From Free Life, Issue 16, April 1992
ISSN: 0260 5112

The Party of Humanity?

Some rational and humanitarian words from the eminent literary and social critic Richard Hoggart:

Are we more effectively educated, educated so as to meet those two main demands of a democracy, for a widespread sense of individual and communal responsibility? Not at any level ... [We are] just literate enough to be the dupes of a largely discredited popular press ... and of all the hordes a commercial open society throws up, the verbal and visual lice on the body politic.

Richard Hoggart, "The Mission and the Vision", The Guardian, 4 March, 1992.

Sixty Million Savages Can't Be Wrong?

The descent from scientific socialism to politically correct relativism as manifest in the The Guardian's television critic's criticism of a documentary about an immigrant family who beat their daughter to death whilst "exorcising" the evil spirits which possessed her:

... the point needs to be made that although we in the arrogant West may laugh at the notion of imps, the whole world east of Egypt accepts them implicitly.
Francesca Turner, "Watching Brief", The Guardian, 17 December, 1991.

The Higher Criticism

And another Guardian film critic supplies more incisive aesthetic insights:

In Alien, the beast pursued Sigourney Weaver around the metalic isolation of her craft until she bit back. In Blade Runner, Harrison Ford stalked replicants and was himself stalked, through the hellish megalopolis of 21st century Los Angeles. Both films were perfect metaphors for the 80s' capitalistic, paranoiac edict: eat or be eaten.

Beverley D'Silva, "Keep on Runnin' ", The Guardian, 15 June, 1991.

Politically Incorrect

And while on the subject of food, a Guardian reader complains about the beam in that paper's own eye:

I really must protest at the policy of continuing such a series as "Out to Lunch" [a restaurant review] column alongside traditional Guardian features whuch, rightly, remind us of global poverty, disease and hunger.

There was something utterly repugnant about last Saturday's issue where the lead article featured the aweful plight of victims of the Gulf War, while the author of "Out to Lunch" thought, of a London restuarant lunch, "%pound;73 for two people, including a bottle of decent rose, but not the tip, wasn't at all bad."

I feel sick at the Guardian's continued hypocritical policy of highlighting serious social issues while encouraging the trivial pursuits of those with too much money. Stop this hypocrisy now! What do other readers think?

Dorren Hawkins, "Letters", The Guardian, 25 May, 1991.

The Soul of Socialist Man

... which assumes these bozos can think. Consider another obvious Guardian reader who has escaped into the columns of the Sunday Telegraph to voice his criticism of Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke:

[Clarke] has undoubtedly given enormous pleasure to millions ... but I wonder if I am alone in detecting a certain shallowness and juvenility in his approach. Maybe he is only reflecting the juvenility of contemporary humanity.

In many ways he is the high-priest of arrogant, hubristic 20th-century science and technology, which seems convinced that the earth, the moon, the planets, the very universe itself only exist to tickle man's scientific curiosity and to gratify his self-indulgent lust for speed, convenience, and an ever-increasing supply of consumer playthings.

If indeed [Clarke] has "done more than almost anyone to push the hunmam race into space" then it's nothing to be proud of: these days I can never look at the moon without deep sadness, knowing that it has been contaminated by the feet of men, and, as even Mr. Clarke admits, that it is likely to become just another human junkyard in the years and centuries ahead. Man pollutes wherever he goes, and the further he travels in space the more damage his greed and vainglory will inflict. Is it not enough for us to have wrecked our own planet?

Our fundamental error seems to be in thinking that the more control we have over our environment through technology the more secure we are.

I think we must accept that there are areas of our life and the world around us that we can never control and should not try to. Instead of squandering vast sums on exploring the solar sysyem and beyond out of mere trivial curiosity, we should at first learn to live in harmony with our planet, learn that the only space worth exploring is our own inner space.

Technology alone, wonderful as it might be, can never fill the vast spiritual vacuum at the heart of contemporary life.

D. L. McCallum, "Letters", The Sunday Telegraph, 28 May, 1989.

The New Socialism

The latest socialist rescue hypothesis from the economics correspondent of the Guardian - sounding suspiciously like fascism/national socialism (and its "productive/unproductive" capital, "third way" talk) to me:

It is not true that sound money and free markets are the only ingredients for the success of a capitalist economy, as a growing body of literature argues ... Individualistic, deal-oriented capitalism of the British and US variety is giving way to another model which stresses collective values and long-term thinking.

Will Hutton, "Tories Legacy Condemns Them To Reap Where They Have Sown", The Guardian, 13 April, 1992.

Fascist Feminists

The Guardian has also become a primary haven for the new wave of fascist feminists. Regular "womans columnist" Liz Hodgkinson thus informs us of the latest advances in feminist science:

Robert Maxwell has been exposed as a liar, cheat, bully, crook and gambler on a scale almost unprecendented this century ... one question that remains is could there ever, conceivably, be a female equivalent of Robert Maxwell?

Could a woman ever do what he did? ... I think that the answer has to be no. The late Robert Maxwell was a monster firmly in the male mould ... It seems that men's brains are built to be able to focus intently on a single issue and forget everything else. Only a man, I think, could become so dominated by the idea of saving his company at all costs that he could fool himself that eveybody would soon get everything back, and more ... I don't think that a woman could rationalise to that extent ... Women can have ego problems, of course, but all the over-whelming ego maniacs have been men ... Conditioning and environment play their part, but we also have to take into account the profound influence of the male hormone testosterone.

Liz Hodgkinson, "The Last Tycoons", The Guardian, 17 December, 1991.

Hole in the Head

Even rock 'n' roll isn't safe. A delcious brew of fascism, falsehood, sexism, victimological paranoia, affirmative action, self-contradiction, illogic, and scatalogical fantasy from Guardian women's writer Liz Evans and her idol Courtney Young:

With her long pale form, blonde tangle and scarlet pout, Courtney Young is the ideal candidate for male journalists seeking another broken siren for their catalogue. Men, it seems, have trouble with her.

Love sings, screeches and plays vicious guitar with Hole, the latest, hippest rock 'n' roll thing to come out of Los Angeles ... [Love says]'The pool of women to play with is small. I've kicked girls out of this band for playing too much like guys ... Girls' playing is compassion and rage, and it can also be ugly and jarring. To deny my femininity and just rock out like a guy would not be part of evolution ...

Like all women, Courtney Love is confused. She doesn't pretend to have any anwers, but she isn't the lost, vulnerable creature many have intimated. This woman wants to kill rock stars, open for Guns 'n Roses and "have 50,000 people throw shit at me". She wants to wrench open the attitudes towards women in the predominantly white male game of rock 'n' roll. "The American male runs half the global world and grows up on rock music from day one. If you can alter the psyche of someone who's growing up to be a rapist or a total misogynist, you're creating values and instead of making the void bigger, you're making it smaller".

Liz Evans, "Calling the Tune", The Guardian, 11 December, 1991.

Freudian Fantasy

Fascist Feminism also also meets Freudian sexual fantasy in the pages of the Guardian, stimulated by a penetrating anlaysis (geddit) of the Gulf War:

War is a boy's game ... [The Gulf War] is being run like the quintessance of machismo, an American football game ... ... American film of Cruise missiles locating windows, doors or ventillation shafts through which to hit their targets has stimulated phallic fantasies in both sexes, [Dr Hanna Segal, a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society] has found. "I was very impressed with how many patients, male or female, were excited by these Cruise missiles going in."

Sarah Boseley, "Battle of the Sexes", The Guardian, 29 January, 1991.

Capitalism through the eyes of John Pilger, reviewing Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth:

Thought control in capitalist democracies is by necessity more thorough than in tyrannies ... The big old lie that only capitalism is good for you is carried by media - advertising and public relations included - whose technology gives it transcendent powers and manipulation that not even McLuhan immagined ... the new brainwashing ...

... the Beauty Myth is a relatively modern piece of social engineering designed to control a new class of literate women who might be its critics.

John Pilger, "Beauty is in the Eye of the Manipulators", The Guardian, 26 September, 1991.