A short editorial from an Oxford student newspaper to brighten your day.George Galloway may think he can swan around Parliament making inflammatory accusations, imitate a cat on Big Brother, and hobnob with Saddam Hussein, but let it henceforth be known that Mr. Gorgeous cannot march into the Oxford Union, a bastion of free speech and debate, and insult the very people who have gathered to hear his intemperate views. There are limits to what we can accept, and a ranting dwarf happens to be outside those parameters.
We can accept, barely, his recent desperate cries for publicity on Big Brother. When he walks into the Union and transforms the chamber into a circus, this too we can eventually come to terms with. Verbally assaulting a female student when she attempted to engage him about his foolish remarks following the debate is completely unacceptable however, and begs the question: whereÂ’s the Respect? The time of George Galloway has passed.
Accusing Oxford students of being posh and emerging from Elysian upbringings is not particularly clever or provocative. Not only is it tired, cheap, and not particularly accurate or perceptive, it is also profoundly boring. We deserve more from our speakers than worn out rhetoric. The incoherent rudeness that he indulged in at the Union bears little relation to the persona he had previously cultivated as that of a debonair wordsmith.
Gone are his convoluted verbal gymnastics; in its place is an reliance on the word fuck to make his point. The crazed prophet is no longer crazed, and no longer a prophet: sleazy and sad now seem apropos.