Poor old Jonnie Marbles. Not only did the aspiring twenty-something comedian have to miss his family holiday in order to be sentenced for lobbying a foam pie at Murdoch. But he's now going to serve six weeks in prison for his actions, meaning he misses the highlight of every comedian's calendar, the Edinburgh festival, too.
How could you not feel a twinge of sympathy for a decent chap like Jonathan May-Bowles of Edinburgh Gardens, Windsor, being sent down for simply carrying out a stunt? (and a 'funny', 'successful' stunt too, as one blogger puts it).
Very easily, that's how. If there was one thing worse than the show trial of Rupert and James Murdoch in front of a selection of MPs last month, it was Marbles' intervention, calling Murdoch Senior 'a very naughty billionaire' before slamming a foam pie into his face and very nearly bringing proceedings to an early close.
It's not really the fact that Murdoch could have been injured. Nor is it that there's anything wrong per se with stunts to draw attention to issues. It's instead that Jonnie Marbles, reportedly a 'founding member' of UK Uncut - a 'leaderless' organisation that can, conveniently, disown supporters whose actions backfire - decided to curtail the debate and take it upon himself to act as judge, jury and executioner. He even had the gall to say afterwards he was acting on behalf of the public.
When he was given a platform to elaborate on his motivations following the event, he barely went beyond his claim that Murdoch was a 'very naughty billionaire'. His critique of Murdoch amounted to him being one of the 'most insidious and toxic forces in global politics today', who 'thinks nothing of greasing the wheels of power until they turn in its favour' and owns a 'media empire built on deceit and bile, that trades vitriol for debate'.
So, rather than even trading in vitriol, Marbles obviously decided he had to steep lower and trade debate for a foam pie. After all, when someone is so self-evidently evil, who needs to trouble themselves with words to explain why that's the case?
This is hardly the first time this contemptuous attitude towards debate has been displayed by members of the UK protest movement. Following philosopher A C Grayling's announcement of the establishment of a privately-funded new university in June, I witnessed a similar stunt bringing discussion to a premature end at a debate that Grayling was speaking at in Foyles' bookshop, London.
Before the renowned public intellectual could even utter a word on the panel, a young protester piped up: 'you have no right to speak!' After a series of protesters interrupted the debate, calling - amongst other things - for Grayling to be 'denounced' by fellow panellists, the philosopher implored the activists to reserve their questions for him until afterwards, when he would stay around and discuss their issues. This he was fully prepared to do, until an anti-cuts activist set off a red smoke flare, leading to the evacuation of the building and the termination of any possibility of discussion. In the days that followed, a witch-hunt then ensued, with other debates he - and other NCH founders such as Richard Dawkins - were participating in being disrupted.
The comments of one self-styled 'political agitator' on Twitter following the smoke bombing of the Grayling discussion encapsulated the attitude of protesters. Despite the new university being announced only a few days beforehand, this individual declared: 'A campaign of protest and disruption, rather than genteel debate [is] needed at this point.'
This approach taken by Jonnie Marbles, the unidentified smoke bomber and others like them is an anathema to free speech and open debate. But it also speaks to the intellectual bankruptcy of much of the 'radical' protest movement in the UK. If a stunt was used to draw attention to some radical, exciting new ideas or critique, I'd most likely welcome it. But instead such stunts are used to mask the fact that these ideas are lacking. This reveals their desire to protest stems not from a rational critique of contemporary trends, but from an emotional, juvenile, reactionary impulse.
The closing down of public debate in such a way by individuals is ultimately reducible to giving two fingers up to the public: a self-righteous way of saying we have decided on your behalf what's right and what's wrong, so we're going to act. It's high time those campaigners arguing for 'protest and disruption' over public debate decided to grow up and tried to engage their brains, and the public with their arguments, instead.