Alex Massie

One of the truths about campaign reporting is that results determine everything. That is, winners are treated as superstars, losers as dimwits. Winning campaigns are always focused, disciplined, well-organised, in-control, cool; losing campaigns are invariably dysfunctional, confused, prone to internecine warfare and staffed by borderline psychopaths. That's how the insta-historians in the press and blogosphere score these events. If Hillary Clinton had defeated Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary her campaign staff would have been treated more kindly (even Mark Penn!) while the Obama campaign would have been written-up as, at best, a heroic, noble effort in the face of impossible odds. More probably, he'd have been castigated for failing to throw enough punches.

It's twenty years since I read The Satanic Verses. I didn't much care for it back then, chiefly, as I recall, because Rushdie's satirical and comic scenes left me untickled. But today - especially today - is a good moment to read the New Yorker's excerpt from Rushdie's forthcoming Fatwa Chronicle, Joseph Anton. If you can't read it today, read it tomorrow. But do read it. Among other things, it made me want to go back and re-read The Satanic Verses. There are many dates you could choose from which to start a chronicle of our times but, at least in terms of one big question, Valentine's Day 1989 is as good as any and better than most places from which to begin.

And then there were four. If Andy Murray's accomplishments still make him the least of the great quartet ruling tennis in this golden age that's about as useful a comment as remarking that Roberto Duran was outshone by Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns. It may be true but it doesn't matter very much. There have been other great eras in tennis - Borg, McEnroe and Connors for one - but there's never been a quartet quite like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and, yes, Andy Murray. Consider this: eight men shared the ten Grand Slam tournaments preceding Roger Federer's first Grand Slam victory (Wimbledon 2003). The subsequent 37 tournaments have been divvied up between eight players.

Cristina Odone begins her latest oh-woe-is-Britain post most amusingly: Around the world, people have long envied Britain's two institutions: the BBC and Oxbridge. Britons, however, (or some of them) are determined to destroy both. They are going about it in a brutal and obvious way, by lowering standards for both Auntie and the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The BBC abroad was a byword for beautifully written and brilliantly produced programmes such as "The World at War" and "Upstairs Downstairs". But in its obsession with "diversity", the Beeb has allowed standards to slip: comedies that aren't funny (but don't sound middle class) and reality shows that teach nothing but how temporal celebrity is, have taken over the schedule.

For people in the communication business politicians have an uncanny ability to confuse even their better intentions by resorting to clumsy, even stupid, language. Thus David Davis earlier today. When normal people hear the phrase "shock therapy" I'm pretty sure they associate it with pretty awful, even ghastly, measures that, most of the time, don't even have the saving grace of working. You wouldn't want any of your relatives to be given shock therapy. It's A Clockwork Orange or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest stuff. Davis is not alone. Dominic Raab says the "talented and hard-working have nothing to fear" from removing "excessive" employee protections. I suspect many hard-working people, including talented hard-working people, might say it's damn easy for him to say that.

I'm writing a column about Mitt Romney for tomorrow's Scotsman so more on him later. Suffice it to say that I thought his speech less impressive than it had to be but that, by the end of the evening, I was more impressed with and by Mitt the Man than I've been previously. This was because of the Mormons. Magic underpants and Missouri and all the rest of it be damned, Mitt should talk about his religion more. He may be reluctant to do so and that speaks well of him but this is an election and Mormonism is about the only thing discovered thus far that transforms Romney from battery-powered robot to actual flesh and blood. Be that as it may, I've also written a piece for Foreign Policy about another trope on full, flag-sized, display this week: American exceptionalism.

Way back in my debating days at Trinity College, Dublin we knew you could guarantee large crowds and impressively  - that is, pleasingly - bad-tempered debates twice a year. These were the annual debates on Northern Ireland and abortion. And they really were annual fixtures during which, for years on end, the same arguments were deployed with the same passion and no-one's views were ever changed by anything they heard. In those days it was usually pretty clear who the bad guys were too. In the case of abortion it was anyone speaking as a representative of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child or, more generally, anyone whose views seemed dictated by the Roman Catholic Church. These were the people standing in the way of Ireland's journey to modernity.