Sunday, January 25, 2009

Speaking out ...

... against gross misrepresentation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Does this man not realise that we have trained thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, of our young people in media studies? Does he not know that equal numbers of young British girls, despite having a baby or two, have finished courses on hair and beauty (admittedly without much positive effect on their own appearance, but as the great Doctor Johnson pointed out a long time ago, you can criticise a table without being able to make one). Does the author of this scurrilous article masquerading as serious commentary think that, in a crisis, people will go without their televisions, their hair or their beauty?

2 comments:

  1. I know you admire this man but I find him so awfully mean-spiritied and nasty to those less fortunate than himself. He always ups the bad and ignores the good. What about all those thousands of young people in low paid jobs doing honest work. I really hate reading his classist vitriol, which presents a very narrow view as opposed to anything approaching most ordinary people's experience in the UK.

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  2. Actually, Maxine, I have started to wonder about these reports. Was it Abraham Maslow who said that meaning is intentional, and that we see what we're looking for? Dalrymple often writes well and the vitriol can be enteratining, but surely this negativity is becoming a shtick, is it not? Moreover,it is one thing to expose the vacuity of much contemporary art, it is another to heap scorn on people simple for being less advantaged than oneself.

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