Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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.

they sell new writers, and bookshops do not

not out of altruism, but because they make a healthy profit off those writers, and should pay tax on that. can't get with this "don't tax the job creators"-esque angle, i'm afraid.

being honest, tG is the only online newspaper that i would ever want to give space to my blog.

the fact that this has now happened means i can now make my parents read a page on the guardian website which is a massive result.

link pls mark e!

thought that broke the hardcore rules of ile !

but hey as you asked :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/mar/26/blog-jam-ireallylovemusic

excellent stuff, mark!

More anti-Amazon rubbish in yesterday's paper; Tim Waterstone, who's got a cheek, and some vested interests on the letters page.

Of course, if Amazon were to go under (extremely unlikely), that would make life much easier for the online Guardian Bookshop.

Elsewhere in yesterday's paper, Deborah Orr appears to confuse current Labour Party policy with socialism. From childhood onwards, we do what we do because deep down we expect a reward for doing it. That's a fundamental part of human behaviour and until/unless 200 ft OMG ZING robots are built to run things, it's not going to change.

Worst was the fawning piece on Green Party London mayoral candidate Jenny Jones where the writer just drops in casually the information that "one of her daughters is a senior editor at the Guardian." FFS. If you're going to set yourself up as the antidote to News International and Associated Newspapers then you should have higher standards and not indulge in the same common nepotism. Otherwise as a newspaper you're not going to be trusted.

And another thing - and this also applies to Labour, the Lib Dems, the BBC and too many other people - never sell out your heartland. If you insist on attracting the ficklest of audiences you'll find that they're the hardest audience to keep. In the meantime, your "heartland" of readers, tired of being taken for granted, will move on, and abandon you.

As far as Amazon, new writers and taxes are concerned; no the situation isn't ideal, but where is the alternative? Where's the figbtback on the part of bookshops? Narrow margins? Lack of shelf space? If they took all the Tesco/WH Smith stuff and 3 for 2 crap out of the shop they'd have more space for new writers, and if they were really clever, or better still grew a pair, they'd use their big sellers to help subsidise the rest of their stock, and because that would attract more punters into the shop, their profit margins would increase. It happened in the seventies; it can happen again. At the moment too many "independent" booksellere are "characters" who think it's still 1912 and books should be hoarded rather than sold. Your business is to sell books, so get on with it and sell them. Never mind how much you paid the distributor in 1978, forget it and get the book out of the shop.

(sp: "booksellers")

i think you misunderstand me. i think it's great that amazon support new writers, and keep such a large amount of books in "stock". i don't think it's so great that they shouldn't pay taxes on the profits they make.

OK, so you don't want to talk about Amazon's tax avoidance.

Maybe one could talk about their union busting activities (yeah, bog standard for a post globalised world, right) or their appalling record on workers rights, health and safety violations, all of which has been documented pretty extensively in Mother Jones - a paper I'm not aware of having any bookshop of their own or being in direct competition with Amazon...

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

... but you know, who gives a shit about workers rights and being treated humanely or even *safely* so long as they stock *your* books, right? Amazon are simply *uncriticisable* so long as I'm alright, Jack. Socialism at its finest there.

This was pretty dire. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/07/copenhagen-really-wonderful-reasons

Jenny Jones is the Green Party candidate for London mayor. That's a Guardian heartland story. That her daughter works at the Guardian was declared in the piece. Do you really think the Guardian should ignore her because her daughter works there? It's hardly Rebekah Brooks going riding with David Cameron, is it?

Of course, if Amazon were to go under (extremely unlikely), that would make life much easier for the online Guardian Bookshop.

?!?

Online Guardian bookshop is a tiny part of Guardian business. Generates about 10 bob, and I'd bet it's run through a partner (might even be Amazon, as with the links to buy CDs on album reviews) - there's no Guardian warehouse full of books. The Guardian's reports about Amazon are not generated by some big commercial push to take over the online book retail market.