Why do people read Julie Bitchkill? I remember in the 70s hearing that she was one of the best writers in the musical papers (I was a teenager then-heavily hung up on music) and so I bought a copy of the NME and read her. I thought her the most ill-informed, musically-illiterate, grammatically challanged writer I had ever come across. However, even then I thought she might cross over into mainstream journalism; not because of any latent talent I thought she might pocess, but because of her unique bitchiness - An updated Linda Lee Potter, if you like.

I was always suspicious of her. Her defence of Stalin rankled and when his crimes were pointed out to her, she would bring out the old chestnut that you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. She also admirred Trotsky, which, when you think how much Trotskiests and Stanlinists hated one another, was a ridiculous contradiction. it was obvous she didnt know the difference between the two. When she went to work for the Mail on Sunday, she dropped her left wing credentials so quickly that you wondered how sincere she was in the first place.

In Bitchkill's world, there is black and white. Take a side, praise it to the heavens, and damn the other side to hell. This makes good copy. THis gets people talking about you. Try and be objective and you will never get noticed. Israel is a case in point. She will gush about the Israelies and damn the Palastinians because she knows it will get up the noses of Guardian liberals. It will get her attention. This is what she wants. She may belives what she says, she may not. This has always been her style and why people still fall for it, I just do not know. She has even been compaired to Dorothy Parker for chrissakes! The keen intelligence, sharp wit and carefully crafted literary skills that informed Parker's writing are notably and conspiciously absent from our less than lovely Julie's.

For what it is worth, I have no opinion one way or the other about Israel. It is two peoples squabbling about a single piece of land. There is nothing unique in that. It will not get setteled until they both put their differences aside and live in peace. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to come about. I think the sympathy that the left has for the Palastinians has more to do with sympathy for the underdog than it has to do with anti-semitisim, although their support comes dangerouslly close to it. Support for Isreal has a lot to do,I believe, with the Arab control of the oil in the middle east and the hostility towards Islam inbred into European culture. Israel's ability to defeat Arab nations on the battlefield has not gone unnoticed.

I havent read the two articles in the Guardian. I havent read Bitchkill for years.In the early 80s, Bitchkill reviewed a single about the invasion of Lebanon by Isreal -I have forgotten the record and the group, unfortunatly-however, I do remember what she said. "Another record about smelly Arabs."

With that in mind, why do people like Julie Bitchkill?