Melanie Phillips Nutcake Recipe

Ingredients

• Take a ridiculous article berating a 16 year old boy about his background (or make it seem as if he was being disingenuous)

• Throw in some made up nonsense about 'Winterval' 

• Cover with a dusting of rationality

• When it turns out to be not quite to your taste, apply stupid libel threats liberally

The libel 'threat' statement from Mel said:

"Your blog post about me is highly defamatory and contains false allegations for which you would stand to pay me significant damages in a libel action. There are many things I could say to point out the gross misrepresentations, selective reporting and twisted distortions in what you have written. I will not do so, however, because you have shown gross abuse of trust in publishing on your blog private correspondence from me without my permission. Consequently I will have no more to do with you and any further messages from you will be electronically binned unread along with other nuisance mail."

Mel is unhinged from reality and, unusually for someone who likes to staunchly defend her opinion, is not interested in receiving criticism.

http://www.fagburn.com/2011/02/melanie-phillips-vile-poisonous.html

She has subjected the world to a number of completely ignorant statements and seems to revel in being a rent-a-quote for theological crowd. Take this comment, for example, and note it's breathtaking failure to grasp 'evidence':

"And evolution certainly does not have all the answers. It does not explain human self-consciousness; it does not explain altruism; it does not explain how existence began." http://www.melaniephillips.com/intolerance-against-religion

Evolution, it might surprise her, does not attempt to address elements associated with the neurological and social sciences and neither does it suggest the origin of life.

"It promotes, for example, unproven environmental propaganda as fact, a subversive idea of citizenship, a sexual free-for-all and above all, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth."

Here's game for you to try; try to work out what she is referring to with these cryptic descriptions... you'll probably come to the same conclusion I did...

"But religion has become the great unmentionable in our society. In intellectual, political or media circles, a religious handle is enough to label one as a bigot or fruitcake."

...and this following statement made me smile more than any other:

"Instead, secularism now arrogantly presents itself as if it were a religion."

Right.... so after a full article completely bashing secularism for being dogmatic, founded on lies, disingenuous with facts, corrupts children in numerous ways and has an overall chilling effect on society she then goes on to say that secularism presents itself "as if it were a religion"... yep, clear off secularism... you're treading on religious territory.

My real opinion however is that she is just not being that smart. I'm only appalled that people think that because she appears in a daily tabloid that she has an opinion worthy of consideration. In reality, she is quite bitter with what appears to be some very strange ideas about what the political term "liberal" is (which she describes herself as).

She says so, I might add, without any hint of irony.