The Fall of Johann Hari

Similarly, the films which established Arnie as a movie star, the 'Conan the Barbarian' series, have a strong resemblance to the fascist myths of a heroic Nordic pre-civilisation, when strapping Aryans would fight against vicious hoardes of savages. The Waffen SS could have used Conan's philosophy, "I burn with life, I love, I slay and am content."
 - Johann Hari on Arnold Schwarzenegger's impending reign, and I guess it would be too much to expect that he'd know about Howard's profound hatred of the Nazis and Fascism in general

I never liked Johann Hari even before I found out some of the garbage he said about Lord of the Rings, as noted by Brian Murphy in a passionate recent post, where he has outed Hari as a goddamn hypocrite.  I didn't even find out until today that he had the above to say about Conan.  My dislike of Hari goes beyond simple disagreements with his assessment of literature and authors I happen to like, and into disgust for his arrogance, pretentiousness, shameless sensationalism, lack of journalistic integrity, brazen plagiarism, woolly association with the truth, and most of all, his penchant for just making things up.

So ultimately, what Mr Hari says about The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien, or Conan and Robert E. Howard matters little, considering what a hash he makes of things like statistics, economics, politics and the like.  If he can't do basic fact-checking about the stuff he does for his job, how can we possibly expect him to know what he's talking about when it comes to the arts?

Rarely do I outright use such strong terms, but Johann Hari...

He bothers me.

... You see why I try not to bring politics into the blog?