, under her stewardship of the News of the World, done with her Sarah’s Law campaign. When Guardian commenters lined up to pompously finger-wag at Jonnie, over his ‘vicious assault on a frail old octogenarian’, I wondered why there was such a loss of perspective. To his credit, Jonnie has taken his lumps with great grace, and continues to do so.
I decided to speak to him, to find out what he was really like, and give him the space to properly communicate his points about Rupert Murdoch.
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Did he communicate exclusively using pies? The utter whopper
“we brought him down a peg or two, we humiliated him”. No you didn’t. He shrugged off a bit of foam, THE PROCESS was humiliating him and you deflected attention from that.
The time to pie him was when he was wielding power; waiting till he was prone was the very very worst time to “bring down” a man.
‘doing what Rebekah Brooks had, under her stewardship of the News of the World, done with her Sarah’s Law campaign’. you’re an idiot. and so is he. stick to punch and judy.
I think there’s a clear parallel to be drawn, in the way they both ‘out’ folks. If you disagree, why not tell me why, rather than just resort to boring, childish ad homs?
i’ve stated my views in a manner befitting the expression of political opinion via the medium of shaving foam. that is all.
Good interview. The Sarah’s Law parallels are well observed, and of course it’s something the media does on a regular basis anyway. Publishing somebody’s address is nothing less than incitement to violence, and anyone doing so is a pitiful coward.
“THE PROCESS was humiliating him”. oh, was it BALLS. save for Tom Watson at the beginning, the process resembled a tiny dog failing pathetically to bite into a space hopper, and the old reptile was smirking to his heart’s content because he knew it too. Marbles’ action was a good way of pointing out that the whole select committee was literally no more or less effective at holding the Murdoch empire to account than a custard pie to the face.
good interview. he comes across way more reasoned and sympathetic than 95% of the gallery-players criticising him. why DO i still follow Emma Kennedy?
My twitter experience got so much better when I suddenly realized I don’t need to follow Emma Kennedy.