This entry was posted on
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at
2:12 pm and is filed
under Christ…, The Political Weblog Movement.

David Modell (the man who once captured the Hamiltons’ entire marriage in a single photograph) has well and truly got the goods on the Christian fundamentalist movement here in the UK, and I invite you to catch the entire documentary on YouTube (links below via) or watch it air again on More4 at 9pm on Wednesday:

Dispatches: In God’s Name (1/5)
Dispatches: In God’s Name (2/5)
Dispatches: In God’s Name (3/5)
Dispatches: In God’s Name (4/5)
Dispatches: In God’s Name (5/5)

(Or use/share this link that lets you watch all 5 parts in sequence.)

[MINI-UPDATE – Only Part 5 of this sequence is now available online. It is embedded below.]

Of particular interest to regulars of Bloggerheads is Part 5, where we see the cosy interaction between Nadine Dorries and Andrea Minichiello Williams.

Just the sight of Andrea Williams fills me with joy. She deserves more television time, she does. It’s a lot of fun watching her play the media expert as she herds shoutier supporters away from the camera.

She doesn’t want Christian fundamentalists to come across like a pack of wild-eyed fruit-loops, y’see.

And Andrea does it soooo much better…

Her most impressive weapon is that solid black border around her eyes, which doesn’t make her look at all wild-eyed.

[rolls eyes]

And, bless her little cotton socks, when pressed with a difficult question, she will totally take control of the situation… erm, by asking for the camera to be turned off with a pleading grimace or unplugging her microphone with a smug grimace.

More air-time for Andrea, please.

(*ahem*)

The Telegraph published Nadine’s (allegedly) militant “pro-abortionists” nonsense, and also this David Modell article about his doco on politically-active Christian fundamentalists… but they lose points for not drawing attention to the obvious connection between the two (more) days ago.

Similary, welcome as it is, those of us who worry about media manipulation would have enjoyed the participation of Modell, Aaronovitch and Cochrane much earlier than this.

Nadine said outright on camera (see from 3 min on here) that she gets her information from Andrea Williams, and in the past week or so we’ve seen many outrageous and unsourced claims from Dorries. Many of those claims were published verbatim by MSM, and too few questions were asked at the time.

Now it would appear that a lot of the bad science and questionable poll data came from the same woman who penned Dorries’ amendment… a woman who thinks that the world is around 4,000 years old.

It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that Nadine Dorries is either knowingly in league with fundamentalists or being used by them.

The response is unusually slippery for the dim-witted Dorries; she feigns outrage over an accusation that hasn’t been made and says that she personally isn’t a fundamentalist (which therefore makes everything OK):

Nadine Dorries: God help me!
Posted Tuesday, 20 May 2008 at 11:54

Apparently now I’m a religious fundamentalist! Of all the arrows I’ve had slung at me since I picked up abortion, that has to be the most ridiculous.

Am I a Christian? Yes I am. Do I go to Church? Occasionally. Do I pray? Sometimes. Do I believe in God? Yes. Does this make me a freak? Well, if it does, we’re a nation of freaks, that’s all I can say.

Almost everyone I know believes in a God. It may not be the same God as mine, they may not go to the same Church as me, but they do believe in something.

My position on abortion is motivated by my experience as a nurse, witnessing late botched abortions .

I will say this once again – I am not a religious fundamentalist !!!!

I will say this only once… I!!!! DON’T!!!! CARE!!!!

Nadine Dorries has allowed herself to be influenced by religious fundamentalists and she has worked to further their agenda while taking measures to mask or minimise their involvement.

And now she’s been caught, she thinks she can wiggle out by claiming that she herself isn’t one of the zealots she’s been taking instruction from.

She’s a bigger fool than I took her for… and that’s saying something.

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RELATED LINKS:

rhetorically speaking – nadine dorries: late abortion is murder
Richard Bartholomew – Documentary Looks At UK Christian Right
Pickled Poltics – Christian fundamentalism in the UK
Indigo Joe Blogs – The ugly face of the British evangelical lobby
Family Lore – A Frightening Prospect
Media Watch Watch – A new Dispatches affair?
Sadie’s Tavern – Whipping, Nad Dorries, and other odd perversions (In which Sadie watches Iain Dale breaking eggs on his face. Tch, to think that he wasted all that time keeping a safe distance from Dorries.)
Independent – Dispatches: Making a giant leap of faith: (In which David Modell “reveals how he gets ‘extremist’ subjects like these Christian fundamentalists to open their hearts to him”)

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UPDATE: Ministry of Truth – The (almost) Final Indignity: Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s vote, Dorries walks away with zero credibility and a reputation as a purveyor of long-debunked hoaxes, crap science and a woman who cannot even muster the most basic integrity necessary to be honesty about her motives. And then, to cap it all, along comes Channel 4’s Dispatches to verify that the links between Dorries and Williams that I exposed here, with the help of Tim Ireland, were right on the money.