Chicken Yoghurt is very good!

I had a quick flick through the various blogs listed in today's Guardian piece on blogs. Here's my initial opinions:

Harry's Place I've mentioned before (does using Hurry Up Harry in the web title attract stray Sham 69 fans? Only I'm wondering whether to change mine to Take That's Greatest Hits);

Slugger O'Toole doesn't appear on my link (will check);

Samizdata blog- yawwn (how come most individualists tend to think the same?);

Oliver Kamm- smug in that way only hedge fund types can be (imagine a walking, talking Economist editorial);

Norman Geras- the thinking person's Oliver Kamm. I will check again- could be good stuff there as long as "Iraq" isn't mentioned;

Tim Ireland- lots of interesting stuff. Worth checking again; &

Chicken Yoghurt- I liked straight off. Anyone who takes the rise out of "Fatboy Dave" Aaronovitch (if you are reading this and are offended by my repeated references to the over-stout...FAT PEOPLE ARE INTRINSICALLY FUNNY) can't be that bad.
Consequently, here's a taste of Chicken Yoghurt, referring to a fourth-rate bit of satire our Dave wrote in The Times recently:

Making it look easy
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

David Aaronovitch: Dateline Spandau, October 1946. Herr Hitler climbs into the dock...

1946. The trial of Adolf Hitler begins in a courtroom inside the grounds of Spandau Prison. These fragments show how the event was covered by sections of the British media and opinion-formers, teletransported from the year 2005.

...

"Brushing off the judge's attempts to interrupt him, Hitler declared: 'Neither do I recognise the body that has designated and authorised you, nor the aggression, because all that has been built on a false basis'."

Can you see what he's done there? He's swappped the name "Saddam" with the name "Hitler" and "Iraq" for "Germany". It's very clever and very difficult to do well. I've heard this kind of thing is called "satire" and only writers who are paid lots and lots of money can do it. Or writers with a deadline looming who just cut and paste some quotes into Microsoft Word and then hit Ctrl-H.

Any sour grapes at what amounts to the equivalent of the O-Level English Language coursework assignment I wrote 20 years ago, aged 14, ("My interview with Hitler") is purely intentional.

I'm not even sure what he's trying to say. Is he calling for the death penalty for Saddam? Is he dismissing those killed and injured by coalition bombing? Is he saying Saddam didn't believe in fair trials so why should he get one himself, a "let's sink to his level" kind of thing? Should we just forget about the referendum vote-rigging allegations? Is he trying to resurrect the "appeasers" label that even Tony Blair backed away from as soon as he could? Aaronovitch has certainly come out fighting after admitting on Newsnight last week that he now agreed with the Liberal Democrats on what had happened in Iraq since the invasion.

Did he write it before breakfast and so his low blood sugar levels made him a bit ratty? Is his house, to steal from The Simpsons, powered by his own sense of self satisfaction?