Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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!

Greatly disappointed to discover another blonde melt who is quietly transphobic, this almost never happens :/. I don’t know her at all but middle-class from posh end of Sheffield and her workload suggests her partner is the main breadwinner, if you get me.

The effect of reading that whole profile and then that being the very last paragraph is a bit stunning. Like she spent the entire visit waiting to pounce, but simply reading the quote in the preceding paragraph shows that Srinivasan isn't generalizing about all lesbians. It's an almost elegant illustration of what "reactionary" means.

Plus the Derrida-->Butler narrative is laughable if you've actually been in academia any time in the past 30 years

Feel like all Graun thinkpieces - ok this is the Observer but, y'know, it's The Sun on Sunday really - should finish with a "P.S. I am terfing while I write this" paragraph

HIGH ON JACQUES DERRIDA

DRINKING THE KOOL-AID THAT IS JUDITH BUTLER

CRIKEY

"The effect of reading that whole profile and then that being the very last paragraph is a bit stunning."

The interviewer questions someone they have totally different politics to then get to have the last say in a last para sermon is a well worn out format.

I imagine 'she says, with some irritation' could have been appended to most of Srinivasan's answers.

xp: Hm, I think I'll call it a personal victory that I haven't read enough such interviews to recognize the form!

Or maybe it seems so deeply self-owning to me that I can't imagine making this series of decisions and thinking I came out looking better than my subject:

1) spend several paragraphs establishing your subject as an intelligent, thoughtful person with nuanced opinions resistant to caricature
2) directly quote them expressing an opinion
3) immediately mischaracterize the quote (accusing it of unfairly "generalizing" about a group) in such an obviously wrong way that it insults your audience and makes you appear either duplicitous or deranged
4) generalize about a different group with dated, inaccurate clichés
5) attempt to caricature your subject as a mindless devotee of a cult-like figure (who you misgender) not once mentioned by the subject

Obviously transphobes won't read it the same way, but yikes

Shoutout to the editor(s) who read the submitted piece and thought 'my, what a brilliant envoi! To the press!'

who you misgender

Tbf (unless you were referring to someone else), this New Statesman interview specifies that 'Judith Butler goes by she or they':

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

Ah my bad, I thought Butler used they/them exclusively

Amia didn't even link to it on her twitter so perhaps a mistake on her part. She would've known what The Observer are like.

Was very dispiriting reading people like Richard Williams linking to this yesterday.

You have to wait and work for ⁦@MsRachelCooke⁩’s payoff in this absorbing and beautifully written piece, but it’s worth it. https://t.co/AMmt63dJ6m

— Richard Williams (@rwilliams1947) August 8, 2021

I like Richard a lot but his politics are melty and I got that sense from him when I followed. Was one tweet out of a thousand and he was never aggressively pushing it. He is wise to butt out of it most of the time and concentrate on his beat.

It would've been great if most of his music writing pals had done the same.

I almost unfollowed him over some melty and plain wrong bullshit he posted about Sturgeon. But yeah he is basically a very nice guy and not one of the idiot aggro-melts and a decent music writer.

I know plenty of melts who still have no patience for terfdom tho. I guess you could argue he doesn't realise why this piece qualifies?

a lot of people just read the "oh my god disagreement is a dying luxury" bit and it tickles their melt pleasure centres so much they mayn't read the "also trans people shouldn't exist debate me"

can't read that Williams Tweet as anything but solidarity with terfdom tho tbh

That para did include guff about 'equality', generalising about others, stuff that if you weren't aware of how this debate operates on twitter you'd lamely like the look of.

I don't think Williams has a toilet obsession, is how I break it down.

Oh god, that’s lovely of you. Thank you. I hope others are as patient

— Rachel Cooke (@MsRachelCooke) August 8, 2021

Ugh.

does green heart white heart purple heart emoji mean "I'm a terf" ?

sorry I guess it means gEnDeR cRiTiCaL rmde

yes it's from the suffragette flag colours lol

Green - Give
White - Women
Violet - Votes

They aren’t allowed to used suffragette colours for terfiness, I ban them from it.

Sometimes they have an avi with a heart featuring the suffragette colours in stripes.

trans women are women

Problem is I've seen plenty of "not transphobic but not involved in trans liberation" feminists with those colours up too. They've co-opted what was a positive symbol, and there will be people who don't know about the co-option. Definitely worth double-checking if you see it, though.

yeah i've seen that and its all v confusing

anyway these people (terfs) are such weirdos. who knows what they're on about most of the time. They start talking in weird tones about 'sex classes' and lesbians being attracted to vaginas (i had thought sexual attraction was at least somewhat more nuanced than that) and 'male-bodied' people. i would definitely say 'dud'.

I lurk on Mum$n3t sometimes to my eternal shame, the feminism sub-board is basically wall-to-wall ranting about either changing rooms access or public figures who must be regarded as traitors if they haven't expressed searing hatred for anyone not espousing binary gender opinions. All very odd.

There does seem to be something slightly unhinged about transphobia.

Readers and fellow authors had been critical on Goodreads and Twitter of descriptions in the memoir, including the use of racial tropes such as “chocolate-coloured skin” and “almond-shaped eyes”, and references to one student as “African Jonathon” and another being “so small and square and Afghan with his big nose and premature moustache”.

Another passage was highlighted for the inclusion of ableist descriptions, in which Clanchy, a poet and teacher, refers to two autistic children as “unselfconsciously odd” and “jarring company”, and writes “probably, more than an hour a week” in their company “would irritate me, too, but for that hour I like them very much”.

kudos to the Orwell Prize jury for awarding one to this Kate Clanchy book and Picador for publishing this racist/disablist garbage.

earlier clanchychat: Literary Clusterfucks 2013

ah yes the failure of the publishers to either not gaf or not notice what kind of content they are putting out is understandable in this era. The Orwell Prize jury on the other hand, they allegedly read this and considered it a prizeworthy book. Oh and of course now Lionel Shriver has waded in to defend this trash.

failure the wrong word there but u know what I mean

you could be forgiven for wondering if Clanchy has even read her own book here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/16/i-used-to-tut-at-people-who-need-glasses-to-read-a-menu-then-i-joined-them-

I used to be a twat completely lacking in empathy! It's a Chiles format headline but he'd never be so crass.

that's psychotic

Yes, it's appalling.

Meanwhile:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/17/talibans-victory-afghanistan-laid-bare-western-hubris

In the shadow of New York’s burning twin towers, I was one swept along on that “something must be done” tide, that drumbeat for a war to stop terror and liberate oppressed people.

It's curious that history has repeatedly proven Jeremy Corbyn MP right, prudent and sensible about things, and the same people who were wrong get to go on calling him an irresponsible extremist.

xxp just saw on Twitter that Zoe Williams also used to believe hayfever didn't exist.

jay raynor's latest observer review made me chuckle, though i have zero sympathy for people who eat at such a place tbh

oh it was of 'polo lounge' in london.

jay rayner increasingly enraged as every dish arrives covered in polos

"A £38 bowl of rigatoni bolognese has a grimly sweet and cloying sauce that tastes mostly of tomato ketchup and profit."

Paying £38 for a bowl of bolognese is about boasting about the price you paid for it and nothing else. It's very clickbaity to write about it in the first place.