Princesses and Peas
In which we share the unending woes of three Guardian columnists. First, Nell Frizzell conjures a grand tale of sorrow and social injustice from her own unremarkable sleeping patterns and tells us that “going to bed early is our last great social taboo.” You heard her. Going to bed “before midnight” is a great social taboo. The last one. Such waywardness is, we learn, “a one-way ticket to condescension… and pariahdom.” “You will be ridiculed,” says Ms Frizzell. “If not shunned.” She is, nevertheless, being very, very brave. “It won’t stop me.”
Meanwhile, Bella Mackie, a Guardian comment moderator and daughter of the paper’s editor Alan Rusbridger, recounts her own fearless, indeed Herculean struggle with an addiction to… Diet Coke: “Giving up my favourite drink was as difficult as I had feared. I set about it with a determination to go cold turkey, knowing that even one can would make me slip back into old habits.” There followed a dark downward spiral. “For the first month, I felt exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open at my desk. Then came the nerves, the feeling that something was missing.” Yes, dear reader. Feel her pain and weep.
And finally, the chronically unhappy professional lesbian Julie Bindel bemoans the evils of marriage, including same-sex marriage, and is sternly disapproving of the fact that “there seems to be an almost total acceptance of [marriage] by lesbians today.” Specifically, what troubles her is that so many gay people, an overwhelming majority, “have a desire for ‘ordinariness’ and do not want to be seen as living ‘alternative’ lifestyles.” Given Ms Bindel’s niche career as a quarrelsome misfit and radical ‘activist’, this desire for bourgeois normativity simply will not do. And so she invokes the wisdom of feminist lecturer Nicola Barker, who tells us, flatly, that, “Same-sex marriage fits comfortably within the conservative ideology of the self-sufficient family and contributes to the politics of state austerity.”
Of course Ms Bindel goes further, as she must, and in doing so coughs up a contender for our series of classic Guardian sentences: “Isn’t marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers?”
A question foremost on everyone’s lips.
Bella Mackie, a Guardian comment moderator
But she’ll need all that sugar and caffeine to meet her comment deleting quotas.
chronically unhappy professional lesbian Julie Bindel
That should be her byline.
That should be her byline.
Well, I can’t offhand think of an article by Ms Bindel in which she’s anything other than sullen, indignant or captious. And she is a professional lesbian, in that she seems to think lesbianism is a job. In fact, she thinks it ought to be every woman’s job. Because desire, she insists, is simply a matter of choice. Or decree.
“For the first month, I felt exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open at my desk.”
Lucky you work for the Guardian then.
“Isn’t marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers?”
Curses! She’s on to us. Prepare the escape pods!
Judging by their work I was under the impression Guardian comment moderators were addicted to sniffing marker pens.
the conservative ideology of the self-sufficient family
We can’t have gay people being self-sufficient and ordinary.
Is ‘professional lesbian’ a degree or a trade?
These people. Gah. And they presume to tell us what to do.
Maybe Moonbat was onto something with his vision of Ethiopian fields crackling with laughter – a less affluent society than 21st century Britain is presumably spared the neurotic drivel of wankers like Nell Frizzell.
But she’ll need all that sugar and caffeine to meet her comment deleting quotas.
It’s even more pathetic than that: no sugar in Diet Coke.
Drink it or don’t, Nell. You’re going to die one day whatever you do.
Greg – “Is ‘professional lesbian’ a degree or a trade?”
It’s a degree. You have to pass a number of courses, including:
* The Proclaimers – Icons of Style
* Managing your Emotions – everything from angry to FURIOUS
* Men – Bastards, Pigs, or Pigsters?
* Great Lesbians of HERstory – A review of noteworthy sapphic ladies, covering Willow from “Buffy” to the present day
* The Vagina Monologues 2: Vag Mon With A Vengeance
* Subaltern Studies, or The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
“Is ‘professional lesbian’ a degree or a trade?”
Well, I suppose if you’re god at it, it becomes a craft….
Give Julie Bindel credit, she’s managed to upset everyone on the political spectrum.
Peter Tatchell is also concerned.
https://twitter.com/PT_Foundation/status/478855905824739328
Give Julie Bindel credit, she’s managed to upset everyone on the political spectrum.
Her clash with Laurie Penny, about unreliable journalism and making things up for effect, was also quite amusing.
Her clash with Laurie Penny, about unreliable journalism and making things up for effect, was also quite amusing.
Quite, she’s also upset progressives who think concern about FGM is a smokescreen for racism, people who dislike Julie Burchill and the entire transgendered community. After all it’s totally insane to argue, as she did, that a rape victim might object to a man in drag at the rape support centre. Who could be so insensitive?
The readers’ comments are also fairly entertaining. One reader notes Ms Bindel’s “genuine confusion as to… why gay people want to be normal,” meaning bourgeois, and how that relates to Bindel’s insistence that “sexuality is a choice, a political act.” Another adds, “She seems to have no understanding that… the vast majority of gay people… just want to get on with a nice normal life.” It’s also pointed out that, “she doesn’t seem able to explain… how two women marrying reinforces the patriarchy.”
Others, however, grumble about how “marriage is and always will be a conservative construct,” which seems a rather loaded, even quaint, way of looking at it.
So, I suppose the married lesbians who drink bottled water and retire at 10:00 PM will cause a rift in the space time continuum?
You know the end of “Return Of The Jedi”, where the rebels are having a proper old knees-up, having destroyed the renascent death star?
Well, if you look closely, you’ll spot a really grumpy female Ewok sulking in a corner. Having grown up bitter and twisted because refusing to shave your armpits doesn’t amount to much of a protest when you’re entirely covered in coarse wiry hair as a matter of course, even having just played a key role in handing the evil oppressor his arse is just not good enough for this one. She has to be really pissed off at something, all the time- anything. Anything at all.
That’s Julie Bindel, that is.
a really grumpy female Ewok sulking in a corner
Nah!. She’s upset that she signed up to be a Wookie and ended up a child’s toy.
http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/features/top-ten-jedi-facts.php?page=2
Interesting. The rush to proclaim one’s quasi-religiously moral bona fides most recently extended to plastering those little pink equal signs all over the planet. Because, you know, there’s no finer way to proclaim proud antiestablishmentarianism than to demand the sucker absolutely homogenize yours too.
Then I’m not sure what Bindel wants, or more pointedly, what protest du jour she’s all on about. Is it the cloistered sanctity of the quiet lesbian couple or is it the loud contrariness of the alternative couple that demands everybody pay to see them Proudly™ lapping up the collective benefit in order to accept that they’re exactly like everybody else.
Maybe I’ve hit on the paradox. Or maybe Bindel is also a blind squirrel. Because frankly I bemoan the growing fraud of statified 21st century marriage – including same-sex marriage – and disapprove that there seems to be an almost total acceptance of it by gays today.
David,
Bella Mackie is a true hero, and should not be mocked. Diet Coke addiction is no laughing matter. I, myself, am currently fighting my own demon addiction – Honey Nut Cheerios. Thank god I have alcohol to help quench my morning cravings.
Oh, and to add to my remark, it seems a foundational aspect of Progressivism is the notion that if a Progg can gin up a protest – say, the right to free beans for all pensioners – it naturally reflects an entire establishment determined to maintain an oppressive, anti-pensioner status quo.
Maybe Bindel hasn’t bothered to investigate if there is an Opponent whose zeal rises to the level of her own. I’m fairly certain there isn’t one who understands what that could be.
I am simply stunned by the implications of her writing, and not in a good way. How does this get published anywhere?
How does this get published anywhere?
And here I used to think foul rock lyrics were like foul film dialog: artistic interpretations used to highlight social concerns. Turns out they were all first person professions of depravity.
I would read The Guardian far more if it cleverly wove all three woes into one big comment on professional lesbian asylum seekers going to bed early while fighting an addiction to a ‘diet’ fizzy drink. Oh, I’d love to see that headline in fewer than eight words.
This is real issue:
This matter caused a row on a Face Book discussion that Richard Seymour of Lenin’s Tomb and guru of the International Socialist Network had with a number of comrades who took exception to his seemingly “liberal” views on the whole question of whether “Race Play” was racist.
TDK – And I thought chimping was unusual.
Would it make things better or worse if the white guy in the race play dressed up as Lenin?
I am simply stunned by the implications of her writing, and not in a good way. How does this get published anywhere?
Not to disparage you, but there actually is a very simple reason why any such objection isn’t going to get anywhere . . . Some guy named Gutenberg got that vehement objection from all sorts of people in the 1400s, and all the way back through the classical Egyptians we see all sorts of history of censoring this pharaoh, that pharaoh, all references to that other god, Etc.—have a look at the history of the god Set over the millennia for just one example . . . .
We can’t have gay people being self-sufficient and ordinary.
That.
Damn those conservative constructs.
Oh, I’d love to see that headline in fewer than eight words.
Professional Lesbian Refugees Addicted To Diet Drink.
“Isn’t marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers?”
Having the right to marry is really a conspiracy to keep gay people oppressed? There’s no pleasing some people.
There’s no pleasing some people.
It’s actually quite difficult to imagine what might please Julie Bindel. Even picnics upset her.
Professional Lesbian Refugees Addicted To Diet Drink.
Nah, you mean:
Professional Lesbian Sleepyheads Addicted To Diet Drink
Gotta get in Ms Frizzell’s soporifics.
SLEEPY SAPPHOID ASYLUM SEEKERS SHUN SUGARWATER – see page 3
“Marriage is a great institution – if you like living in institutions.” Interesting, too, that at the end of her drivel, Bindel quotes this approvingly, as though humans or at least radfems could thrive outside of any social institutions. All humans – indeed all social animals – require institutions to flourish. It’s in our biological nature.
Now they’re just having us on, I think…
That picnic link is, well, something else:
Picnic fiends prepare food they would normally find repellent, such as pasta bows mixed with green peppers and tinned sweetcorn, home-made hummus with the consistency of Polyfilla, and cocktail sausages that resemble a shrivelled, severed penis by the time they are unpacked. Fruit is bruised, and cake is mush, not to mention the fact that someone has forgotten the salt, so the little cherry tomatoes that are barely holding together taste of fuck all.
So Julie’s a tad fussy about what she eats…..
By the time the picnic is finished your arse feels like it’s been kicked by a frightened horse, because no matter how nice a spot you pick, and how thick your blanket is, the ground is full of bumps and hard stubble. Bending over to slice yourself a supermarket baguette can put your back out and bruise both knees. Such joy.
……and it seems is so hideously unfit that she cannot sit or move normally………..
Ah, but what is this, do I detect a whiff of patriarchally imposed domination – Julie’s objections become a tad more clear:
Men and children love picnics, but the women usually hate it because, let’s face it, making a picnic is seen as women’s work.
(Heaven forfend she ever reads about David’s “plastic spatula of oppression”, formerly described on this blog). Anyhoo, back to Julie and her what passes for her friendships:
For my birthday one year I was taken to Kenwood on Hampstead Heath to hear an outdoor opera. I love Tosca, but by the end of the evening I could quite happily have perched myself on a high wall and hurled myself over the edge to my death, shouting, ‘Perché non potevamo abbiamo ascoltato Tosca a casa e cena mangiato in comodità?’ It rained. I was desperate to go to the loo, having drunk a bucketful of warm white wine (someone forgot the ice). And I could hardly hear the opera over the sound of tossers playing frisbee.
Moral of the story: Don’t plan a happy sociable afternoon with Julie, and don’t treat her for her birthday.
It’s actually quite difficult to imagine what might please Julie Bindel. Even picnics upset her.
Happy holidaying children in her vicinity, during school holidays, also gets her going. So much so that she ‘gets even’ by harrassing them, insulting them, and exploiting her sexuality in a way calculated (she hopes) to offend them. If you have time read the comments, including hers – it is unbelievable:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/aug/21/julie-bindel-tuscany-holiday
For those with better things to do than give further contemplation to this appallingly miserable killjoy, this comments gives a flavour of the responses:
Lets assume that Julie’s entirely in the right here, and that, far from her just being a miserable lemon-sucking old bat who takes offence at children enjoying themselves, the neighbouring kids are actually running wild and being obnoxious with the connivance of their negligent parents, and it really is unbearable.
Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?
“SLEEPY SAPPHOID ASYLUM SEEKERS SHUN SUGARWATER – see page 3”
I think I may have ruptured something reading that. Not to mention convinced my neighbour I have adopted a hyena.
I don’t know how, but your link to “classic sentences” goes back to this post.
Hmmm. Apparently we are informed by Julie Bindel that all must be absolutely updated to reflect recent occurrences.
Got it, we can indeed understand and act accordingly.
Previously, we would have noted; Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
We will now instead note: Chronically unhappy professional lesbians: Those with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
—Situational note, all the rather a few lesbians _I_ know seem to regularly be quite cheerful and matter of fact about all sorts of things, actually. Must be the chronic and unhappy bit for Julie . . .
I don’t know how, but your link to “classic sentences” goes back to this post.
It goes to an archive of 40 or so posts, the most recent of which is this one.
Must be the chronic and unhappy bit for Julie
My guess would be that Ms Bindel’s politics and sour disposition are not entirely unrelated. The question, I think, is which came first.
The thing with Julie (and others of her graunista ilk), is that they have such a terrible problem with other people being happy.
It doesn’t matter that their happiness arises out of things they choose to do, or people they choose to be with, and in neither case doing any harm to Julie. Nope – if their happiness is a result of something she disapproves of, it must be castigated. How dare they choose to enjoy their lives and those they love!
Fuckbeans. Just realised several hours too late that I got my miserable Grauniad wenches mixed up. Oh well.
Kudos to ‘fingsaint’ in the CIF comments for “the completely satisfied sector.”
She hates panettone as well, apparently:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/panettone-festive-delicacy-italian-monstrosity
And also loathes stollen:
“If panettone is full of hot air, you have to be a fruit cake to like stollen, the German cake that may take over from panettone soon as the latest food craze. It is heavy, dense, and full of medicinal-tasting dried fruit, plastic almond paste, and enough icing sugar to…” etc.
Hal’s right about Puritanism – I think Ms Bindel would feel completely at home in AD 1657.
“She hates panettone as well”
WTF is WRONG with this person?!
My guess would be that Ms Bindel’s politics and sour disposition are not entirely unrelated. The question, I think, is which came first.
She’s a spiteful misanthrope so radical feminism suits her to a tee.
Going to bed “before midnight” is a great social taboo.
And sleeping in isn’t?
Those dratted morning larks who get up at 5am to greet the dawn with yoga and oat-grass smoothies are more than happy to heap guilt aplenty on the rest of us for being such loathsome slug-a-beds, not to mention subjecting us to Morning Chirpiness, one of the most annoying attitudes possible.
We night owls give morning larks a hard time when they want to retire early in retaliation for their smug, self-righteous morning celebrations. Going to bed early is just another way to announce your superior circadian morality.
There’s no cultural formulation that associates staying up late with virtue, but getting up early?
That’s godliness personified.
As someone notes in the Guardian comments, “The problem with getting what you want is that you can’t fight for it anymore.” And for some people – say, someone whose career, status and public persona are based on being, as it were, professionally angry – the activism can be more important than the cause. In some cases, the cause seems little more than a pretext for indulging an unhappy disposition.
“Marriage is a great institution – if you like living in institutions.”
Other social institutions on the planet:
Pride of lions
Flock of birds
School of feesh
Pack of wolves
Herd of deer
Troop of baboons
Pod of whales
Try disrupting or subverting those static, bourgeois institutions and see where it gets ya.
Other social institutions on the planet:
Unfortunately, the proclamations we’re contemplating come from a debacle of hipsters, or a congeal of hipsters—take your pick—and nothing of use or value comes from there . . .
A few days ago a friend of mine observed a congeal at a local street festival, where she reported that they were all staring blankly at some local band, while standing perfectly arranged as if in concert seating, as if they had all stood up in unison as the seats vanished out from under them. Her overall assessment is that hipsters are the perfect proof of the autonomic nervous system: being too stupid to remember to breathe, they’d all asphyxiate without the ANS . . . !
“Lets assume that Julie’s entirely in the right here… Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
I think that was one of mine. Quite proud of that one.
I stay up late and like my lie-ins. My mum used to say I was wasting the best part of the day. I always said I was putting the best part of the day to its best use. God bless flexi-time. Some of us come in early and leave early, others come in late and leave late. I don’t think any of us would claim to be oppressed, except maybe on days like today where the sun is splitting the trees and we have to be in work at all.
One can only wonder what Miss Bindel’s thoughts are about forced marriage.
Huh?
If neither marriage nor picnicking are your thing, don’t forget you can always wind Ms Bindel up by not watching TV.
She sets standards in curmudgeonliness which I can only dream of emulating.
splotchy – 🙂
Nikw211 – I love that article.
Dealing with delusional lotharios at the bar can be annoying, sinister or just plain tiring
Yes. Women hate it when they get male attention.
“an automatically-generated quotation from feminist writer bell hooks” (yes, the lack of capitalisation is intentional).
The lack of capitalization serves two functions. The first function is distinguish bell hooks from her grandmother Bell Hooks. The second function is to indicate the importance of the text and not the biography of the author.
She could have just published as “Anonymous”. Anyway, the third and fourth functions are to denote adolescent pretentiousness and likely mental illness.
they’d been inspired to create the service after the media’s reaction to the 2014 Isla Vista killings
It’s another of the increasingly lame failed attempts to use Elliot Rodger and his victims as props for the feminist cause. They’re annoyed that #YesAllWomen thing died out so quickly and are looking for other angles. Think Alan Partridge pitching Monkey Tennis to the BBC.
“any money raised beyond the cost of paying the phone bill […] donated to The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.”
Ah, the noble cause of killing Mexican babies.
Incidentally, the male feminist who wrote it looks like this:
Ladies…
Geez. I wonder why he hates confident men who chat up women in clubs?
Mr Grumpy – She’s brilliant. Like a radical feminist Victor Meldrew.
I love that article.
Steve 2: Steveageddon
It really is quite something, isn’t it?
I mean … it’s not just the idea of the hotline itself but it’s what the idea of that hotline says about the whole mindset of the people behind it and the reality they must think we inhabit … kind of incredible, really.
“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”
That’ll learn ’em.
Oh, and that GiF of James Vincent … I don’t usually like to mock people for their personal appearance, having a face like the battered bonnet of a Robin Reliant myself, but when you see the photo next to the words … my goodness me.
A great bit for Pseud’s Corner:
It’s common to hear valid critique dismissed as unconstructive “infighting” that will only derail us from a universal vision of female empowerment. Twitter can be a bitter place – especially in arguments where space is limited, empathy is difficult to hang on to, and everybody involved cares so much.
From this:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/18/sexist-racist-online-sabotage-wont-win-posing-online-feminists-leftists
Mr Grumpy.
Wait, what, hang on a minute.
Julie Bindel cannot abide children (because of the noise), people who picnic (because she wants the whole park to herself and her dog and hates other people thinking they can use it too – selfish bastards), or gay women getting married (because of the inherent Conservatism in it) but she does approve of watching a woman set light to her fake boobs on Footballer’s Wives?
I may never be able to explain to the TV snob my excitement at the episode of Footballers’ Wives where Chardonnay set fire to her synthetic Bristols
Bindelism – an ideology in which whatever one happens to be thinking at any one time, one is always right.
Julia M,
Oh man … the whole article is a classic of the genre. The following is the only part of the whole article which makes reference to any evidence for the claim made in the headline.
Users including Shafiqah Hudson picked up on the scam, and identified at least 200 such accounts.
I see Miss Penny has put all of her investigative sleuthing Nancy Drew-type skills on the case again, working tirelessly to come up with devastating evidence for … oh, no wait, she hasn’t.
My mistake.
She just saw it on Twitter. So obviously it’s true because that’s what the screen on her iPhone says. In between, ordering a skinny latte and checking her hair in the mirror.
Nikw211 – Yarp.
So here’s the imaginary feminist scenario:
20-something girl goes out, modestly dressed in a burka or something, to have earnest conversations about Germaine Greer in her local library. But suddenly, a wild MAN appears and threatens to club her over the head and drag her back to his cave to make babies.
Our quick-thinking feminist saves the day by giving him a fake phone number. Back at his man-cave, which stinks of Lynx body spray and rape, the man sweatily mashes the buttons on his phone, only to be greeted with a recording saying:
When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.
Humbled by this unexpected wisdom, the man vows to never use his penis again.
Now let’s run through a typical real world scenario:
20-something woman gets her skimpy nightclub wear and high heels on to go out partying with the girls. But what’s this? Ugh! It’s a man! And he’s nervously flirting. In a bar! He doesn’t look hot like Ryan Gosling or James Vincent, so he’s a creep who needs to be taught a lesson!
I know – trick him into phoning a radical feminist hotline that’ll quote random incomprehensible radfem word-jumble at him! That’ll teach him not to try to meet women in public places expressly set up to let people meet!
Back at his mancave, our hapless chap tries ringing the pretty girl he bought drinks for the other night. He’s a little bit hurt when it turns out to be the number for some sort of automated fortune cookie services, but he sighs, shrugs, and moves on with his life.
Steve 2: Steveageddon
Heh ; – )))
You certainly paint a vivid picture of manhood as knuckle-draggers permanently cloaked in a miasma of Lynx.
Tex Avery seems to have understood the plight of modern woman as far back as 1943.
Steve 2:Steveageddon, that is just magnificent!
JuliaM: They didn’t mention the smashing success of #YesAllCats as a counter to #YesAllWomen.
Also, what in Sam Hill is “Yes, All Women…” supposed to mean? Some truncations just shouldn’t be allowed.
Seems David stumbled on the early stages of the source of Laurie’s angst today, about which she has written (and been broadly mocked in the comments) of today’s guardian in the link above. For those who have not been watching agog at the inmates of the zoo of feminists on twitter, it seems troll accounts have been set up to parody the extreme extrapolations of laurie et al. And because these trolls have posed as black women, laurie et al have been happily defending the indefensible. A case of support the messenger for PC reasons, no matter how offensive or unreasonable the message.
Thus Laurie was swift to condemn a bystander who objected to the sentiment of ‘I wish Hitler had put them (white people) in the oven’. The person responsible for that remark it seems was a ‘person of colour’ and according to Laurie this excuses any expectation to be civil. Of course, now her lack of integrity has been exposed, Laurie blames the ‘CIA tactics’ of those who posted grossness which she was swift to excuse. See the link.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2013/10/little-knots-of-agony.html
(If only Laurie read this blog – she’d have spotted that she was being set up to expose her shallowness, as several commenter rumbled the trolls).
Could you not help her out and email her the link, David? You never know, she might pitch something towards rickety barge repairs.
Says Nell Frizzell: “Because going to bed early is our last great social taboo.” That’s the thing about CiF that makes it so reliably fatuous. If you make a ridiculously untrue (or in this case hyperbolic) statement with enough conviction, you can decorate it like a Christmas tree with a whole collection of lesser bullshit. Knocking it on the head a bit early is the last great social taboo, is it, Nell? As opposed to, say, masturbating in the fresh produce section of Asda? Or jumping up and down making chimp noises when a family of black people walks past? Or punching kittens and posting the results on YouTube? All those might be a teensier bit more taboo (for good reason). But no matter, off goes Nellie, churning out a thousand words (for what, 250 quid?) of fact-free rubbish. Amazing how they get all the non-news to exactly fit the space available, isn’t it?
splotchy,
For those who have not been watching agog at the inmates of the zoo of feminists on twitter, it seems troll accounts have been set up to parody the extreme extrapolations of laurie et al. And because these trolls have posed as black women, laurie et al have been happily defending the indefensible. A case of support the messenger for PC reasons, no matter how offensive or unreasonable the message.
It was started as a prank at 4Chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board (which Laurie and Lola never mention, natch). There was never any “secrecy” involved in the trolling, but I suppose we should let the poor dears pretend to be mighty sleuths for (finally) figuring it out, as it actually keeps the prank going…
“the conservative ideology of the self-sufficient family” – what an outrage! It’s progressive and compassionate to steal from others and live off their hard work, don’t you know! Something we should all aspire to, instead of this disgraceful conservative ideology of looking after yourself.
I prefer to go to bed early with a good book – or a friend who’s read one.
Nikw211 – 🙂 down with #wolfculture
Charlie Suet – you, sir, are a man of superior refinement and taste.
David Gillies – “As opposed to, say, masturbating in the fresh produce section of Asda?”
Not on the Pak choi please.
David: Looking at the first two columns, I think you’re attempting some unfair cheap shots. Neither Frizzell nor Mackie is engaging in any sort of overwrought cri de coeur, unless you consider referencing a minor personal problem in a newspaper column a display of extreme narcissism.
Frizzell is commenting on the modern tendency toward late nights, especially among the fashionable young (with considerable factual content on why this is a real health problem). The line about “the last great social taboo” is obvious humor.
Mackie is commenting on the fact that very heavy consumption of caffeinated soda can have unpleasant health consequences – even a dependence that in her personal experience approached addiction. She didn’t know this, thinks many of her readers don’t either, and informs them, with a leavening of humor (“…a glass of wine. Apparently, it’s good for you. Well, this week, at least.”). She doesn’t blame anyone else, or even Capitalism, for the withdrawal symptoms she sums up in a paragraph.
Bindel, now, seems truly mad.
Looking at the first two columns, I think you’re attempting some unfair cheap shots.
Heh. It’s possible I lack your forgiving nature.
..”unless you consider referencing a minor personal problem in a newspaper column a display of extreme narcissism.
Well yes, of course it’s narcissistic. Not least because the ‘minor personal problems’ are utterly trivial and could only be thought sufficiently problematic to bring to the nation’s attention if one were an empty-headed attention-seeking fool with nothing better to think about!
I goggle at what sort of readership they are hoping to get.
Splotchy @ June 21, 2014 at 15:15:
>”… unless you consider referencing a minor personal
>problem in a newspaper column a display of extreme
>narcissism.”
Well yes, of course it’s narcissistic. Not least because the ‘minor personal problems’ are utterly trivial and could only be thought sufficiently problematic to bring to the nation’s attention if one were an empty-headed attention-seeking fool with nothing better to think about!
So you regard being one of a couple of dozen columnists for a website to be a platform of such immensely august prestige that it must be reserved only for topics of Great Public Concern? Nothing less than the Fate of the World?
Come on.
Besides which, young people staying up late and not getting enough sleep is a significant health problem. It doesn’t seem like one, but it’s insidious – and worth bringing to public notice. Excessive caffeine consumption, too.
Neither of these writers made a big fuss about their personal situations, or called for others to make great accommodations to relieve them.
Let ’em be.