The Avengers

The Times quoted Paul McMullan former deputy features editor of Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News  of the World as telling “a judicial inquiry” that “Phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool, given the sacrifices we make, if all we’re trying to do is to get to the truth.” The Times (“British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool," NYT, 11/29/11)  quoted McMullan going on to ask if “we really want  to live in a world where the only people who can do the hacking are MI5 and MI6.” And McMullan put the icing on the cake when he commented, “For a brief period of about 30 years, we have actually lived in a free society where we can hack back.” If what the Times described as McMullan’s "jaw-droppingly brazen remarks" seemed beyond the pale, they make sense if you consider him as a character in a forthcoming Thames Television series modeled on The Avengers. You remember that Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg starred in that highly popular sci fi and fantasy show back in the 60’s. Well, we can’t be sure until we have hacked into Rupert Murdoch’s private phone, but who knows? Perhaps all the wild antics McMullan describes which included spending “two weeks locked in a hotel room with Princess Diana’s gym instructor” were inspired by The Avengers. Speaking of  Princess Diana, car chases were all the rage until tragedy struck. “I absolutely loved giving chase to celebrities,” McMullan said. “How many jobs can you have car chases in? Before Diana died, it was such good fun.” McMullen could easily take over the role played by Macnee and how about his comely former superior Rebekah Brooks as Emma Peel? And what will these twenty-first century Avengers  avenge? Of course the fact that only enforcement officials get to spy. As we all know, fantasy sells.

Arf Wiedersehen

British tabloids are taking a beating in the wake of the News of the World scandal. But sometimes their American counterparts manage to get it right, although “Sam Sleeps” was a snoooze when it appeared in The New York Post. And then there was the infamous “Ford to New York: Drop Dead.” But no one does it like the British. In her Wednesday op-ed column, Maureen Dowd reports on a book called Amazing Dogs by Cardiff University School of Medicine lecturer Jan Bondeson (“Hitler’s TalkingDogs,” NYT, 7/13/11). Dowd describes how Dr. Bondeson “reveals that Hitler supported a German school that tried to teach large, muscular mastiffs to ‘talk’ to humans. The story set off a panting spate of  ‘Heel Hitler,’ ‘Furred Reich,’ ‘Wooffan SS’ and ‘Arf Wiedersehen’ headlines in British tabloids and plenty of claims that Hitler was ‘barking mad.’” Compression is an attribute of poetry, as is enjambment, the latter term just being a word thrown out to impress the reader. So credit the meeting of popular culture and great art when reading tabloid headlines that turn murder into a terrifying joke. Let’s hope the Brit tabloids survive the current storm. Open up a random page of dialogue in almost any Pinter play and you’ll find the same mixture of humor and fear. Could the roots of Pinter’s dramatic poetry lie in British tabloid journalism?