When I first heard Pat Condell's videos on YouTube I enjoyed them, quite a lot if I am being honest. It's not that I agreed with the points he made, or felt that he was justified in his claims, but there was always an angry charm about him, like the crazy step-aunt that comes over for Christmas dinner and makes racist or homophobic remarks. You know that you shouldn't, but you can't help but snigger – it's just what they're like; they mean no harm really.
And for me, Pat Condell always was just a funny, crazy guy, and for a short while I did subscribe to his videos on YouTube. Not for information, not to appease my political stance, but simply for entertainment.
But somewhere along the line, Pat Condell became almost a cliché of what he originally criticised. He became a fundamentalist of his own agenda, a walking, talking and sometimes joking bigot of hate and discrimination, and in this he lost his quirky, angry charm that had originally attracted me to his videos.
And those who disagree, as many may, are labelled liberal softies, too feeble to say what 'needs to be said' because of our 'fear of political correctness'. In fact, Pat Condell is almost an anthropomorphisation of the phrase, 'political correctness gone mad'.
But, whilst Pat Condell sits on his YouTube pedestal of gold-plated trash, it is he that is, quite ironically, the spineless epitome of hatred masquerading as intellectual truth. If you listen, he offers little in the way of his own explicit views, but more accurately, to find Pat Condell's opinion you must often distil through his videos to find what he doesn't criticise, which is very little.
From watching Pat's videos, I have managed to summarise his own opinions as thus: he dislikes Muslims; Christians; Jews; religion; God; believers in God; liberals; the political left; criminals (go figure); the middle class; people who are non-offensive; and humanity in general.
Yet, quite in contrary, he does appear to believe in astrology, being a self-professed 'Scorpio', which does little for his claim on his website's homepage, 'Hi, I'm Pat Condell. I don't respect your beliefs and I don't care if you're offended. Cheers'.
He also likes Bob Dylan, football, beer and chillies; and he's a vegetarian. What a real nice person, I feel bad for mocking him already.
Main image cropped from Wikipedia.
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