Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

very interesting piece

Hadley's in full echo-chamber mode:

Yet I know a lot of non-Right-wing, non-bigots who are extremely angry at how things have shifted. My friendship group consists mainly of thirty-something to fifty-something progressive women, all, like me, lifelong Labour, or Liberal Democrat, or Green voters, all teachers, or civil servants, or writers, or lawyers. Most are not on Twitter, or TikTok, or any Mumsnet message boards. But when we meet up these days, they talk about Lia Thomas, the Ivy League swimmer who recently transitioned and is allowed to compete against female swimmers and is duly smashing women’s swimming records.

ie "Everyone one I know thinks the same as me and we're not extremists..Why can't everyone see we're just being reasonable?" rhetoric

interesting only in that it shows who she thinks is impervious to bigotry, tho to be frank we knew that already

Imagine being friends with a Liberal Democrat voter.

Well I would fall into that age group and I have never heard of Lia Thomas, nor does the case concern me much when you look at the problems faced by women’s sport (underfunding, lack of broadcast coverage for a lot of them, etc). It’s great to know that women’s sport, like so many other things, only exists to some people if they have an opportunity to go on about trans people.

Ofc they’re always lifelong Labour voters

Must be nice for all those progressive women to spend more time thinking about Lia Thomas than Ashling Murphy.

Yes.

"when we meet up these days, they talk about ..."

Fine, they talk about that one person. That's up to them. But don't they talk about anything else?

There are quite a lot of important and indeed dangerous things going on that one might talk about!

They must meet up pretty often given how recent the Thomas story is. Or maybe they're not on Twitter, TikTok (is TikTok especially transphobic?), or Mumsnet because they spend all day consuming american right-wing media like so many other non-right-wing non-bigots do

Yet I know a lot of non-Right-wing, non-bigots

Some of my best friends are not right wing bigots!

I like to talk sports with my friends too

interesting only in that it shows who she thinks is impervious to bigotry

Daniel is extremely otm about this

all teachers, or civil servants, or writers, or lawyers

such a shameful, screaming tell

Yes, class hatred screams out from everything these people do

if you want to picture the working class experience of working in a bureaucracy, Hadley's absolutely covered it

hatred but plastered over with squeamish distaste and patronage

"But when we meet up these days, they talk about Lia Thomas, the Ivy League swimmer who recently transitioned and is allowed to compete against female swimmers and is duly smashing women’s swimming records."

That's not even true. A basic search on twitter tells you that.

Didn't know all her friends were swimming nerds.

truly, what is to stop men across the ivy league from putting on one-piece suits and competing in these women's events?? apart from the current rules requiring documentation of three years of hormone suppressants, i mean

does unherd pay well?

or all of these culture war mills. the critic?

dork satanic mills

unherd apparently pays really well.

ooh! 'Tankies Have Taken Over My Webforum' has a nice ring to it

it really is astonishing to me the unresearched, fatuous bigotry that people who call themselves journalists feel okay putting their names to, but i don't know why, it's as old as the hills really

hangon is this the same wan whose friends all abandoned her for this same reason? she doesn't include an explanation of how they all came around to transphobia and are now totally with her. what an eejit.

ooh! 'Tankies Have Taken Over My Webforum' has a nice ring to it

― imago, Monday, 21 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink

You should pitch.

per an article from last year, she lost "at least a dozen" friends over being a transphobe & didn't at all understand why being an obsessive bigot was a friendship dealbreaker so my guess is by now the only ones left are those who completely agree with her, as that article suggests

yeah funny how that works

Adrian Chiles' latest is even better in context pic.twitter.com/s7JLqNPuCA

— future canon (@futurecanon) February 24, 2022

Now more than ever this is the Guardian content we deserve

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/feb/25/you-be-the-judge-is-it-ok-for-my-boyfriend-to-keep-butter-in-the-cupboard

ah fuck jury duty again?

Some people asking why no Chelsea in this article. Why do you think? It’s not for a lack of will believe me https://t.co/nXfCcsti7b

— Barney Ronay (@barneyronay) February 26, 2022

im not in any way invested in the guardian as a bastion of anything, nor even a facsimile of a bastion that is the closest thing you might hope for in this world, but this is a shocker

Because - he's saying it's been censored?

it's not a lack of will, it's a lack of remembering to mention him

From the same correspondent:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/mar/05/shane-warnes-death-is-like-that-of-a-friend-and-gets-worse-with-each-hour

Extreme headline.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz2YNYpCYAE6mBR.jpg

I have been consumed by grief ever since I heard Neil Warnock was killed by a frozen ice javelin of piss.... blah blah ..from the rosy-cheeked stripling to the gloriously grizzled and statesmanlike Yoda-Warnock of 2005, with his lovable little flared white trousers, his ennobling air of gravitas.

lol what a dickhead

I remember his ennobling air of gravitas when he said "Boris Johnson is good.. Brexit is good..now you just need to vote for Boris and bloody well get brexit done me old cobbers!"

you could just say he was the greatest spin bowler of the century and work on from there rather than pretending he was your dearly departed gentle and benevolent uncle.

op-ed on feminism by ... Rachel Reeves.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/06/progress-women-international-womens-day-labour-party

Zoe Williams:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/i-accidentally-took-my-kids-to-a-jeremy-corbyn-rally-how-could-i-explain-stop-the-war-to-them

Yes: "I accidentally took my kids to a Jeremy Corbyn rally – how could I explain Stop the War to them?" - it's real.

appreciative, tinkling chuckles ensue

There were some homemade signs, but two banners centrally produced, one uncontroversial: “No to Nuclear War.” The other was more problematic, drawing an elliptical but discernible equivalence between Putin’s aggression and Nato’s “expansion”, by saying “no” to both. This was quite complicated.

Why is she describing the second banner in such a coy way? Does she mean it says " Stop the War. Russian troops out! No NATO expansion" ?

I'm sure her pre-teen kids are quite capable of using wikipedia. Stop the War event ≠ 'Jeremy Corbyn rally, of course.

NATO expansion is good now?

‘War is bad because it kills people’

got no problem with this sentiment nor how it is expressed, even if dickhead posh guardian liberals who identify as left-wing because they once went on an ANL demo in '91 are going to ridicule it as "student politics" or naive.

I have watched the whole of the speech that JC gave in Trafalgar Square - last Saturday I think. It's excellent. It warns of the horror of nuclear war. In case anyone was wondering, it extensively condemns Vladimir Putin - not something that ZW would want us to know.

Quite something how she flaunts her ignorance. I'm sure it's intended as "relatable" self-deprecation but there's no reason not to take it at face value. The piece seems like it's leading up to how she explains the war to her children, the nuance involved in "No to NATO Expansion, No to Putin" - but she just ends the column instead. She gets paid for this?

She gets paid for this?

I never read any of these people because I can barely get past a couple of paragraphs without this question screaming in my brain.

They pay brisk money for this... oh wait, sorry wrong thread.

OK, I understand why she is finding it hard to explain an anti-war rally.

Some people have difficulty explaining biscuits..