Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I'm glad Suzy saw it too. JM seemed so pointless; just go away, woman! be quiet!

dire how she kept saying HE'S MY BOY
awful !!!

he's probably a tosser too, the Boy

the Max Gogarty line above is so funny !!

the really odd thing about the Review people is how many of them I have met.

Morley
Harris
Myerson
Churchwell

oh, OK, that's only 4. it feels like more.

wow I didn't know it was possible, now, to post that many times

maybe Kermode could be worst of all tho?

There's something really horrible about having this breezy, artful magazine style of writing applied to the writer's own anguish.

I have deliberately tried to strike my son, to punch him until he hurts. Who have I become? What happens to make anyone do that? And yet, later that day, we find him sitting in the park outside, strumming a guitar with his sister.

I apologise (as though I could ever say enough). He smiles and says it is OK (and that's why I love him).

Wait, you love him because he allows you not to feel like an asshole on the same day you hit him?

Sitting in the park with his guitar - is there no end to his depravity?

You saw what happened to Doherty.

He mistreated a cat too.

Skim read the article; sounds like the whole family are bunch of narcissistic cunts, up to and including the cat.

He mistreated a cat too.

Next stop, Ian Brady

I just mentioned this to my own mother and she's pretty LOL WTF about the whole thing too, says that on Newsnight JM kept on absolving herself by claiming to have never once mentioned him by name. And now she's handed me yesterday's Times where Libby Purves has proffered a hearty response.

I love how this kid's increasing rebelliousness and perversity is entirely blamed on weed.

No, she told us, the cannabis isn't a symptom, it's the cause. That's when we put it together.

"That's when we finally had something outside ourselves to blame all this poor communication on."

"The problem, I suspect, was that Julie Myerson is a compulsive writer and that once lovely phrases begin forming in her head her self-control evaporates. Perhaps it is her equivalent of a really good spliff."

To be fair I do know of people for whom skunk has caused enormous problems. I also know people who smoke it pretty much every day and lead perfectly normal lives.

"The problem, I suspect, was that Julie Myerson is a compulsive writer"

Can we do something to help her to overcome this embarassing compulsion?

buy enough of her books that she never needs to write again

I also know people who smoke it pretty much every day and lead perfectly normal lives.

If frightening hapless codgers and mugging 10 year olds for their mobiles phones is normal, yes

I thought it was 10 year olds who mugged people

but I agree with you, I hate muggers.

I don't like Julie M either and it sounds like her narcissism and carelessness have finally landed her like a beached shark.

"i actually know someone who likes the smell of skunk."
http://marykcarman.blogspot.com/2008/04/hop-on-mexican-train.html

can someone else post nice pictures of skunks? Pictures don't always work for me.

I don't like Julie M either and it sounds like her narcissism and carelessness have finally landed her like a beached shark.

A bleached shark, judging by her hair colour in that old photo

the generalising abt drugs on this thread - abt their effects, the stupidity or o/wise of ppl who take them, their availability in se london etc - seems as bad as a bad guardian writer (eg toynbee)

http://www.heroicfineart.com/catalog/images/ClassicPepe%5B1%5D

from her introduction to the book, explaining to her son why she wrote it: "Don't worry, it's not so much about you - or at least it is - but it's more about me really." lol self-awareness.

More interesting if it had been about the cat

... or is that the sequel?

The cat gets a paint stripe down back. Pepe le Pew falls in love w/it.

Myerson family's ongoing struggle with skunk etc

as a side point.. is kicking your druggy kid onto the street to fend for himself really supposed to be the thing to do and the way to stop him falling into further drugs/crimes/south londonness??

seems counter intuitive to me

oh wait i see that's the whole point of the book?

And it gets worse: Family section Guardian editors have just outed Myerson as author of two-year Living With Teenagers column. Which was written anonymously until the kids cottoned on a year or so ago. Just how much money has she made over her kids'...exploits?

Family section Guardian editors have just outed Myerson as author of two-year Living With Teenagers column

Ho, wow, that makes sense. God, to finally have a focal point for the loathing that column inspired in me is quite bizarre.

Seriously, though, this woman is an unmitigated fucking cock and I intend to spend the rest of my life ignoring her, because she's too absurd to even consider taking seriously.

That's pretty much true.

Surprised anyone has ever read anything in Guardian Family section. I don't have a Family, but don't have time to read it. Does anyone with a Family have time to read it? Then again I don't really like Families.

you are v. strange.

On Myerson, I was surprised but impressed that the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts, former No. 10 head of policy Matthew Taylor, took time out in his latest blog entry to comment:

(by the way, has anyone yet written the inevitable Goody-Myerson comparison: on the one hand the ignorant untalented, lumpen Goody who is enduring media intrusion in her dying hours in order to provide financial security for her children, on the other, the fragrant, highly intelligent, middle-class Myerson who seems to be encouraging media intrusion into her family in order that she can sell more books, sorry that should read ‘expose the scourge of skunk’).

in an unexpected aside from his thinking on Public Service Reform...

Just what does 'fragrant' mean in this context?

Middle class + also hott.

locus classicus being 'the fragrant mary archer'

lumpen?

as in lumpen-proletariat?

I thought it was a cancer ref

next instalment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/10/family-julie-myerson

Since the identity of the children in Living With Teenagers
is now known, we have removed the columns from the
Guardian website to protect their privacy.

someone was probably canny enough to archive them yesterday when this was dropping

This blog post is OTMFM:

http://potlatch.typepad.com/weblog/2009/03/julie-myerson-vs-hannah-arendt.html

"She's the literary equivalent of a flasher at a cricket match, and she deserves to get rugby tackled by a steward then evicted."

V good.

Hope that happens IRL.

Must stop abbreviating!

i have read a few things about this but am not getting how it is different from other misery-memoir situations. is it that she's saying her son is an abusive bastard, rather than, as is more usual, her father? idk, people writing about their fucked-up family is not a new thing.

they usually wait until the father is dead, plus parents are reckoned to have more responsibility for their kids than vice versa. maybe unfair, but there it is.