I have a bright memory of a radical journalist demolishing Norman Lamont, leader of Tories for Torture, in a debate about the detention of General Agusto Pinochet 25 years ago.
Thanks Mic - used to read The Times for years, not to agree with it, but to get a feel for the right of centre’s position but the dive it has taken from somewhere in the mid 2010s has been gradual but consistent.
To pick up a copy these days, it’s like a polished turd of an Express or Daily Heil that hasn’t found the “HUGE FONT” range or is keeping their stock of exclamation marks for the big culture wars it gently stokes.
That wrinkly, wizened old ballbag Aussie really has done a number on the old mother country.
Maybe it was just my mood one day but I was reading that column with Brett and Gail and I felt like if I kept going I would honestly not mentally survive how infuriating it made me. It's what you said but also the hollowing out of the very idea that anything is complicated or essential to understand let alone address. And this is what the papers have become more and more--like an asbestos blanket over the light of reality.
It is a bombardment of psychic damage and, exactly as you say, a complete rejection of the idea that things are complicated or require special effort to understand. They imagine themselves to be the perfect generalists.
I have a bright memory of a radical journalist demolishing Norman Lamont, leader of Tories for Torture, in a debate about the detention of General Agusto Pinochet 25 years ago.
So whatever happened, David Aaronovitch?
Thanks Mic - used to read The Times for years, not to agree with it, but to get a feel for the right of centre’s position but the dive it has taken from somewhere in the mid 2010s has been gradual but consistent.
To pick up a copy these days, it’s like a polished turd of an Express or Daily Heil that hasn’t found the “HUGE FONT” range or is keeping their stock of exclamation marks for the big culture wars it gently stokes.
That wrinkly, wizened old ballbag Aussie really has done a number on the old mother country.
Maybe it was just my mood one day but I was reading that column with Brett and Gail and I felt like if I kept going I would honestly not mentally survive how infuriating it made me. It's what you said but also the hollowing out of the very idea that anything is complicated or essential to understand let alone address. And this is what the papers have become more and more--like an asbestos blanket over the light of reality.
It is a bombardment of psychic damage and, exactly as you say, a complete rejection of the idea that things are complicated or require special effort to understand. They imagine themselves to be the perfect generalists.