5 Feet of Fury

Paul Johnson: And why stand up straight when you can bend over?

I really can’t take Paul Johnson seriously. It must be nice to have such a distasteful past and still get audiences with the Pope and feted by National Review and, here, profiled glowingly in the Wall Street Journal, all because you’re able to string together cliches in full sentences, with an plummy English accent.

Had Johnson been the dom in his extramarital affair, I could almost put up with him.

UPDATE: many thanks to the loyal reader who passed along this very English 1998 profile of Paul Johnson in the Independent.

PS: Isn’t British libel law fun? Presumably the reporter has her notes, which are generally accepted (if not downright required) to be presented at evidence. Perhaps she was too old fashioned to take a tape recorder? And had his mistress lied, presumably HE would have sued.