Is there a cruder an attempt at verbal self defense?
At least “It is not that I am in any way against gays, lesbians or even gay lesbians [heterosexuals?], it is just that...” tries to connect with what will definitely end up being wrong with the 2nd half of the sentence as a form of pre-emptive apology. “It was all just a joke” comes after what has been said and expects, acting as Last Man, it will free all.
Now you might be thinking, for all I know, what if “It was all just a joke” was put onto pull-string activated voice box unit and placed into a man sewn together out of off-cuts by an Evil Doctor straight out a Joe R. Lansdale novella? What if that happened? What would that man be?
Well, thanks to the investigative work of journalist Johann Hari, we now know that such a man would be Mr. Tong. Please read Johann’s article – but for those who want it, here is my synopsis of the situation he found Tong in.
Tong, vastly unknown one time quitter contestant on Big Brother, inheritor of money and self-styled “misogynist knob” found himself recently with idle thumbs. And why the Devil invented Twitter.
Tong decided to promote his hitherto unknown agent weight loss program on the micro-blogging site to his (increasing) followers. A program which involved purchasing medically unlicensed pills of Tong’s own recipe and subscribing to his Twitter [ho, ho] feed for his motivational words. Motivational words that had 90’s morning TV sprite, Mr. Motivator, deep lunging in his watery grave [he is dead, right?].
Tong titled his weight loss diet: “Managed Anorexia”
Tong called his unsolicited medication: “Size Zero Pills”
[Tong clearly has a knack for names and terminology which should be put to better use in an illustrated educational booklet for children guarding against developing eating disorders, with Tong himself, a cartoon character in the story that the 5-fruit-a-day kids would defeat]
The concept of this “diet” is to learn to hate food, to not eat anything to the point of pissing ketones and hold onto the abstract notion of “hope” that gobbling Tong’s mystery pills would sustain in you enough energy to read the following sorts of things from Tong to encourage you to keep breathing in and out from your fast hollowing carcass that once held your head up:
“Females who do not aim nor want to be a size zero are simply uneducated and ignorant.” Tong
“All you non size zero girls need to keep a food diary, noting everything you eat & drink - review it daily and see how imperfect you are.” Tong
All inspirational stuff. But what was the motivation for Tong to break into the market? He claims it is tough love fuelled by his desire of American Size 0 model women from magazines he has seen and his equally reactive disgust of not American Size 0 model women in real life he has seen. Tong openly admits he only ever dates strippers and adult performers (or as he collectively nouns them: “bitches”) and pays for the company of women (“a girl who has sex for free is an idiot”).
Sometimes waiting for Godwin's law to occur is not enough. Sometimes you have to poke the Nazi eagle. Right in it’s beaky face. Tong has had many responses regarding his weight loss plan (some even from the world of celebrity). They have not all been supportive of it. In fact there has been a lot of negative attention about it. Johann relays a response from Tong’s Twitter account back to him.
When somebody compared him [Tong] to Hitler on Twitter, he said he “considered it a compliment.”
Why? “Because he was effective.”
How? “He believed in something and he went for it. He believed in himself and he didn’t let anyone tell him otherwise.”
So you admire somebody who pursues a cause, even if that cause is systematic mass murder? “I don’t understand enough all about the World War Two…”
I think Tong may be confusing Hitler’s Third Reich Movement with the hit West End Show “Billy Elliot” there. Easily done if you “don’t understand enough all about the World War Two” I suppose.
Interrogated directly with the most obvious of questions – Did he consider the title of his diet insensitive and a reflection that he doesn’t know what he is talking about? Did he consult medical experts about his pill? Did he collate science peer reviewed statistical data to back-up the safety of his dietary design? Did he stringently and rigorously test his diet to ensure that it was at all safe in an effort to counter the mountain of evidence to the contrary? Did he consider the potential damage if not deaths he could be contributing to in young women who may be already battling eating disorders by following his advice? – Tong’s responses are extraordinary in manner:
“I just coined the term [Managed Anorexia], ha ha! …but I believe in it.”
“I don’t know that many doctors in the sphere of my social circle”
“You could use, arguably, the statistic that if – there must be one somewhere – that if you eat less, you lose weight”
“If ten out of ten people listen to me with my views on managing anorexia, ten out of ten people will lose a lot of weight”
“Corporate homicide is impossible to prove anyways”
Then, presented with the fact that, legally and morally he is objectionable, culpable, prosecutable and eminently jail-able should his twaddle and pills cause harm – Tong reflected, u-turned and begged for the interview to never be published: “It was a hoax all along!” and changed his tune on Twitter too, explaining that the pills never really existed, it was a social experiment he had concocted and that, actually, all the “managed anorexia” thing is really dangerous – “It was a hoax! A hoax!”
For someone to describe Hitler as one of life’s “go-getters” it is not at all surprising that a short visit to Tong’s Twitter account recently also reveals a number of crass comments about the human tragedy involved in natural disasters through to disparaging remarks about people with less money (and so “value”) than him interspersed with bizarre self-flagellating sentences about his own relationship with food (“Sitting looking at a packet of crisps in front of me – how long will I last?” – Not long it turns out – within 2 tweets he admits to “caving in” and eating “a third of the crisps in the packet”).
I am sure that these sound bytes are fired off (almost on a minute by minute basis) in an attempt to be noticed – to feel important by default of any attention – and anger is easiest to flame. But when eventually he looks back at his sad, crisp denying, loveless excuse for a life he may look for some redemption in his Twitter postings from their dwelling in the arse crack of the site for consolation that he didn’t really mean any of it.
You see? “It was all just a joke”
A sure fire indication it perhaps wasn’t very funny at all.
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[Er… Sorry, I came over all The Guardian there for a minute!]
Still, he is doing better post Big Brother than Rebecca 'the Rebaccanator’ Shiner.
[Normal service resumed!]
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