Dislodging the draft(s)
In a bid to break the blockage, here are the nearly newsletters of the past month
With a mixture of anxiety about saying the wrong thing and inertia in the face of huge and horrifying news stories, there’ve been fewer issues of this newsletter recently than I would’ve liked to produce.
Consider this edition a selection box of the ideas that nearly made it:
Tattered threads of nostalgia
… on columnists’ looking back to the 80s to find answers for today’s fears. From Lord Finkelstein over-thinking Sting lyrics…
I’ll tell you what has been keeping me awake at night. It’s this: what if Sting is wrong? In 1985, Sting had a hit with a song called Russians. A reflection on the Cold War and nuclear weapons, Russians argued against the “hysteria” of President Reagan and the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. And it finished with these words: “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology/ But what might save us, me and you/ Is if the Russians love their children too.” … It’s obviously right that the Russians love their children, too. But what if they have a different idea of what loving them might mean?
… to Helen Rumblelow in The Times today suggesting that Russians didn’t fear nuclear war because they didn’t see Threads…
…Threads was unilateral. It was not dubbed into Russian and young Putin never had Threads nightmares.
Makes you think’
Alastair Campbell posting the Ukrainian propaganda clip of a CGI attack on Paris with the words “makes you think” has led to satire — dead since Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize — once again being disinterred and made to dance a grim boney shuffle.
Pie Another Day
I almost wrote about the ugly spectacle of Jonathan Pie contributing a video about Russian money in the UK to the New York Times but watching it once sapped what little was left of my will to live that day. Suffice to say Tom Walker’s inelegant explanations that he only licenced Pie videos to Russia Today did little to convince me that he was the right man for the job.
In the cold
Quentin Somerville’s powerful report from Kharkiv last week included a section where he presented a piece to camera while walking among the bodies of dead Russian soldiers.
I spent most of Friday writing about the phrases “In a petrol station forecourt, a dozen Russian dead. The bodies, we are told, will be left to the dogs.” and “This whole area is littered with dead Russian bodies.” before junking the piece.
I’m still thinking about who gets to retain humanity in death and who can be reduced to bodies and scenery.
Lovestruck bakers and British 'lions'
A story in The Times last week about a ‘lovestruck’ French baker who travelled from Paris through Poland and into Ukraine to ‘save’ a woman made me think about the ‘human interest’ angles. Anthony Lloyd’s story left it until the final paragraphs to reveal:
Yet the course of true love never runs smooth, and she is late for the rendezvous. “When we spoke on the phone, she said she needed a little more time to think about it,” Colas admitted today, looking slightly crestfallen. “I hope she really wants to escape to France with me and that our love story won’t turn into a tragedy.
“I am 90 per cent sure she’ll take the bus tomorrow to meet me. The other 10 per cent is too awful to think about.”
This discarded draft also brought in the valorising tabloid stories of “British lions” volunteering to fight in Ukraine. I may come back to that topic.
Eternal sunshine of shithead mind
Another potential draft ‘inspired’ by Alastair Campbell.
In a column last week Campbell used his diary entries mentioning Putin in an effort that might best be described as “history shall be kind to me as I intend to rewrite it in the pages of The New European.”
Russell Brand: Rogan with a wig, Icke in yoga pants
I might come back to this one.
Jeremy’s cocktail recipes
Pondering why it’s now permissible for a BBC journalist to share details on how to most effectively deploy a Molotov cocktail1 and which other conflicts it would be allowable in? This would most likely have expanded to a more general look at the illusionary and transitory nature of ‘impartiality’.
From the Oligarch region…
An attempt at looking at language in tabloids and broadsheets alike and how our homegrown corruption is described very differently to the imported varieties.
More Bullshit Servings
’Inspired’ by The Atlantic’s abysmally timed, heavily-lubricated handjob profile of MBS. Another one that I will likely return to around Boris Johnson’s forthcoming debasement tour of Saudi Arabia.
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Surely these should be renamed in line with the rebranding of White Russians.
Yes a neat evisceration of the ongoing Campbell Official History of the UK in the World. Perhaps most interesting:: Oligarchs especially spiked or deleted journalism on Lebedev and more widely to include Australian and British oligarchs. Lebedev a way in. British Lions maybe. Possibly a fading topic till one dies. One relayed on Novara last night of course. Johnson in Saudi. Why not Venezuela? They kill less dissdidents. 'Oh but we're allied to Eastasia... till we're not.' This really neeeds tackling. US might veto its client state UK but desperation and a hopefully Saudi niet might focus Johnson's frazzled mindlessness. Out in the Cold re dehumanising death of Russian conscripts. There's a part of me I admit that doesn't mind if the Azov regiment and (mythical, mooted) Syrian Army volunteers mutually slaughter each other. Though Aaron Bastani's brilliantly chilly humanism in 'they're human beings Michael' rings proleptically in my ears.