Irony or chutzpah?

Remember the psychiatrists who claimed back in 1964 that Goldwater was not “mentally fit” to be president. The Guardian has dug up TV psychologist Oliver James to write a very silly piece about George Bush.

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest possible discipline on themselves and others – the sort of regime found in today’s White House, where prayers precede daily business, appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women’s skirts must be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a 21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.
. . .
However, it is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him and a significant slice of his citizens – in surveys, half of them also agree with the statement “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”.
Bush’s deep hatred, as well as love, for both his parents explains how he became a reckless rebel with a death wish. He hated his father for putting his whole life in the shade and for emotionally blackmailing him. He hated his mother for physically and mentally badgering him to fulfil her wishes. But the hatred also explains his radical transformation into an authoritarian fundamentalist. By totally identifying with an extreme version of their strict, religion-fuelled beliefs, he jailed his rebellious self. From now on, his unconscious hatred for them was channelled into a fanatical moral crusade to rid the world of evil.

This is mostly comedy, but here is the part I really like. Back in February 2001, Henry Porter wrote a withering piece about James, in which he condemned the Sunday Telegraph for using such a fraud for an attack on Peter Mandelson.
Dr Oliver James, the television psychologist, is used to remote diagnosis. A lack of personal experience of his subject presents no obstacle to Dr James, who has delivered himself of the view that Peter Mandelson was at a “high risk of suicide attempt” because of his sacking from the cabinet. Without the slightest professional qualm, he further stated that Mandelson is likely to suffer “a terrible depression” and that there is some kind of “design fault” in him.
. . .
Dr James, apparently an expert on everything from paedophilia to the meaning of Princess Diana’s death, is not a member of the British Psychological Society, which forbids such behaviour for two very good reasons. If Mr Mandelson was indeed a suicide risk or vulnerable to depression, nothing could be more dangerous than for a doctor to announce it in the press. But since Mandelson is suffering from strain – a natural reaction to his summary dismissal – it is extremely presumptuous of James to suggest severe, long-term instability. In other words James was either downright irresponsible, or he was wrong. Whichever way you look at it, he infringed Mr Mandelson’s rights and dignity.
. . .
It seems extraordinary that he can get away with this behaviour which in most areas of medicine would be regarded as unethical. But there is of course no professional body to which psychologists have to belong to practice and which has statutory power to limit the profession’s taste for public speculation about an individual’s mental health. Curiously, it is precisely James’s ignorance of Mandelson’s state of mind – he is not a client – which allows him to blather on without breaking the sacred confidentiality between patient and doctor.
So who published Porter’s attack on James? The Guardian. The Guardian attacks the Sunday Telegraph for using a fraud like Oliver James, and then proceeds to use the same old fraud for an attack on Bush. Is that irony or chutzpah?