Though the header: Clarence Mitchell is Different might not seem, given the many other interesting choices on offer, the most scintillating pick of the crop, it is however not without a certain touch of savoir vivre.
John Blacksmith offers us a wide and interesting choice of delightful phrases in his latest offering: Entertaining Mr Mitchell. A wide and interesting choice indeed. Though a tad longer and a touch more descriptive, this for instance:
.......to drive away the memory of the McCann voice, that sneering whine with its toxic mix of aggression, spurious justification and self pity, so reminiscent of the petty criminals who daily traipse through the district courts of his native Glasgow.
Now that's not bad in anybody's book, not bad at all, not at all at all it ain't. Ironically, or should that be coincidently, whichever, another phrase of the inimitable Mr Blacksmith, I had earmarked as the title for another article, featuring not just himself, but the equally inimitable and talented, Professor Moriarty. Of that, a little later in the day.
I say the inimitable Mr Blacksmith but.... but does that become a misnomer when we consider what John blacksmith and I appear share in equal amounts? They being of course, equal and abundant amounts of revulsion, loathing and not least contempt, that we hold for the repulsive Clarence Mitchell. So much so in fact that it would be much akin to looking in the mirror, cracked or otherwise, and seeing the other fellow staring back.
Have at it then and savour the admirable writing and meritorious phraseology.
But just give me minute to find a piccy or two.....
Like the header, you may think this a strange choice, but for much the same reasons, it rates as one of my, top five ever.
Entertaining Mr MitchellAnyone new to the McCann case – the Bureau’s target audience - must be slightly puzzled by the opprobrium that our friend the Coffin, AKA Clarence Mitchell, seems to attract. Just what is it about him? Why, in particular, do critics of the saintly parents’ Authorized Version of events criticise and abuse him more than almost anyone else involved in the case?
Birds of a feather?
Even that grim whiner Gerry McCann hardly attracts the verbal flak that bursts around Mitchell every time his absurd, Muppet-like features, augmented recently by what appears to be a cheap synthetic wig, appear on the screen. Partly that is because McCann is so genuinely repulsive that one just wants to leave the room, shaking one’s head, or scrabble among the cushions for the remote control: anything, anything, perhaps even Simon Cowell, God forbid, to drive away the memory of the McCann voice, that sneering whine with its toxic mix of aggression, spurious justification and self pity, so reminiscent of the petty criminals who daily traipse through the district courts of his native Glasgow.
The quote came from an article in the Indi, an article you might better remember for these words of modesty: I am a decent, caring human being. If I can help them, I will." Blah blah
Mitchell isn’t repulsive in this I-need-a-shower- after-watching-him sense; instead one wants to hurl ripe tomatoes at the screen while shouting you can’t believe this shit, you imbecile, you just can’t! before falling into stunned silence and then vain fantasies - that the Goatherd Edgar, for instance, will suddenly snap, leap from his chair and hurl himself upon his team mate, seizing his puffy neck with both those giant stranglers’ hands.
Voice from the pit
Mitchell inflames people, we think, both because of what he is - his manifestly odious personality - and, more important, the related matter of what he does. Of all the actors in this drama Mitchell is the one with the fewest excuses, the one who, above all others, chose to involve himself in the affair – and people sense it.
The prime movers, the McCanns and the Tapas 7, all - according to the Portuguese police - found themselves at the centre of a nightmare that was not originally of their own choosing. The family clans who sprang to their defence with their instinctive underclass distrust of the police were sucked in by their children. Others, like Amaral, had to descend into this cess pit due to the demands of their professions; still others, like the hapless, stumbling Gordon Brown walked into it because of their lack of political nous.
Clarence Mitchell is different: he sought out the opportunities offered by the shit-filled tank and chose to enter it up to his neck, finding, perhaps for the first time in his life, a place where he was comfortable and fitted in. Unlike the others he had almost nothing to lose, not even financially, as we shall see, and the inevitable consequence of his immersal, the stench he emits, is one he seems quite able to live with: people may abuse him or back off, holding their noses, but that, apparently, doesn’t trouble Clarence: somehow he seems used to it. more The Blacksmith Bureau
