Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I mean everything Perry wrote sounded and felt like something a professional trained therapist/counsellor with years and years of experience would say, and I didn't find that any of it read tough or "internet hardman" at all, but ymmv. Therapists/counsellors will reframe what a patient has said as a way to get them to confront the situation as they see it from a different perspective, it seems it would be a fruitful way of approaching.

I'm not saying Mariella just aimed to make the questioner feel better in the moment, but I am saying that often Mariella's columns read like she was playing internet hardman because - at least for the last couple of years - she seemed burned out and impatient and not interested in the people writing in, or quick to identify the complainant as "actually the bad person". I've enjoyed Perry's columns so far because she doesn't bring that energy, and her answers have seemed empathetic and productive.

Lolol

Not only will I not pay for the Guardian, this is so bad it's making me wonder whether there's a way I can steal from it pic.twitter.com/o75AoJWs0n

— jan 🇵🇸 (@janhopi) July 12, 2021

I see Philippa Perry discussed this on twitter (kudos to her for doing so). I've often wondered what constraints columnists have to work with and what goes on that we don't see.

It’s harsh, it’s speculative, and it’s the best I could do. I wrote to him personally as well where I had more space for sugar coating. He replied and appreciated my efforts. I can see he’s doing what he thinks is right but it wasn’t getting them anywhere.

— Philippa_Perry (@Philippa_Perry) July 11, 2021

She’s a pretty good egg generally (I met her years ago when I went round to interview Grayson and at the time she was consultant psychologist for Big Brother).

i kinda get they're proud of hyde and crace -- they seem popular even tho i think they're both rubbish, him especially -- but is behr on the list for the same reason, or morely likely bcz he'll pout ands feel left out if mom and dad don't give him a lollipop? it's the internet so i've no doubt *someone* has linked a behr piece and called it "insightful! brilliant!" but come on lads he's a world-famous idiot

any fule kno

Bradshaw is a movie critic I trust less than even Commode - he's the absolute worst. He doesn't even review Sean Penn's latest turkey, he actually attempts to get invited round his yard so he can fuck him.

brb letting el chapo's henchmen know abt the tryst so they can take out the two of them in one go

Mark S is right -- no-one likes Behr, except Hyde, Freeman, d'Ancona, et al themselves.

Not only will I not pay for the Guardian, this is so bad it's making me wonder whether there's a way I can steal from it

that can't be real!!

i trust Commode 100% thru the simple expedient of assuming the opposite of anything he says is true

philippa perry seems like a terrible person sorry

I find where the toilet paper is stored and replace a missing roll: this, I think to myself, is mutual aid.

Suddenly each vodka maté feels like a bulwark against an uncertain future.

I mean, not that I haven't had dippy thoughts at a rave.

What a load of bulwarks

But yeah I will prob have similar feelings of bonhomie if I’m ever off my tits in a club again, provided I don’t have a panic attack

http://artsoftheworkingclass.org/text/dawn-foster-1986-2021

"Having just completed a blog for them about my gender reassignment and dealt with a couple of minor breakdowns, I was furious with The Guardian’s sister paper, The Observer, for publishing a transphobic screed by Julie Burchill. Dawn had worked on it, saying it was impossible to decide what was acceptable below the line when the article was so full of hatred."

and the Manic Street Preachers, who funded a memorial bench in Newport despite Dawn not being a fan of theirs

hah hah very sad lol!

there is stuff in Dawn's family background I can very much relate to. I have a sister who was conceived when my mother was raped at 15 years old by a violent scumbag who was also the father of an uncle of mine. She really wasn't the type of person who is allowed to succeed in UK media, not smug and posh enough, but she fucking towered above that shower of wankers at the Graun.

Latitude perhaps has the image of being among the more genteel of the larger festivals – aside from the headlining bands, there are ballet performances by the lakeside, literary debates, ballroom dancing, esoteric cabaret, even, naturally for the middle classes, wild swimming.

naturally

hah! if you want to try a figuratively swimming in raw effluent vibe some of the highlights of the arts politics & science stage include "Mark Kermode Live in 3d" and "Jess Phillips MP" and "Supergrass Special".

that last one is actually a lad who dobbed in 17 members of the Ra during the 80s

oh I was hoping it was going to be Gaz and his chums moving their political views and insights from the pub table to a public forum for the first time!

a beerhall push, if you will

lol that's just what I expect from the SS

If this is the headline it doesn't seem worth reading?

Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

I can't believe I was once deluded enough to think she was one of the better ones.

I feel like she WAS one of the better ones until you lot started banging on about how bad she was, and then she actually became that bad

I Blame ILX

she was already bad, but was more quietly bad when the "IRA twat" put her in his shadow cabinet.

yeah there was definitely good things about her, and the way she talked about her own life experiences as education secretary was really eloquent and expansive and helped illuminate the corbyn-era vision of education against the asset-stripped notions that endure in a society obsessed with oxbridge/russell group prestige. This is a vision that only makes sense in the context of an overall commitment to anti-austerity, anti-racism though and these are two ideals she has proven she has no fealty towards whatsoever. her behaviour during the deputy-leader campaign really showed her true colours on the latter quite clearly.

she has always attracted a lot of sexist and classist abuse (including from Kieth) which was obv because a good looking bird with a regional accent and a quite individualist fashion sense will always be a target of misogyny and contempt in UK politics, and also attract support in some places if they are reactionary enough. She could have been so much more but I think her nativist concerns aren't just her going with the flow and are quite deeply held convictions of hers. Watching her move against Kieth wasn't even that good entertainment because two sides of the same coin.

guardian still more just than the sum of its worst elements (bad as they are):

The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis, by @Yohannkhttps://t.co/60fgnryRfa

— The Guardian Long Read (@gdnlongread) August 5, 2021

reading that this morning sent me off to listen to Smiley Culture for a bit then i remembered he was murdered

which kinda tied things together

"He believes that politeness and civility are undervalued virtues."

I normally bristle at this dreaded c word but coming out of the mouth of this brilliant fellow, definitely not!

his whole deal has been quietly starting important arguments in all directions for as long as i can remember

eventually he will even have ensured that 80s jazz fusion has the love it deserves :)

hah hah! he's also a big cold war steve fan!

big cold war steve is a kind of fusion, in this TEd Talk i will

Dawn Foster obituary is finally published:

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/05/dawn-foster-obituary?

It took quite a while in comparison to some of the other writers who passed away, and the people who wrote it don't work for The Guardian.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8Cvem8XIAEqApP?format=jpg&name=medium

I was waiting for someone to highlight this.

This is pure Guardian:

"Crikey. It seems extraordinary to me that someone so interested in equality and freedom would generalise about an entire group of people (lesbians) in this way – and this, I’m afraid, is where I conclusively part ways with Srinivasan and her ideas. Thirty years ago, academics were all high on Jacques Derrida. Now a lot of them appear to be drinking the Kool-Aid that is Judith Butler, high priestess of gender theory. But still, our conversation has been interesting: spiky, in a good way. Disagreement, and the freedom to express it, increasingly feels like oxygen to me. Once Srinivasan has smilingly guided me out of the college, unlocking a gate so I can leave by a side entrance and fleetingly feel a bit special, I experience something I haven’t felt for a long time: a pedagogic brain ache that may only be relieved by a very large bar of chocolate."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/amia-srinivasan-the-right-to-sex-interview

Even more pure Observer.

I'm sure she was dying to throw in a reference to the Sokal Affair.

Love to boast about my pig ignorance

My main gripe (undisguised envy) about Rachel Cooke is that she gets to review “graphic novels” for the Guardian, with seemingly no special expertise…

(Suzy may know more, but she strikes me as a very ‘crikey!’ sort of middle-class sensibility more at home navigating the restaurants and shops of Upper St)

It's the appearance of an intelligent, inquisitive, sensitive mind with no account for the damage this debate does to actual lives that is sickening to watch.

Cooke's graphic novel reviews seem unexceptional - standard Guardian lit grit reviewing applied to comic strips. I'm not sure 'expertise' is always a good thing when it comes to comics; t least, people who are relatively new to the form often have interesting things to say about it.

lol @ lit grit!