She Said It, Not Me
Polly Toynbee, that is:
There is an instinctive bond between Guardian readers – we almost nod to one another as we read the paper on a train.
Yes, I bet you do, Polly. I bet you do.
Update:
In the comments we’re also discussing this, spotted by Robert. Apparently, artists and writers are being “ignored to death”:
The artist in America is being starved, systemically and without shame. In this land of untold bounty… the American creative class has been forced to brook a historic economic burden while also being sunk into sunless irrelevancy.
You see, it’s simply ghastly that craftsmen and labourers can have nicer cars than “the makers and chroniclers of our culture.”
he sought around, found an opening in locksmithery, and worked hard enough for long enough to give them a decent car
Silly.
The obvious answer is that he uses his formidable lock-picking skills to nick valuables from other people’s houses and cars.
I mean, wouldn’t you?
This is our shining world now, how we prioritize: Locksmiths earn stabler livelihoods than the makers and chroniclers of our culture.
I’m pretty sure we’ve seen that attitude before somewhere… Oh yes, here. The last paragraph seems particularly relevant.
Morning, di. Another late one?
@CIngram: I agree with almost all of what you say, but not your assumption that the locksmith finds no particular satisfaction in his work. Why shouldn’t he? He deploys technical skill, which is generally a very satisfying thing to do, and he can often take pleasure from helping other people. (Though perhaps not in the Timberg example.) Do makers of giant porcelain shoes enjoy similar satisfactions? Probably not, and perhaps that is among the sources of their discontents.
Incidentally it would be an odd society where a competent locksmith did not earn a more stable livelihood than a self-selected “maker of culture”. Also as a career locksmithery has the advantage that demand for your services tends to rise during difficult times.
Oh yes, here. The last paragraph seems particularly relevant.
That.
That.
And of course this.
And this.
And this.
And this.
And this.
And… well, I think you get the idea.
“[On the dissolution of the Louisville orchestra and the comment that if it were popular, people would have paid to see it] Timberg urges us out of this bamboozled, depleted mentation with which we permit the market to dictate the worth of things.”
By “the market”, Timberg means people other than he. A few paragraphs back we find the phrase: cultural stewards. I envisage a ‘cultural steward’ as one of those headsets you can wear while touring a museum that tells you about the pieces you’re seeing, except this one tells you what you’re supposed to think about them into the bargain. There’s never any acknowledgement that the failure of “the market” to furnish Giraldi and Timberg et al. with the perquisites of a middle-class existence might be due to people making rational decisions about how to deploy their finite resources. There’s no appreciation of opportunity cost (this is a failing of Leftists in general). Instead there is the question-begging assumption that “art” is such an unalloyed social good that its production must be subsidised by mulcting those whose revealed preferences indicate would not otherwise consume it. Never found in all of this is the idea (applicable to essentially every other walk of life) that if you cannot make your current employment pay, then you should go and do something else. It happened to agricultural labourers and steelworkers and typists. So either live in a garret or get a job that pays the bills.
By “the market”, Timberg means people other than he.
Bingo. It’s practically megalomaniacal.
Also, I applaud your use of mulcting. A criminally neglected word.
Also: would anyone at all give a damn about her idiotic opinions if Miss Toynbee had a different last name? In other words, without her HEREDITARY PRIVILEGE she’d be just another resentful bus-stop mutterer.