Like many socialists, I positively enjoy reading telephone directory-sized volumes of heavy duty political theory; most people don't. That's why the non-fiction bestseller list is largely composed of cookbooks and tragic childhood pot-boilers. Yet this is something that the left rarely keeps this in mind when trying to get its message across.
To put the same point another way, come up with a list of the most important living anglosphere intellectuals, from across the spectrum. Off the top of my head, I’d mention people such as David Harvey, Robert Brenner, Francis Fukuyama, Noam Chomsky, Samuel Huntingdon, Joseph Stiglitz, maybe Richard Dawkins.
You might select entirely different names, but hopefully you see where I am coming from on this. Whatever you think of their arguments, not to have these guys on your bookshelves is equivalent to falling asleep in class. But while most of this blog's readers know who they are, for most of the population, name recognition will range from limited to virtually non-existent.
Then think about the people who most shape popular political perceptions. True, some of the above have access to broadsheet op-ed pages. But in this context, the Guardian’s readership is too miniscule to count.
The mass audiences in Britain and the US go to those with broadcast and tabloid slots. The other common denominator is that they are usually effective humourists.
Any one column from Richard Littlejohn - pictured - will have more political impact than a dozen party conference speeches. Not having a comparable figure on our side is a loss for the left.
Littlejohn would probably like to think of himself as even-handed, and it is true that he directs plenty of venom towards ‘Call Me Dave’. Maybe his underlying message is closer to the UK Independence Party line than Compassionate Conservatism.
But the ability to write the soundbites his target audience of Sky viewers and Daily Mail readers later roll out as if they had thought them up themselves is a prime political asset for the British right in general.
On the other side of the Atlantic, US political satirist PJ O’Rourke is another case in point. The politics suck, but the gags are actually funny. That means the politics usually goes unnoticed.
But they are certainly there. I’ve just finished his book ‘Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism’. When writing about the Middle East, for instance, he quotes leading US rightwing academic experts on the region, including Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis. The man has obviously done his homework and builds it in to what he writes. He's good, damn it.
A handful of figures on the left can pull off the same trick. I watched a DVD of the Michael Moore flick Sicko a couple of nights back, and couldn’t help admiring how well it was all done.
I mean, it was dreadfully simplistic stuff. There are plenty of more sophisticated arguments for universal healthcare in the US than the ones he adduces, but that is entirely beside the point; reeling off country-by-country stats on proportion of GDP spent on health services is just plain dull.
In Britain we have Mark Steel, who can be extremely funny when he is on form, but lacklustre when he isn’t. Mark Thomas has built a young audience with an anti-arms trade stand-up routine. I’m not in a position to judge how effectively George Galloway utilises his TalkSport and cable television outlets as an anti-war platform, as I haven’t managed to listen to either. I’m sure readers will have their own opinions.
None of this is to decry the importance of theoretical clarity in politics. But we are not faced with an either/or choice here. Let me conclude with a plea for the left to transcend its frequently turgid literary output and at least try to couch its agitation in digestible terms. Until we do, few will listen. Sadly, we remain abso-bloody-lutely hopeless in this respect. Any ideas why?
Posted at 15:12, 27 March 2008
Comments (58)
Too many people on the British left are just basically a bit emotionally uptight and humourless. A glance at the popularity of the most recent thread you started before this one would demonstrate that, Dave.
Thing is, I know lots of funny and articulate and down to earth people on the left. There's a whole being less than the sum of its parts thing going on here, that's for sure.
When Piers Moron was editing the Daily Mirror and gave John Pilger carte blanche in the run up to the start of the Iraq War - that was probably as good a chance as the British Left have had recently to get some of our ideas into the mainstream.
Sadly, the Mirror circulation dipped slightly when Pilger was given the front page, and the shareholders and bosses of Mirror decided to put profits first and returned to the usual tabloid faire. So the essential structural problem is the corporate control of the media.
Aside from Galloway's radioshow, it is also interesting to think about the left wing Air America (I think it was called) experiment in the US - did that ever get off the ground?
Dave,
Not making any grandiose left claims for him, but check out Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO.
The Richard Littlejohns of this world are mediocrities by comparison.
Darren
Well, I would. But I can't seem to find HBO on Freeview.
Galloways radio show seems to attract a lot of "the CIA shot John Lennon" types.
Is that left wing?
There was an extremely funny New Statesman writer, Mat Coward. He now writes a very good gardening column in the Morning Star (the best stuff in the paper some would say) and a section about Crime Novels. As well as some anti-EU drivel in Spectre. Still, he is about the wittiest bloke I've seen in print for a long time.
Btw, Mat, I hope the endive plants are still going. Your garlic sadly didn't do too well.
Dave,
Looks like HBO puts the full episodes on YouTube:
Real Time with Bill Maher: Available until 4/7/08 (HBO)
Not claiming that Maher is a social democrat. I'm guessing that he is best described as a left libertarian with a particular interest in war and the environment.
First part of the show is Maher's ribald political stand up but the real political meat is with the panel discussion, the interviews and 'New Rules' segment at the end of the programme.
PS - PJ O'Rourke was one of the guests on last week's episode.
"Too many people on the British left are just basically a bit emotionally uptight and humourless. A glance at the popularity of the most recent thread you started before this one would demonstrate that, Dave."
The CPGB one? not only the lack of humour but look at all the trainspotter terminoloy -
Matgamnaites
Conradists
Bordigists
The BRS
Anyone evenly vaguely normal is going to be put off by this bollox.
Reply to Tim's
"Galloways radio show seems to attract a lot of "the CIA shot John Lennon" types.
Is that left wing?"
I don't agree .. there are very few "conspiracy" callers, and these tend to mention 911 (especially Building 7), after which George quickly moves on to the next caller.
The vast majority of the callers tend to be solid left wingers.
You can hear the recordings of the shows on
http://www.georgegalloway.com/page.php?page=content/listenlatest.html
Jeremy Hardy was exceptionally witty, if rote guardianism can be considered leftist, which it can't.
The British left could do with a Chris Rock, little attitudinising over foreign policy, plenty of highlighting inequality, a degree of perspective, compulsive mockery of dishonest bollocks from all sides.
Truth to tell, if we unearthed one I'd probably vote for the fucker.
"But let me conclude with a plea for the left to transcend its frequently turgid literary output and at least try to couch its agitation in digestible terms. Until we do, few will listen. Sadly, we remain abso-bloody-lutely hopeless in this respect. Any ideas why?"
Umm, it couldn't be that when the turgid prose is left behind, when the *ideas* are presented in digestible terms, that people would actually understand them and thus realise they are entirely bo****ks could it?
Only asking mind as it's a thesis you don't seem to have considered.
For example, telling the average man in the street that "x% of children live in poverty" doesn't actually mean they're eating one piece of bread and dripping a day, rather, that it means a definition of relative poverty, that it means that some children live in families with less than others, tends to rather change their view of how much redistribution should be going on.
I reckon it’s a few different factors including:
- A tendency to ‘talk inwards’ so you can impress your mates and peers on the left rather than non-politicals, as rewards/feedback are easier to get that way.
- A tendency for old hands to throw their weight around by dissecting everything to within an inch of its life and show off their historical knowledge, which tends to imprint itself on newcomers who feel the only way they can keep up and be taken seriously is to read heavily and match the language - which tends ot be a vicious circle.
- The type of people who come in to the left are often loners in everyday life – Maurice Brinton’s socialist cultists - which tends to mean a higher percentage have no sense of humour or interpersonal skills.
- Little training or updating of communications skills, and poor utilisation what we’ve got – most of our literature is aiming at a market which has shifted massively since the 19th century, but you wouldn’t think so from the writing and styling of our products.
- Numbers. They have more, and the rewards are way higher for supporting right-wing views, so they’re going to pull in talent where we don’t have the muscle to.
There’s a load of others, but I’m about to finish work ;).
"For example, telling the average man in the street that "x% of children live in poverty" doesn't actually mean they're eating one piece of bread and dripping a day, rather, that it means a definition of relative poverty, that it means that some children live in families with less than others, tends to rather change their view of how much redistribution should be going on."
Pointing out that you're going to spend the majority of your active life toiling for the greater glory and profit of some chinless gimp who got given his/her ownership of a good portion of your life on a plate may tend to strike a chord or two.
I confess I am somewhat dumbfounded at finding a post appealing for a left which is more accessible to and more understanding of ordinary people next to one hailing the Weekly Worker as the kind of paper the left needs.
I used to read humorous columns & think "I could do that" (or, in the case of Mat Coward, "I could do that although not nearly so well") - so when the Socialist Movement was in the process of launching its paper socialist I wrote something on spec & offered it to them. Answer came there none - they didn't even acknowledge the letter. (I should say that I was involved in the Socialist Movement - when I say 'they', these were people I met & talked to on a regular basis.) Some years later I offered a jokey column to the IT magazine I was working for at the time. They liked it; over the next ten years I sold them about 100 of the things.
Which suggests to me that socialists have even less of a sense of humour than IT geeks. Or possibly vice versa.
I think it is a lack of humour. Political correctness limits your scope as well, as does a need not to be seen as cruel. A lot of humour has some cruelty in it. The only left-wing humour that has made me laugh was cruel. But you lot can only be cruel about your baddies; George Bush, fat Americans, Tories, toffs and Seff Afrikans etc.
Give me the choice between a good gag and a good political point, I will take the gag. How many on the left would say the same?
Re: GF's comment:
Is the right really claiming a monopoly on political humour?
If there's a comedian on the right whose funnier than the late Bill Hicks, George Carlin or Bill Maher I've yet to hear of them.
Francis Wheen was funny when he wrote for the Guardian. Not heard much from him lately though.
If we're discussing newspaper columnists, I like Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror. He's much more amusing than Richard Littlejohn.
In America, Al Franken has made a lot of money out of being a comedian and writing best-selling leftie books, and is going to be a Senator in November.
Mentioning John Pilger in the same sentence as populism says it all! This is the man who, single-handedly, made me give up on the New Statesman.
P.J. O'Rourke's politics may suck but he's not only funny but HUMAN whereas Pilger simply bores me to tears and Michael Moore is rather a prima-donna. Perhaps the late Claude Cockburn deserves mention as an opinionated left-wing gadfly. Francis Wheen, I agree, can strike a chord - and occasionally Francis Beckett.
Though iconic in her own way, Polly Toynbee doesn't really do 'populist' and as for Blunkett and Hattersley's columns ... pass the sick bag Alice!
The overall theme of the original post is true though - the left is pants at populism.
Where is Ben Elton when his country needs him?
"Where is Ben Elton when his country needs him?"
Trying to work out which tax haven to stuff his publisher's advances in I would imagine.
Its obvious isn’t it . Comedy is by its nature confiding and truthful because it relies on recognition. The left rely on ignoring the fundamental truths about people such as their loyalties self interest amorality laziness sexuality and insatiable appetite for ego massage . In their public and academic fantasy all sorts of exciting designs or living may be scratched on the OHP. None of them work , funny in itself
To put it your way
Funny= true = Not left wing assuming human paradigm as axiom
Sadly, we remain abso-bloody-lutely hopeless in this respect. Any ideas why?
Because the left is religious in its psychology, combining piety, self-righteousness, megalomania and a belief that ideology is more important than reality. Your "telephone directory-sized volumes of heavy duty political theory" are the equivalent of theology. Chomsky's a prophet and Pilger's a priest. Etc.
Lots of posts here have touched on some of the reasons, but I'm not sure any of us have quite nailed it (including me, naturally).
But there is something to be discussed in how offputting, how unpopulist and unpopular, the left's language sometimes is. For example, we often rightly lambast the insiduous effects of management speak, and how it's seeped into the language of Thatcherite/Newlabour politics. That all this talk of downsizing, streamlining, integrated strategies etc is just a numbing way of telling people they're being shafted.
But by Christ, much of how the left talks to itself, and beyond, does much of the same thing. In both cases, what's going on is the creation of a kind of elitist one-upmanship, combined with a bamboozling of one's audience through the medium of impenetrable language. This is profoundly undemocratic and has the effect of excluding, intimidating or just boring people. Indeed, some might argue that that is its aim - too many people go into leftwing politics to satisfy personal ego trips.
The Weekly Worker thread yesterday is pretty much exhibit A in that.
I've heard it said that, in the simplist terms, the Right is the politics of greed and the Left is the politics of envy.
Similarly the Right stands for "uneven distribution of wealth", and the Left for "even distribution of misery".
Envy and misery (no matter how well intended) are negative aspirations. Wealth and greed are positve aspirations if you believe you can achieve them.
There is nothing funny in a society driven by envy and misery.
Nah, all wrong that. The right radiates LOADS more misery and envy than the left: part of Thatcherim's appeal was an envious "look at those unions, those scroungers, those intelligentsia types in their various gilded positions/ivory towers. Let's attack them." And one only needs to listen to a John Gaunt phone-in/read a Littlejohn column/anything in the Daily Mail to realise that an innate sense of dissatisfaction, joylessness and anger is what powers the Right in this country.
Being right-wing has always struck me as a fun-free blend of being powerful yet resentful and unhappy.
Darren's right in his assertion: "If there's a comedian on the right whose funnier than the late Bill Hicks, George Carlin or Bill Maher I've yet to hear of them."
Hicks, especially, was exceptionally cruel and could not be accused of being 'PC'. Just fucking hilarious and truthful. Chomsky with dick jokes as he referred to himself.
humour thrives on adversity and not unsurprisingly a predominantly white male middle-class Left is not exactly the product of misfortune, so it often has a problem in that area, connecting with the wider populace
but I think Rob Ray is correct when he says:
"- Little training or updating of communications skills, and poor utilisation what we’ve got – most of our literature is aiming at a market which has shifted massively since the 19th century, but you wouldn’t think so from the writing and styling of our products."
This is a Communist blog, are you lot serious are are you having a laugh?
You make me laugh anyway, so communist must have a sense of humor. That is of course only those that never get within a country mile of actual power. Those that do, only laugh when they have starved half their populations to death. The current leaders of Cuba Albania China South Africa North Korea and Zimbabwe must be literally splitting their sides this very second, when not splitting other peoples of course.
When you lot grow up perhaps you may start to understand that communism is not an alternative to corporate capitalism. Communism is a construct of corporate capitalism created financed and designed as the justification for the evil that FASCIST corporate capitalism gets up to every day.
The alternative to corporate capitalism, if there is one, is real FREE MARKET capitalism backed up by common law, a written on tablets of stone original founding fathers version of the American constitution and PROPERTY RIGHTS. In short RIGHT WING LIBERTARIANISM or at least as close to it as practically possible. Explained as best as it can be to brain dead idiots like yourselves by the likes of Ron Paul and P J O'Rourk.
Understand please that the British Labour Party is a corporate capitalist socialist, and therefore a FASCIST party from its head to its toes, and has long since been one. It is the THIRD WAY which is a FASCIST way. There is more to being a fascist then jackboots and concentration camps. There is far more to Not being a Fascist, then promoting gay marriage and not beating up on your fellow man because of the colour of his skin. FAR FAR MORE to say the very least.
If you lot don't help get rid of this bunch of warmongering, sold out lock stock and barrel to the NEW WORLD ORDER, high masonic criminal despots ASAP. Prison or a re-education camp will seem like paradise compared to living out side one. For many ordinary people it is already. The way we are going many poor people will soon be begging for a prison place. Or possibly slicing up your kid sister just to get one.
You cant beat CORPORATE INTERNATIONALIST POWER you can only mitigate the effects of it at best, and hope for salvation.
You have been warned. But feel free to carry on playing at communism if you wish. Its still a free county but not much longer, and you still make me laugh.
You aren't funny because you aren't funny. The tragic enthusiasm for thick tomes on political theory is sad. It makes the obvious as the butt of jokes. Ordinary blokes are too busy getting on with making a living to have any time for such trivia. What you have to understand is that socialism is a dead philosophy and therefore an historical curiosity. Anyone that stil believes in it is therefore a curiosity.
Wow Dave,
"socialism" and "sense of humour" must have been on google alert over at the Little Green Footballs office..
It boils down to the fact that if you want to make a living from leftist journalism you usually need the sort of contacts that a public school education provides. Populism and public school do not match.
And if you would want to be a politician in today's Parliament for some reason, you would have to brown-nose to such a massive degree to get a sniff at parliament, and instinctive "populists" wouldn't do this. Once they had been through the whole process of university and associating with the bunch of crooked twats in Labour Students, populism would not be an option.
The answer to your question is simple: the Left can't do populism because socialists despise the people.
I would certainly say that the sneering and contemptuous attitude towards religious belief in the embryology posting a little further down (and there are countless other examples) is an indication of how little socialists tend to sympathise with the sense of meaning that ordinary people confer on their lives.
A lot of people think right-wingers aren't capable of being amusing at all. Not true. Mussolini looked hilarious swinging from that lamppost.
Assuming Charlie Brooker is the Charlie Brooker, then there's one highly amusing man of the left. I'd be both upset and delighted if he was poached by a tab. One reason some don't I suspect is the freedom they have - rumour has it Steve Bell could get much more on a tab, but they would put restrictions on his work whereas the Guardian are only really concerned about libel issues. More generally, I don't want to paint a golden past but popular newspapers used to employ a wider range of writers - the decline of the Mirror (Paul Foot, Pilger at his best), Express even further back, etc.
One can argue how far Dawkins represents the left - although Milne's attempt yesterday to paint "new" atheists as apologists for capitalism and war was particulalry crass given Dawkins vocal opposition to Iraq, Sokal making similar points etc - but he did sell by the truckload. I think his was 12th in the 2007 bestsellers list. Unlike Joe Popular I doubt the views DO was "sneering" at are held by many ordinary people. Secularism has been associated with left for centuries and with good reason.
[(he) didn't actually make the post but the original quote in it is attributable to (him)]
This has turned into a slightly bizarre discussion about how funny socialists are. I don't think that's really the point at all.
Actually most of the best comedians in the UK are left-of-centre in their politics (even if their comedy doesn't always strongly reflect it). So for that matter are most bands, TV makers and other cultural bods.
There are plenty of left-wing Littlejohns out there who I'm sure could write cracking popular columns, but there's just one small snag: there's no mainstream left-wing press to do it in anymore. It was decimated from the 1960s forward.
But on the wider issue of how left parties such as the SWP, the SP, the AWL (etc) come across, unfortunately I think Hogsback has a point:
religious in its psychology, combining piety, self-righteousness, megalomania and a belief that ideology is more important than reality.
Harsh, but there's a sad grain of truth in there IMO...
Do I detect a Bordigist-Matgammite-Littlejohn bloc against the left here?
What a load of cack that we have no sense of humour and lack contact with real life. Compared to who? Compared to such Suffolk Tory nutters as Steven Lark, committee member of the Richard the Third Society? Compared to the local Liberals, whose strangeness is a wonder to behold. Or the Greens, and animal rights crew, who held a sixty strong demonstration outside Ipswich Co-Op defending the rights of ducks?
As for Milne, whom I hold as a good example of left-wing laughing-stock, his article was against 'militant secularists'. That we are capitalists...
Cor blimy guv *you're* the toff. As the person who first used the phrase as a headline (you can google this and it will show I'm right) - In Defence of Militant Secularism - I wish I had the rhino of a well-off liar like Milne myself.
A lot of people think right-wingers aren't capable of being amusing at all. Not true. Mussolini looked hilarious swinging from that lamppost.
Ah, the old buy one, get two free offer from Italian garages. Well it got me to laugh.
Of course you have forgotten our very own Julie Birchill
Lefties can be a po-faced bunch of billy-no-mates, but it's not specific to lefties, it's specific to political activists (as Andy Coates says about about non-lefty politicos). Stuff we politicos find interesting bores the arse off 'normal' people. As a result I think these days being politically active is seen as a bit odd.
PS why has no-one mentioned Alexie Sayle? He used to be very funny. I remember one line where he said that he ended up in the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Florist). Did another good bit about making jokes about Stalin and how middle class lefties decided they could laugh at them because they were a comment on the nature of the Soviet Union.
Sadly, the Mirror circulation dipped slightly when Pilger was given the front page,
I wonder what on earth might have caused such a remarkable phenomenon.
and the shareholders and bosses of Mirror decided to put profits first and returned to the usual tabloid faire. So the essential structural problem is the corporate control of the media.
Indeed. Under true socialism we could put John Pilger on the front pages of all the newspapers, and then the right stuff would be in them, no matter how many people read it.
This is actually what happened in eastern Europe, you know...
Of course you have forgotten our very own Julie Birchill
You bastard, I almost had, and after all that expensive therapy, too.
Anyway, the problem seems to be that a lot of funny and talented writers are socialists, but that doesn't mean socialists are necessarily funny. Conservatives, of course, have the best jokes: Boris Johnson is one.
It's partly a problem of venue/platform ie no mass circulation left-wing paper because there is no mass movement any more and no theatres/television programmes that showcase comedy that is political. It's also partly a problem of the 'narrowness' of the activist movement ie not many genuinely workingclass people involved. I find middle class people take themselve far too seriously to be humorous, their whole training and education is preparing them for the pomposity of a profession or a manageriak role. Self-esteem (or amour-propre) is key to their whole psychological makeup. As Orwell said in 1984, 'The future lies with the proles.'.
The best left humour it seems to me is not written but cartoons, esp. Steve Bell.
The left is often restricted by PC, it seems to me, and many people who join left groups take themselves and what they believe too seriously to do humour very well.
Tom, spot on: my favourite line from Sayle was "The Woodcraft Folk - the Paramilitary arm of the Co-Op."
I know I'm a pretentious git on this but the funniest left cartoonists are French: Cabu to the head and the rest of the lads and laddettes around Charlie Hebdo (Reiser died some time back but there's plenty still around, and some new ones last time I bought a copy not so long ago). Now that is a really funny lefty satirical weekly. Really.
I realise that, amongst the po (or is it poo?)-faced Islamophiles in the UK the Pittites loath the much-loved Charlie because of Val, who's a bit of a Harry's Place type. But I note in passing that Pitt's attacks on the Charlie are lifted from Reseau Voltaire: 9/11 'truth' campaigners with some some very strange views about the 'Zionist' Lobby.
Tip, maybe Pitt will end up with Lyndon LaRouche.
Littlejohn made my sides split with his bile about the Ipswich murders committed by Steven Wright:
“It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of ‘work’, death by strangulation is an occupational hazard.
That doesn’t make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.
They weren’t going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur. The only kind of missionary position they undertook was in the back seat of a car.”
Why can't the left write humorous stuff like this?
Okay Sean: limit case.
I don't think you'd get any of us lot in Ipswich to have a giggle about that.
Maximum No.
BTW: I suppose you saw when our Trades Council Secretary, Teresa MacKay was denied the right to address the Million Women March in Trafalgar Square. All came down to our TC's position on Decrimilising Prostitution which is now declared in line with official TUC policy (posted here) and our association with the English Collective of Prostitutes.
Now it's obvious to Dave and to others, who've been around on the left for years, that we knew who the latter were: aka, Kings Cross Women's Centre etc. But they worked with us (I say us, I really mean Teresa and other women comrades) plus local people generally, including sex workers, and showed genuine respect, knowledge of what they were talking about and sensitity. Plus, basic common sense. And they are bleeding right.
Apparently the real comrades were up in arms at the demo at Teresa's exclusion.
Indeed Sean. My vision of an ideal future - a boot perpetually stamping on Littleprick's smug fucking hack cunt face. Seeing that worthless piece of shit's mugshot makes me wanna puke.
Still, this cheers me up:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cxmlaur5UsA
This thread seems to in many cases to be sloshing about, mixing up 'populism' with 'sense of humour'.
In terms of 'populism' (does that really mean 'popular' in the context here?) I think Tommy S, Gorgeous, John Pilger, Paul Foot plus and a few others can be said to be (or have been) popular, with left of Labour views, but views to the left of many (most?) of their fans.
As to humorous, I can't think of any right wingers who are (apart from my dark secret, Jeremy Clarkson).
Popular, cuddly, sharp and humorous - Linda Smith. She could take right wingers apart in panel shows and make them laugh at themselves. A real loss.
If we're talking about popularism among elected politiciansm let's not forget how popular Ken Livingstone was back in the days when the Tories were passing the legislation to abolish the GLC. He's been trading off that popularity ever since. I would also argue that Arthur Scargill was very popular during the miners' strike (if you supported the strike that is, I mean people were polarised, but you'd expect that.). All the others around at the moment, even George Galloway, can't really be compared to these. I am sure that back in the dim and distant past there were other, trade union and left Labour leaders who were popular, People like George Lansbury etc. What's the difference between these people and the pretenders to their crowns? Oh, yeah, they ain't bloody led anything.
In 1984 I was a computer programmer. At one point some code I was testing involved displaying a series of user IDs. I don't remember much about it, except that the user IDs were a maximum of eight characters long and they displayed in alphabetical order. For testing purposes, I created a dummy file of four user IDs, as follows:
ARTHUR
SCARGILL
WALKS_ON
WATER
Not a statement I actually endorsed, even (or especially) at that time, but it seemed like the right message. Rather be a picket than a scab, etc.
Two reasons why we find it hard to emulate Littlejohn: (1) It's easy to pander to ingrained establishment prejudices because that's what we've all been educated with at school, at home, in the workplace, by the bulk of the media (note Littlejohn's Ipswich bile cited somewhat approvingly above by Andrew Coates); (2) lefties are generally too uptight and take themselves too seriously to give commentators some leeway in attempting humour.
Galloway's TalkSport show is a bit too same-old, same-old for me every week although it makes a change from the rest and it's the best on offer. Mark Thomas would do it better. Stand-up comic Stewart Lee would do it even better still (hear him take Littlejohn apart on his Ipswich coverage).
Jeremy Hardy is sound but Mark Steel is still the best columnist I'm aware of in England. Ireland's Gene Kerrigan is good even though he now writes for Sir Tony O'Reilly's right-wing Sunday Independent.
Deepest apologies to Andrew Coates for wrongly attributing the Ipswich comment to him when he was rebutting it.
Jeremy Hardy is sound....the sound of a snivelling little shit.
Simple:
There are no left wing tabloids to develop such a talent.
This is because to start a new big paper requires cash. That comes either from a corporation or a private tycoon like Murdoch.
Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, and self-made tycoons and profit-making corporations don't (and never will) promote left wing ideas.
Er, leveller, the original comment on Littlejohn was clearly sarcasm...
Just to confirm, my comments about Littlejohn were indeed ironic. How could they be otherwise? Furthermore, I've seen Stewart Lee twice in the last year or so and as I remember he calls 'Der Stürmer's' star columnist a c*nt at the end of a great section of his show.
A sentiment that was endorsed by all around me.