Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

it's the only one i ever read by her, so not fair to judge on just that

'the good burghers of' is always a red flag phrase, and google say marina's used it 16 times in the guardian alone

She doesn't seem to have any ear for prose rhythm or turn-of-phrase, both of which are pretty important when you're trying to do comedy (or "comedy"). If you read most of her sentences outloud, would they really make people laugh, or would they just lose the thread midway through?

tbf i blame the sub for not striking out "the good burghers" -- it was a long-dead faux-comic cliche about the time "mine host" started to grate

giles coren to thread

tbf, i think comic writing in newspapers is spectacularly difficult to do consistently well because of the whole premise of writing "about" the news as it happens.

but a lot of the writers who try make it harder for themselves by taking the approach matt is complaining about, which is to include as many jokes (i.e. stylistic cliches) as possible.

Of course, while Friedman's seasteads might be in vogue with Valley types or those dreaming of the Tea Party Venice, among the good burghers of what convention already demands we style as riot-scarred England, I fear his laissez-faire ideals would garner short shrift or sarcastic invitations along the lines of: if people wish to live in places unconstrained by the rule of law, perhaps they'd care to try Tottenham.

she's perfectly suited to private-eye style logistical beatdowns so i don't understand why she's mainly doing LIS these days. i loved her guardian diaries, when she did them.

Yeah it seems to be a problem that afflicts a lot of comic broadsheet writers. You really notice it when the style leaks over to TV, like when you turn on one of those ropey Friday night C4 shows and there's someone reading one of those torturously long sentences off an autocue in a voice that suggests they were never meant to be on TV in the first place.

the disparity between ilx opinion of marina hyde and...basically everywhere else i frequent, is really astonishing

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 13:27 (26 minutes ago)

this is pretty hilariously purblind

i have repped for her on ilx in the past, i'd guess between 38% and 55% of the smallish coterie of ilx users who have expressed an opinion on her ish have been at least somewhat enthusiastic

xp This is why I don't read many "comic" novels, because they're prone to looking very busy and strained in order to give the emphatic impression that something funny is going on, when something a little calmer would be much more amusing. It's in the same ballpark as the I'm-being-funny-now contortions of James Wood's "hysterical realism". Like Matt says, none of it can be successfully read out loud.

aagh on deadline so no time to find more examples but these are two of my fav m hyde columns

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/22/sky-leaders-debate-spin-room-abortion-democracy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/26/david-cameron-world-of-euphemisms

what does "the good burghers of" mean? is that some kind of meat wagon pun?

ilx tends to think some pretty unfunny shit counts as great comedy (see: comedy threads passim)

do you think marina hyde does great comedy?

Enrique (Enrique) wrote this on thread What did I ever see in Zoe Williams? on board I Love Everything on Feb 3, 2004
Marina Hyde I like. She does the Diary quite often, which is the only bit of the Groanydad worth reading ('cept for Swells, obviously). Hey Toby, fuck Varsity, right? Right.

:0

"what convention already demands we style as riot-scarred England" is a joky revolt against a cliche which immediately goes on to help itself to the effective content of that cliche: are we supposed to be worried about riots or not? marina will happily mock us either way! the anxious-compulsive need for a style-vectored gag almost completely undermines the (actually quite strong) point she's making

i think marginalising ILX and the rest of the world into "us" and "them" is what created this mess in the first place

It seems I was the first to rep for MH on ILx, linking to this piece, which is still quite funny: http://www.guardian.co.uk/diary/story/0,3604,1135757,00.html

xp Those two examples prove that the more substance MH has to work with the better she is. She comes unstuck when she doesn't have enough to say and fills the space with these tortuously overextended sentences, one of which mark s has just elegantly dissected.

do you think marina hyde does great comedy?

i think she's a great writer who is very funny, i wouldn't call it "comedy"

Lex, don't you profess to dislike all comedy?

if you copy and paste some of the post on ILX and read it in notepad it sometimes reads just like marina hyde. the problem is ILX culture taking over normal, rational people you can see it in kids who talk like ILX now.

Haha Lex Marina Hyde is totally your acceptable face of things you otherwise claim to hate (comedy, archness, 'tall poppy syndrome' etc).

^^^this.

Saying you dislike all of genre x probably disqualifies you from making judgements about the relative merits of individual examples of said genre.

there's a difference between "being funny" and "comedy" -- the problem with the paragraph quoted is that it's sold its political force out for mannered comic-effect habit

again, i basically blame the subs: they should corenise stuff like this

xp

i don't think that's fair on lex. i think part of the reason most of us don't find her funny is that she's doing something different to "comedy", so it seems reasonable that people who don't like "comedy" could like her.

okay fair enough re. Hyde, but the point pertains whne Lex says stuff like this "ilx tends to think some pretty unfunny shit counts as great comedy"

I can never decide whether this thread is funny or not.

i blame the subs for that too

Libya's Supreme Guide had lost his way. His slogan of 40 years: "God, Muammar, Libya: Enough!" had lost its power. And in the end he is being blown away as surely and as brutally as an unsuspecting airliner climbing gracefully through Scottish skies.

no way

that's fucking shocking

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/23/libya-gaddafi-vicious-despot

was that in the print edition?

hey simon tisdall, you know that little knot in your stomach as you typed that last line, the one that intensified when you sent it to the subs? pay attention next time

lol that as on p6 of a national newspaper

Leaving aside the issue of taste it doesn't even work as a simile on a basic level because toppling Gaddafi took six messy months and he's still at large. He'd have had to be assassinated for that to even begin to work.

and libya didn't do lockerbie, no lorax.

sssh don't tell joe biden

tracer, i think this sentence might be even more tone deaf than the worst of the style section in the nyt

was that in the print edition?

― caek, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 17:38 (34 minutes ago)

that's where i saw it

tisdall isn't usually like this is he? or at least i haven't noticed it

i blame the subs who lurk beneath the surface before torpedoing vulnerable journalists as surely and mercilessly as their ww2 era namesakes dispatching banana boats

this sentence should have been stricken from the page as ruthlessly the lusitania was removed from the surface of the wide blue ocean, sinking with great loss of life especially to women and children fleeing the war for the safety of america

Tisdall is one of the few Guardian news columnists worth reading IMO. Perhaps tired and emotional when writing this, though.

rmde at the bbc doing a sanitised profile of latuff as well

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/aug/26/used-car-prices-fall-auto-trader <-buy auto trader! buy!

The company, which claims to be the largest digital marketplace for vehicles with 80% of all available used cars for sale in the UK (and is part-owned by Guardian Media Group),

at least they owned up to the shameless shilling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/sep/08/andy-murray-donald-young-live

Hello! I wasn't meant to be doing this, I was doing something else with my time, but it turns out no one else was doing it. Hooray for us! Well done everyone! So here we are. Here I am. Anyway this match has been going on for the last 20 minutes or so and the big news is that Andy Murray has broken Donald Young twice and leads 5-2 in the first set.

i was thinking of reviving for something dumb about pop culture in today's G2, but i've basically forgotten what it was already. oh, it was the pass notes on eddie murphy. that was pretty dumb. also one of the front page headlines is 'police question Guardian reporter'