If you only read one thing today…
…make sure it’s this jewel by Alix Mortimer. Really, do read it. It’s fantastic.
(Via the mighty Jennie)
Posted on November 8th, 2008 at 8:15 am
| See also • A brush with greatness • Why Labour Voters Ought to Think Again • Astley 2008 |
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* is mighty *
Well, I did read it, as well as I could given that it’s a long block of not very-friendly and not at all well-written text….and it’s not a jewel. It is, maybe, a lump of some kind. It’s a lump of exaggerated tripe - and tripe exaggerated for party-political purposes.
Take for instance: “At what point is it ok to get paranoid, do you suppose? Not abstractly paranoid. Not paranoid-with-sad-shake-of-head. Properly terrified-paranoid. Paranoid in the style of what has up to now been the nuttier end of the blogosphere.”
Now assuming that this passage has any content other than “getting carried away with oneself” and therefore actually demands or merits an answer, it might be: “at the point where people like you actually genuinely fear a serious penalty when they write a blog piece like yours”. (I say “somebody” meaning “somebody who writes such a piece”, of course, as opposed to anybody who has to try and read it, something of a penalty in itself.) I might say something like “get over yourself”, if I were trying to imitate the original. I shall say “have some sense of bloody perspective”, instead.
It’s against my principles to leap to the defence of the noxious Hazel Blears so I shall refrain from a sentence-by-sentence demolition of the distortion of Ms Blears’ views (dubious and hypocritical as they nevertheless are) that the piece engages in. Perhaps instead I shall allow myself some rhetorical questions of my own.
The first is - have this government really been so mild and inoffensive that people have to resort to screaming exaggerations in order to criticise them? The second is - is there something particular about the Lib Dems which makes them always sound so bloody childish? The third - relating to the passage “Just. Fuck. Off. That is all.” but not only to that - is: if writing in bad sulky clichés constitutes a “jewel”, what’s an actual good piece going to constitute? The opening chapter of Bleak House? Dostoyevsky? The Four Quartets?
Justin: doesn’t Bleak House start with a one-word sentence? Don’t get me wrong, I love the book dearly, but it seems an odd example to invoke in criticism of Mortimer’s post.
Yes, but the sentence is “London” and it doesn’t continue “Foggiest. City. Ever”.