Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

This is an edited version of Will Self's inaugural lecture as professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University

huh!

We should have a pedestrian equivalent of critical mass - gathering each Friday to block runners and cyclists on the South Bank.

Articles like this really are unhelpful.

The paper's going back to the bad old Left-behind days of the eighties, when the NME could have earnest debates about whether The White Album was a racist title.

It's petty nitpicking that does nothing to address institutionalised racism or actual racism, and as I keep saying, the Left are going to have to do better than thinking it's still 1985 and Kinnock and Red Wedge.

I was more "oh, no John George or Ringo then?", but that was it.

It's funny, both the kids have made Sgt Pepper friezes of their own, on leaving Primary school to move up to Snrs. (Amber got a few bonus marks for including "Newcastle" and "New York" as well as people in hers)

I mention, mainly because this makes Peter Blake into some primary school child picking his friends and his parents taking it off him and adding more important people that they think will impress.

--- If the latter, then as a snapshot of British cultural life, his options could have included, say, children's author Malorie Blackman alongside JK Rowling. Or maybe Turner prize-winning artist and director Steve McQueen alongside Damien Hirst. What about designers Duro Olowu or Beatrix Ong, actors Archie Panjabi or Idris Elba, dancer Akram Khan? The list goes on.

absolutely dire

he should have consulted a focus group to ensure all creeds, races, classes, and sexual orientations were represented in this hugely significant landmark document of britain today which crystallises forever the views of every person in the country.

The list goes on.

I think with public art, it's approrpriate that the colour and gender balance is considered - I was surprised when the big Quentin Blake mural around the King's Cross development featured only white faces – but this isn't public art, is it? It's an old man reflecting on his old manness.

yeah exactly... he really has a right to include whoever he wants.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9703/guaq.jpg

weird lede

that headshot is all-time

http://www.theffstore.co.uk/ekmps/shops/fanfavourites/images/steve-pemberton-league-of-gentlemen-signed-photograph-273-p.jpg

I like this picture better.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Philippa_and_Grayson_Perry_and_family.jpg

Not to be contrarian and "politically correct" and all but you know, Peter Blake has the right to include whoever the fuck he likes on his album cover update.

However, I think it's actually completely legitimate for someone to question the decision of the *Guardian* to lionise yet another hoary old famous white dude from the 60s who lionises no one but other old white dudes. I mean, I often feel that "jesus christ, not another article about the 60s, or the Beatles or the Stones, I'm sick to death of white male baby boomers and their white male baby boomer taste" - I think it is completely legitimate and unfortunately still necessary to RMDE at that shit as the columnist is doing.

Merely ~ironic~ of course, that the people complaining about that commentary are themselves middle aged white dudes, but I'm not saying nothing about that. (oh noes! where is the middle aged white dude perspective? it is SO underrepresented by the press! etc.)

who lionises no one but other old white dudes

Plenty of white dudettes in his remix.

What thread were we talking about LOLrie Penny on? (argh Lex now you've got me doing it)

Because there is no part of the LOLrie / Ryan Gosling story that is not hilarious and ILX needs must be cynical about it.

haha i have officially not talked about the lolrie gosling story in public at all!

it seems very apt that it happened in the same week as samantha brick. writers taking the trolling concept underlying april fools and running with it for the whole week

round of applause to lolrie for cracking america though!

(would admire her more if she had actually made it up, and you'll note that at no point does she actually directly claim to have been saved by him)

apart from saying "I literally, LITERALLY just got saved from a car by Ryan Gosling"

yeah but her explanation of how that happened is something like "this man svaed me from a car and then this other woman said omg that was ryan gosling"

(as i understand it, i don't follow her on twitter)

I am laughing too hard to type on my iPhone.

It was just so funny because I kept seeing these "Ryan Gosling saves woman from car" things going by on twitter - but I didn't realise the woman he saved was LOLRIE PENNY, that just shot it into an exponential realm of funny.

And then she takes to Gawker to castigate Americans for being shallow and celebrity obsessed for REPORTING A CELEBRITY INCIDENT THAT SHE JUST COULDN'T WAIT TO BRAG ABOUT. And the whole "don't paint me as a ditzy damsel in distress, but... I walk into parked cars all the time!" I feel like an evil, evil person laughing at her, but she's reached the point of utter self parody. Everything about this is just hilarious.

But, y'know, if it helps her "crack America" by all means, go for it.

that whole "i can't believe people are making a FUSS about this THING that i didn't make a FUSS about in the SLIGHTEST, in fact i made so little FUSS about it that i am now writing an ENTIRE ARTICLE about why people shouldn't make a FUSS about it and btw LOOK AT ME and btw LEAVE ME ALONE I AM TRYING TO WRITE ABOUT WAR AND IMPORTANT THINGS but btw LOOK AT ME"

it is amazing tbh

Yes. And I'm quite sure that she ~thinks~ she is not saying "LOOK AT ME" but "LOOK AT THESE BIG IMPORTANT ISSUES THAT ARE SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THIS CELEBRITY I AM WRITING ABOUT BECAUSE IT'S SO NOT WORTH THE FUSS." Which only makes it funnier.

It was just so funny because I kept seeing these "Ryan Gosling saves woman from car" things going by on twitter - but I didn't realise the woman he saved was LOLRIE PENNY, that just shot it into an exponential realm of funny.

Me too!

I dunno, but then I feel bad. Because I don't mean this laughter in a mean-spirited way at all.

Like, I don't think she's evil or bad or hateful or anything, and I know that she is actually an incredibly sweet and lovely person. But I do just think that it is hilarious.

That for someone who is constantly going on about awareness, she can be incredibly un-self aware.

But, you know, who wasn't full of their own self importance when they were 25.

well, i'm sure it'll work and she'll increase her profile in a way that more self-aware writers her age might not, and there'll be good things and bad things about becoming the story rather than reporting it but there'll definitely be hilarious things. it'll be fun watching how and where she ends up

Maybe she will become super famous Britishers commentariat type person like Alistair Cooke and never come back

(but I didn't say that last part.)

If they take Laurie Penny can we take Laurie Pike?

I didn't get the impression that she was bragging so much as "WTF that actually happened to me!?!". I can't really imagine a regular twitter user who wouldn't tweet that? It seems the right tone and length for a bizarre contextless fact like that.

Also other lady confirmed his identity as she was uncertain due to having been just snatched from in front of a car.

Also she has been turning down media requests all day because actually fame-grabbing would be really easy but not in any sense a smart move.

These truth-blasts from the inside knowledge gained by spending 1.5 minutes reading her twitter page.

It's one thing to tweet a WTF moment. But did you actually read that Gawker article? This is the source of a large proportion of our LOLs. I don't see how your "truth blasts" in any way make any of it less hilarious.

The article seemed like the right thing to me - there are 67000 hits on Google for "Ryan Gosling" "Laurie Penny", it's still on the front pages of the UK and US news.google entertainment section, the "Oh she's making a big deal out of it" doesn't seem to really match what's happened.

However, I think it's actually completely legitimate for someone to question the decision of the *Guardian* to lionise yet another hoary old famous white dude from the 60s who lionises no one but other old white dudes. I mean, I often feel that "jesus christ, not another article about the 60s, or the Beatles or the Stones, I'm sick to death of white male baby boomers and their white male baby boomer taste" - I think it is completely legitimate and unfortunately still necessary to RMDE at that shit as the columnist is doing.

pretty sure the columnist is questioning blake, not the guardian. personally i agree that i can't be fucked reading about the beatles or the stones or whatever, but equally i find listing successful black people who should have appeared actually comes across weirdly and makes it seem like an entire race is a niche genre of popular culture that people should totally get into more.

i basically don't think making blake's picture is hugely significant of anything, or telling of anything about britain. maybe not being there says something positive about artists from other backgrounds, maybe it says something neither positive nor negative. maybe it says nothing at all.

The piece does specifically say that he shouldn't have included more people from minority backgrounds because he's been bullied into it or for the sake of tokenism - i think it's getting at the idea that there's an inherent assumption on the part of a lot of people, Blake included, that the British cultural establishment is a white one. It's a thought that probably could have done with developing a bit more, and an article that doesn't come across as saying anything particularly incisive, but it's not as bad as i'd expected from the commentary.

Given that the front page of the same Guardian concerned ongoing and pretty horrific racism in the UK - with several inner pages devoted to investigation of same - the piece reads as nothing more than "hey, let's hit an easy target," using the same tactics which in the eighties saw the Labour Party vote and NME circulation pretty much collapse through the basement. Which seems to me endemic of a greater underlying problem with the UK Left in 2012, i.e. a few more people are going to read this, go "OMG the Left wants to SPOIL OUR FUN" and they'll remain unelectable. Or, in the case of Blake, not knowing to leave well alone.

To be honest, it probably says more about the culture of rolling blog pieces than it does about the left. It's something you see a lot of in the US as well - lots of articles looking at the racial dimension to, for example, Game Of Thrones and not so many looking at endemic systematic abuses. It gets people clicking through.

i.e. a few more people are going to read this, go "OMG the Left wants to SPOIL OUR FUN" and they'll remain unelectable.

yeah i don't think anyone who would think this would be voting left in the first place tbh

nah, i personally have cancelled my subscription to the guardian and also the socialist worker on reading that piece

feel about the same w/r/t the blake thing as to the thread about sexism and racism in videogames, actually, that talking about the incidentally offensive aspects of art that is just plain bad and lousy is in some ways a point-missing gesture

also it is semi-public art he was paid by some festival or other to make, not something he did for its own sake, fyi

Meanwhile, was the Top Cat competition all about SEO OR WHAT?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/30/winner-top-cat-2012

i think it was ALL ABOUT CATS and have no problem w that whatsoevs

I overheard a girl in my SU bar say that Laurie Penny was her hero. Ooof. Also, does she still live with Nicholas Lezard? His column in the NS is 'great'/HOW DOES HE GET PAID TO CONTINUALLY WRITE THAT UTTER UTTER SHIT

No, she doesn't live there any more.

He was looking for a new housemate, but the New Statesman column about this seems to have been taken down. Here's the most you can now see of it:

I need a new young, female housemate (not in a pervy way)

you can find the whole column if you put one of the initial sentences into google - i am not surprised they took it down as it's super dull but also makes him sound like even more of a tosser than that guardian article did. and also because he's like 'laurie's away until june, i'd like a new young female housemate until then then please, it's not a sex thing, it's just that young women aren't threatening and won't argue with me'.

When I find it through Google I get a "page not found" when I actually click on it.

yes, but the article's still there in the whole edition on pagesuite professional (whatever that is): http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=61&refresh=4c1LxE7081Db&EID=0cf2fdfa-ce26-40cc-9ed0-d8757e6aa675&skip=&p=61

It's been a long time since I hated a columnist that much. And not even writing in the Daily Fail.

omg that bit about University Challenge

Thanks for the link (I think).

who are all these awful, awful people and why do they think we care about them?

It just gets stranger and stranger.

In G2 today, a confused piece by Barney Hoskyns about Southern rock (i.e. Allmans, Skynyrd) which basically says that Southern rock is great but actually it's not because of the area's history of racism. Great logical thinking there.

I don't get either why the Grauniad has suddenly decided to have a downer on Amazon. Lots of drivel both in print and on the website about poor benighted booksellers being put out of business by Amazon, it stops new writers coming through EXCUSE ME! Haven't I had a book out for the best part of a year? And who is stocking it in their shops? Precisely one in central London and it's not just me either - all you see when you go into Waterstones is the same old bullshit, celebrity kitchen nightmares and lots of loss-leader discounts. Take away the discounts and you have Daunt Books. Whereas Amazon actually stocks my book and that's where nearly all my sales have come from. If places like Waterstones were serious they'd tell their Finance & Marketing departments to go take a hike and actually take chances on stocking books by new or unknown writers. Rave reviews in The Wire and Mojo, called the best music book of 2011 in the Telegraph of all places - but none of that means anything to the chains - finance say shit, Waterstones jump on the shovel.

So I don't actually give a toss about how much tax Amazon are or aren't paying; they sell new writers, and bookshops do not, and until that changes bookshops have no right to have a go because they should be doing a hell of a lot more for the likes of us.