Grim Prospects For A Pariah

Arch purveyor of sewer sentiments, Kelvin MacKenzie has kept, by his standards, a relatively low media profile since the start of the year. There have been sightings of the liar now & again, most jarringly as a guest newspaper reviewer on the BBC News channel recently; the phone calls & emails that flowed the Beeb's way would have left the corporation in little doubt that MacKenzie's presence was a gross abuse of licence payers' money (the reviewers are paid for their time). Most recently, he could be spotted in the company of Jeremy Clarkson at Thatcher's funeral. A veritable Brains Trust, wouldn't you say?
MacKenzie had hoped to pen a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph. Indeed, the paper's editor, Tony Gallagher (@gallaghereditor, if you feel like sending him a tweet or two) had declared on the Telegraph website that the liar would contribute on a weekly basis.
Unfortunately for MacKenzie, reaction to his first column helped ensure that it was the only column he would scrawl for the Telegraph; many online commenters raised the subject of Hillsborough, one referred to him as a "ghastly little man", a quintessentially Telegraph put-down.
MacKenzie's short-lived stint at the Telegraph was yesterday mentioned by Roy Greenslade on his Guardian blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/apr/18/kelvin-mackenzie-dailytelegraph ). Greenslade noted that MacKenzie left the Daily Mail last July, having been employed as a columnist there for less than a year, & that the BBC, newspaper reviews notwithstanding, is noticeably reluctant to have him as a panelist on Any Questions & Question Time. Greenslade observed:
"Why should this be? In a word, Hillsborough. Twenty-four years on from the tragedy he cannot escape the fury of Liverpool for his front page that defamed the city's football fans."
Regarding MacKenzie's sudden departure from the Telegraph, Greenslade reported that Tony Gallagher "was made aware by the sports desk of deep upset about the hiring of MacKenzie by its writers, especially its star columnist Alan Hansen."
Hansen was, of course, in the Liverpool team which took to the field on April 15th, 1989. In the years since he has had to confront & correct the smears about Hillsborough which emanated from MacKenzie's infamous front page. As Greenslade noted, Hansen's possible resignation from the Telegraph in protest at MacKenzie's appointment would have caused the paper acute embarrassment.
Greenslade opened his piece by asking:
"Has Kelvin MacKenzie become unemployable?"
After the faux-aristocratic flummery & pomposity of the taxpayer-funded Thatcher funeral this week, it would be an appropriately Thatcherite fate for MacKenzie to find himself without work (& income) indefinitely. Such a fate would be welcomed by many.