The return of gaffophobia!
Ah, gaffophobia, how we’ve missed you. What was for a brief time our own home-grown Googlewhack seemed to have been swept somewhat under the carpet in a piece of meta-calculation by Boris’s minders, reasoning that once it had reached a full-page article on page 3 of a national newspaper, his non-appearance had started to become the negative story they were trying to avoid by keeping him away from things in the first place!
So soon enough they started putting him forward for TV debates and hustings and all the things he’d previously been pulling out of. Indeed there have been so many TV appearances it’s been hard to keep up with them all! (There’s another in 25 minutes on ITV1 London, by the way.)
But this weekend Boris’s minders were reminded why they’d been pulling him out of things in the first place. At the Stonewall hustings he was humiliated and ridiculed over his offensive remarks comparing gay marriage to bestiality.
So after that, what happened today? Only a short time before the event, Boris finally confirmed he wouldn’t be taking part in a hustings at the University of London Union.
This brings us full circle: the Time Out hustings were held at ULU a few weeks ago, and it was Boris’s no-show for that event that propelled the gaffophobia of his minders into the public consciousness.
It seems he has a fear of students, which is bizarre given how many of them have set up Boris-loving groups over on Facebook. Presumably he’s only scared of politically engaged students, since it’s the apathetic ones who think the election is a laugh that he’s counting on the votes of. Let’s hope they think it’s so much of a laugh that they don’t bother going out to vote.
Wes Streeting, President-elect of the National Union of Students, speaking in a personal capacity said:
"It’s a shame Boris Johnson’s minders won’t let him face a student audience. We were looking forward to challenging his reactionary views on everything from tackling racism and advancing LGBT equality to climate change and war."
Boris Johnson chickens out of student hustings – what is he scared of?, KenLivingstone.com
I realise that is taken from his main rival’s web site, but in the interest of balance I just checked Boris’s web site and can find no mention at all of his chickening out of this debate – not even a lame excuse like we were offered for him missing the Time Out one.
In the mean time, by a happy coincidence, a couple of people have contacted us to point out a new video on YouTube highlighting Boris’s fear of scrutiny. Enjoy!
April 23rd, 2008 at 19.02
Do two words count as a googlewhack?
Try (on google.co.uk):
boris johnson reputation
- always good to know what google considers an authoritative page on a topic…
April 23rd, 2008 at 19.46
Actually, I think that technically a Googlewhack is a pair of words which when searched for together on Google retrieve only a single page. So thinking about it, ‘gaffophobia’ was never a Googlewhack really, although something like ‘gaffophobia Boris’ would have been. I think it’s probably cheating if one of your words only has one result on its own though!
As for your suggested search, that’s rather good to see – perhaps the benefit of Google owning YouTube is that those of us posting videos on there can be assured of decent search rankings