1. Wow, this is actually disgusting.
2. Like, really, really disgusting.
3. I mean, I often find Hannan’s comments objectionable – you don’t dedicate seven months of your life to professionally ripping the piss out of someone because you really like them, do you? – but this is really, incredibly offensive.
4. It’s been nearly four hours now, and I’m still really angry.
5. Like the guy in Clerks, I’m not even supposed to be here today.
6. Yet here I am, back on the old Hannan beat once again.
7. I was two days away from retirement.
8. Just when I thought I got out, they pull me back in.
9. Okay, that’s quite enough of that, let’s get back to Hannan.
10. Offensive thing number one: the lizard.
11. The Lizard Theory of Global politics originated in The Biggest Secret, the first book from (yes, really) the former BBC sports reporter David Icke, which according to Time, “contained interviews with two Brits who claimed members of the royal family are nothing more than reptiles with crowns”.
12. The lizards – also known as the Annunaki; these aren’t any old lizards, they have a name – “have controlled humankind since ancient times” and “count among their number Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bob Hope”.
13. Sorry, what was that last one again?
14. Bob Hope? A lizard?
15. Why would a race of shape-changing aliens want to infiltrate the entertainment business, doing USO shows and spending all their spare time playing golf?
16. What is meant to be their gameplan here?
17. I mean if he’d said Glenn Miller I’d have believed it.
18. People who have been forced to publically deny being giant lizards in recent years include Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Rumsfeld and the New Zealand prime minister John Key.
19. In Jon Ronson’s 2001 book Them: Adventures With Extremists, anti-racist campaigner suggested that the lizards were a code for “Jews”.
20. But in the same book, David Icke made very clear that by “lizards” he did not mean “Jews”, so that’s alright then.
21. No, this is a completely different conspiracy about a global financial elite running the world behind your backs.
22. Sorry, our backs.
23. Obviously I am not a lizard. What a ridiculous thought.
24. Moving on swiftly, offensive thing number two: the choice of who to make a giant lizard.
25. Obviously Hannan went for a woman, which is in not in any way sexist.
26. But why exactly did he go for Hillary Clinton?
27. Hillary Clinton, you will notice, is not currently and is not in future likely to be president of the United States.
28. So why does Hannan find her so threatening?
29. Perhaps he doesn’t find her threatening: perhaps he just knows that there are #numbers in hating on Hillary.
30. And playing on other people’s misogyny to get retweets is of course completely and utterly fine.
31. Offensive thing number three: the hypocrisy.
32. Daniel Hannan claims to be more English than HP sauce, but grew up in Peru and spends his days in Brussels and Strasbourg.
33. He also earns what is, by any reasonable standard, a lot of money from a supranational organisation.
34. If there is a wealthy, international elite, it very definitely includes Daniel Hannan.
35. So where does he get off laying into money-grabbing elites?
36. Seriously, who the fuck does this man think he is?
37. Offensive thing number four: the photoshopping
38. Look at those boundaries. It’s all blurry.
39. If he’s going to post these disgusting things he could at least get somebody to do it properly.
40. I don’t think he’s showing the conspiracy theorist community the respect that they deserve, that’s all.
41. He’s not deleted it.
42. He deletes things quite often – I got a whole column out of that one, too – but it’s still there, like he thinks this is fine.
43. It is not fine.
44. I am not a lizard.
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