Speaking of schadenfreude

With today's news that London Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone has been officially suspended from his duties for 4 weeks for acting in an "unnecessarily insensitve" manner, the weekend could not have gotten off to a better start. Livingstone, recall, had responded to a Jewish newspaper reporter's questions by asking the reporter if he was a "German war criminal" and then likening him to a concentration camp guard. (You can hear the fateful exchange between the two here.) Livingstone refused to apologize, and was eventually charged by the Standards Board of England with having breached the Greater London Authority code of conduct. Today an Adjudication Panel ruled against him.

For those lucky few who may be unfamiliar with him, Livingstone, who at one time got himself ejected from the Labour party, has been known to blurt out such thoughtful and intelligent gems as "I look forward to [the Bush administration] being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown," and "Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two." He is, in other words, the Pat Robertson of the British loony left, although, unlike the imaginations of the BBC with regard to Robertson, Livingstone's political power is in fact substantial. So when the news of the (perhaps literal) bully's comeuppance was released, it was difficult to suppress a wide smile.

And yet...

As much as it pains me to take his side, this case against Livingstone is utterly ridiculous. So he was rude to a journalist...big deal. Are journalists, who BTW are not without their own particularly effective form of defense, really so fragile? Is Livingstone's idiotic, if all too predictable, allusions to Nazi's really out-of-bounds simply because the target of his bile happens to be Jewish? Frankly, if a majority of Londoner's really do want to be represented by such an inane and foolish buffoon as Livingstone - and apparently they do, as he has been re-elected despite his well publicized absurdity - they ought not be deprived of the privilege by an unelected, three-member panel on hurt feelings.

Still, if it is the case that someone must fall victim to modern-day sensitivity worship, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It won't, in any case, spoil my weekend.