The Pain Of Being Polly
Speaking, as we were, of the Guardian’s imperious opinionator Polly Toynbee, madam’s latest outpouring finds her reflecting – if that’s quite the right word – on the burden of her own elevated status. The woes, as it were, of the upper-and-upper-middle-class socialist:
Wait for it.
Update, via the comments:
We’re also told that, as a child, Dear Polly “envied” her much poorer friends, with their “cheerful,” noisy, and rather small dwellings, which had “ever-open front doors.” Though, alas,
As a way to conjure gravitas and fish for sympathy, it’s a bold approach.
The point of the piece quoted above, a long and rambling extract from Ms Toynbee’s forthcoming memoir, is far from clear – as is Polly’s way. However, the gist seems to be that class is a terrible, terrible thing, and that our author, a descendant of the Ninth Earl of Carlisle, and whose life is cushioned by multiple homes, here and overseas, and a well-into-six-figure income, is every bit as much a victim of it. What with her fretting so much.
For brevity’s sake, I’ll attempt to paraphrase: ‘I have never known, and will never know, anything approaching poverty. My lack of diligence, or indeed competence, has never been a significant setback, on account of my class and privilege. Therefore, you should listen to me and do exactly as I say.’
Again, bold. Must be that “painful self-awareness.”
In the comments, further thoughts occur.
Update 2:
Regarding Polly’s purported envy of the humble and downtrodden, Mike D asks,
Which reminded me of the reliably ludicrous George Monbiot, a man who agonises over the “isolating” effects of disposable income, double glazing, and TV remote controls, and who believes that we – thee and me – should imitate the peasants of southern Ethiopia, where homes are made of leaves and packing cases, and where, despite Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, “the fields crackle with laughter.”
For Dear Polly, mingling with the working class is somewhat similar, I should think.
Oh, and Mr Monbiot, lest we forget, was schooled at Stowe, an imposing boarding school in Buckinghamshire, where annual fees are a mere £36,000.
At which point, readers may discern the makings of a pattern.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
So her entire family is really well-off too? Poor cow.
I’m lighting a candle for her as I type.
Perhaps we should organise a vigil of some sort…?
Yet more anecdata that it is internalised guilt that drives a certain type of leftism
She does seem to have some weird hang-up about being well-off. About being the thing that those she patronises, and frequently disdains, would quite like to be.
As a way to fish for sympathy, it’s an unusual approach: ‘I have never known, and will never know, anything approaching poverty. My lack of diligence, or indeed competence, has never been a significant setback. So, in a sense, I’m the one suffering here.’
Needless to say, so far as I’m aware, no attempt has been made to ease that terrible pain by, for instance, handing over her extensive property portfolio to those Ms Toynbee deems even more oppressed than herself.
[ Added: ]
But then, this is a woman who demands that private education be banned, for others, while having ensured that her own children went to one of the most upscale private schools in the country, away from all the riff-raff, and who denounces as “toffs” anyone she doesn’t like who earns even slightly more than she does, and sometimes less.
She is, after all, a rather grand woman herself – born into a quasi-aristocratic family, descended from the 9th Earl of Carlisle, privately educated, with a second home in Tuscany, and others elsewhere, and a well-into-six-figure income. A woman who insists that “left-wing people are more intelligent and just generally better people,” while devoting her energies to denying those less fortunate the opportunities that she enjoys and which she expects her offspring to enjoy.
A woman preoccupied with correcting the lower orders, i.e., making them more socialist, by sneering at their preferences and aspirations, campaigning to deny them options in everything from travel to education, calling for their neighbourhoods to be demographically transformed, whether the inhabitants wish it or not, and having them taxed to buggery.
Her head must be like a balloon full of bees.
LOL
This came to mind. The late Peter Risdon on the consequences of Ms Toynbee’s supposedly altruistic worldview:
Which in turn reminded me of a documentary I saw some years ago about the tenants of a run-down and disreputable council estate. What struck me at the time – and went entirely unacknowledged by the ‘progressive’ documentary makers – was the infantilism of the tenants – their lack of agency. They seemed entirely absorbed by the state, reduced to a kind of childish passivity. Such that there was no expectation that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone,” For months.
Something for David:
[ Sound of image being saved and labelled. ]
Kindling might be more to the point.
Talk about ancestry and inherited talent. Three of her grandparents with their own Wikipedia entries. Her non-Toynbee grandfather, a Conservative MP, left out of her enumeration of radical ancestors. Not well-educated in terms of academic credentials, but in those kinds of families the dinner table conversations and guests are a graduate school education in themselves. And all these famous acquaintances, cousins, etc. It’s like a Mitford sister, Jessica Mitford especially.
Obviously it’s good for the character to be aware that people are putting up with your shit in all sorts of ways all the time and giving you all sorts of second chances you don’t deserve. But I don’t see why she has to suggest that Mr Steadman Jones, the English teacher who works in a comprehensive even though he could probably get a more pleasant job, and who goes the extra mile to bring out latent talent in his students, might really have been a toady and a snob.
So all these radical ancestors who had so much intellectual influence in their world had no intellectual influence on young Polly Toynbee who had their genes and grew up in their house.
It doesn’t matter what the nature or the nurture is when a 16 year old comes into a classroom. All you have to do is to tamper with the records to tell the teachers that every student is a genius, and the teachers will believe it (assuming that teachers are too stupid to be able to size up the students themselves) and reality will adjust itself (assuming that teachers are alchemists).
Worth watching the early 1970’s documentary Junior High School ([1], [2]), where both students and teachers say pretty much the same thing – that academic talent is a social construct and a virtuous or vicious circle depending on whether the teacher thinks you’re bright or not. And then most of them immediately admit that they don’t really believe this, or that they believe it in their heart but not their head, or in their head but not their heart.
Polly’s supposedly humble “comprehensive” school, Holland Park, bears little relation to the state schooling enduring by actual proletarians. The school was promoted as a “radical comprehensive,” favoured in the 70s by well-heeled middle-class lefties, and was described to great effect in the book Comp by former pupil John-Paul Flintoff.
See also the conceit, common among leftist educators, that an IQ is something that a teacher can just bestow, pour into any child’s head, and then, presumably, take credit for.
It’s perhaps also worth noting that the Guardian contributors who rush to excuse almost any kind of feral underclass behaviour – Zoe Williams comes to mind – tend to do so in the knowledge that they’re unlikely to have to endure it themselves, or to live next to door to the “problem families” that they pretend to care about. (Unlike the numerous victims of those same “problem families,” whose wellbeing doesn’t appear to matter anywhere near as much.)
As I said in the post linked immediately above,
You know, that kind of thing.
That conceit is also the foundation of the ‘if they’d only implemented it properly’ escape hatch so beloved of the progressive collective.
This charming youth, mentioned previously, might soon be disabusing them of that notion given his predilections.
LOL. Punchline, punchline, punchline. *applause*
And all true. I just had to type it out. Links in the original.
It’s one of the galling things about so many Guardian columnists. They seem utterly oblivious to just how degenerate degenerates can be.
An aphorism for our times:
both students and teachers say pretty much the same thing – that academic talent is a social construct and a virtuous or vicious circle depending on whether the teacher thinks you’re bright or not.
There’s some truth to that, though, although largely in the arts. My high school English department was well-known for deciding early on who was and who was not a “good English student”, a reputation that would follow through five years of schooling and impact one’s marks.
In a stunning display of journalism, the editors of the high school newspaper engaged in a little test: they had the same English paper submitted in two different classes to two different teachers – one under the name of a “poor” English student, the other under the name of a “good” English student. The “good” English student got an A-; the “poor” English student got a failing grade and a requirement to rewrite the paper.
Although there are obvious flaws in the methodology, when the newspaper published the results it caused quite the shock, and likely led to multiple English teachers taking early retirement the following year.
You can’t pull this sh*t in the STEM subjects, which is one of the reasons STEM has been the active target of Iowahawking at the high school level.
I suppose it would have been impossible for her renounce her background and hie off to Birmingham (yours or ours) and take up plumbing to assuage her guilt at not having had any sewer workers or roofers in the family.
Meanwhile, in the realm of culture clashes, all cultures are equal, say the likes of these.
I simply adore how she tells the reader, flat out, that she did nothing to earn her material wealth, and she refuses to do anything of merit WITH all of her vast wealth….
And yet, she refuses to conduct her own life in the same manner that she advocates.
Or, maybe, if you look at what she does, instead of what she says, she IS actually living her life according go her values.
Either way, you must stand back and applaud the mendacity.
One of the things that strikes me about the Left here in the US is that they continually wage war against the ability of people to work their way out of poverty. In Chicago, there used to be newstands and street vendors all over–gone now. Everywhere they wage war on food trucks. To braid hair you must attend a full year of school. They hate Uber and want to force it to hire drivers full time. For those who don’t know, Uber drivers like their autonomy and being able to drive only when they want to. Same with independent truck drivers. Because you see, the Left sees exploitation everywhere. Oh, and the teachers unions hate independent, charter, and magnet schools. Is it because the students don’t do well? ahahaha no. It is because those schools don’t have a teacher union.
Should she wish, Dear Polly could voluntarily pay more to the Treasury than is due. This has been suggested to her, publicly, many times. She has, after all, repeatedly told us that people shouldn’t mind being forced to pay more tax, regardless of their own circumstances and priorities. Or she could donate a percentage of her sizeable income, or one of her houses, to a family she deems deserving, and do it again the next year, and the next. These would be life-changing acts for the beneficiaries.
Proof of caring, as it were. With immunity from charges of hypocrisy as a bonus.
But no. Our self-styled yardstick of human righteousness won’t voluntarily do what she wants others to be forced to do, and what she wants them to not mind being forced to do. Instead, she denounces those who earn less than she does as “extravagant earners” – people whose wealth invites “disgust.”
Like so many of her peers, Ms Toynbee thinks that voting for the state to confiscate even more of other people’s earnings is somehow, in itself, an act of altruism. A rather sly redefinition. It’s also, conveniently, presented as an excuse for not using her own considerable resources personally, directly, to act on her conscience. If indeed that’s the word.
And if a very well-heeled socialist bangs on week after week about how terrible unequal incomes are, and about how something must be done urgently – and then says that she won’t do, even in a small way, what she insists is morally imperative – unless the state forces her to do it – which it may never do – then this doesn’t strike me as a resounding affirmation of her professed principles.
Or that’s their excuse.
Exploitation or situations to be exploited? My money is on the latter.
At one time the Guardian grudgingly allowed readers to express their true opinions on articles although it still got rid of the disreputables. I think the number of times I was banned went into three figures. But the paper became even more left wing and Stalinist and the number of articles you were allowed to comment on was severely reduced and only the party line was permitted.
Nowadays, I notice, an article like this is allowed to receive comments but all are pre-moderated to prevent a contrary point of view.
It’s sad that the Guardian still claims to be a liberal newspaper when freedom is the last thing that’s allowed.
“They’re only outraged because they’re racist.”
Peak Guardian? Is that possible?
It reminded me of the reliably ludicrous George Monbiot, a man who agonises over the “isolating” effects of disposable income, double glazing, and TV remote controls, and who believes that we – thee and me – should imitate the peasants of southern Ethiopia, where homes are made of leaves and packing cases, and where, despite Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, “the fields crackle with laughter.”
For Dear Polly, mingling with the working class is somewhat similar, I should think.
Oh, and Mr Monbiot, lest we forget, was schooled at Stowe, an imposing boarding school in Buckinghamshire, where annual fees are a mere £36,000.
At which point, readers may discern the makings of a pattern.
America’s pastime.
Also America’s pastime.https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/22/sport/oakland-athletics-announcer-glen-kuiper-spt-intl/index.html
Thou shalt not mispronounce the blessed and holy name of the Negro League.
Let go, parted ways, relationship ended. The bastards don’t even have to balls to say they’ve sacked the poor sod after 17 years of service for one mistake. He’s 60 now with not a cat in hells chance of ever getting another job in the game he loves. But hey if glorifying a bunch of perverts dressed up as nuns upsets Catholics well that’s their problem.
Do they actually claim the name liberal?
…where annual fees are a mere £36,000.
TBF, that was only about £2000 when he was in school…
LA Dodgers – I am sure they are going to pack 56,000 of the “diverse communities” of the Alphabet Mafia into the stadium so totally logical they roll over and play dead for the Sisters of Perpetual Debauchery.
The things society has traditionally disapproved of represent a sort of collective wisdom to avoid bad consequences. For example, historically having a child out of wedlock either meant you were burdening your family with that child, you lived in poverty with that child, or you gave it up to an orphanage (in eras where an orphanage for infants usually meant dying)–ie very bad outcomes. Being a drunk meant that you probably became impoverished and even in debtors prison, which meant your family starved. These were things to be avoided. Social stigma and disapproval helped remind people to avoid them. The homilies of family, hard work, and going to church were values/actions that led to good outcomes. The Left wants total freedom from consequences but consequences exist even in no one tells you they disapprove.
So here’s something I got curious about in the context of the “OMGOMGOMG Brittany Griner’s game didn’t sell out!!11!, Why not?!?!!” hysteria…Turns out there’s only one tranny in the WNBA and she’s a FtM who, oh how conveeeeeniently uses they/them pronouns…apparently…if I have that right. None of this idiocy is ever clear to me. She’s only had ‘top’ surgery and it’s some sort of badge of honor for the WNBA that they let this transmenarerealmen-manly-man play in their silly league. Odd that, eh? I mean the most high-profile (because they try so hard to make it so) sport that women play that men absolutely excel at such that no woman has an even remotely possible chance at dominating a man in, not even relative to (IMNSHO second place) soccer. Yet…no MtF trannies there. Odd. I mean we have them in swimming (mostly well off white people sport), girls’ high school track and volleyball, other high school level stuff. But at the professional levels, where real money is involved and women are bitching that they don’t make enough money relative to the men? Not so much. Why it’s almost as if the whole pile of BS was driven by the desire to create the most difficulty for certain kinds of people without upsetting other kinds of people. For now anyway. Or it’s just another episode of the Truman Show.
Why didn’t a WNBA game sell out?
Because rather like women’s football over here nobody cares about it, particularly now that old-fashioned lesbians are an endangered species. The bbc keeps telling us excitedly that such and such a game has just broken the attendance record but omits the fact that tickets cost at least 90% less than the real thing.
It’s just ultra-cheap filler for sports channels.
OMGOMGOMG Brittany Griner’s game didn’t sell out!!
Plus, she is no freaking “hero”, whether you agree or disagree with Russian law, it is their law, and she broke it, knowingly or not, and was shocked there was not the usual US “celebrity” wrist slap.
…and now for something completely different, I am not at all sure what is going on here, but it is probably racist, just not which is the aggrieved party.
“What is a Woman”, mansplained by the LSMFT Foundation. Speaking of which, what the hell do black and brown have to do with their logo (flag, etc) ? Granted I am not a professor of Sex, Gender, And Other Imaginary Problems, but I wasn’t aware race was a “gender”.
…and now for something completely different, it is not 1979 anymore.
Of course it did.
What is it about these people (Toynbee and her ilk) that they simply cannot bring themselves to align their values with their actions or vice-versa?
Isn’t there some relief, some joy, some honesty, in preaching what you practice and practicing what you preach?
Either you genuinely feel a conviction that you want to help the poors and you speak about it and you follow through on it…and you help them.
Or, you run a farm, or teach school, or – for all I care – flit about the world enjoying various vacations and living off inherited wealth and privilege. No judgment here, you be you.
No, instead they’re malignant narcissists who not only want to flit about the world living off unmerited wealth and privilege, they ALSO want to ostentatiously write about how wonderful they are and how awful we are that we should dare fail to live up to their expectations for us.
And they want us to not mind their rank hypocrisy, but also not mind having them rub their hypocrisy in our faces and then not mind being forced to praise them for the privilege of receiving their scoldings.
Broadly speaking, it does seem a good way to avoid some unhappy mental complications. I suppose the problem is that middle-class lefties tend to be quite status-conscious, often neurotically so. Having nice things and the degrees of freedom afforded by wealth are obviously statusful. But leftist pronouncements, however pretentious and unconvincing, also confer status, if only among the like-minded.
Convoluted attempts to reconcile the two – to have one’s cake and eat it – would, I think, explain much of Polly’s output, and a sizeable chunk of what’s been published in the comment pages of the Guardian.
If you got rich by robbing people (e.g., home title theft, spammers, Nigerian princes), then it is justice that you feel guilty. But if you got rich being a plumber or having a farm, enjoy it.
Another thing about culture: I do not know a single person who has ever been arrested or shot, over my entire life. Thousands of people from work, church, family, neighbors. I knew one suicide. And not all the people I know/knew are white. If you know dozens of people in jail and can count the dead, you are in a bad culture. It is not normal.
It pales in contrast with their delight in conning the rubes.
…the “OMGOMGOMG Brittany Griner’s game didn’t sell out!!11!, Why not?!?!!” hysteria…
As our great empiricist philosopher said, “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how the hell are you gonna stop them?”
Take attendance?
“If you don’t want your career to stall, you need to accumulate more ESG points.”
and “You Gotta Pump Those Numbers Up, Those Are Rookie Numbers.”
Really, Pol? My grandfather was a turner in the Cowlairs Locomotive Works. His wife worked (yes, worked, back in the 1920s… it happened) at one of the Kirkcaldy linoleum factories. Which is more than that famous son of “the Lang Toun”, Gordon Brown, ever did. On the other side, my great-grandfather arrived at the Broomielaw Quay with the shirt on his back to start work as a farm labourer.
But then I’m just a privileged middle-class white conservative.
There’s not much lipstick in evidence, but he IS a bloke, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise:
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1661057229372420097
Move along now, noting to see here, just an adjunct professor with a machete chasing a reporter down the street.
Curious how when you hear of yet another educator being intolerant, childish, or wildly unhinged, you don’t need to ask what their politics might be.
Speaking of unhinged:
When you get your news from Vanity Fair.
Via Flappr.
And with near telepathic simultaneity:
“Twitter is a far-right social network” and has “fully assumed the role of a far-right platform.” “It is,” says The Atlantic, “accurate to call [Elon Musk] a far-right activist.”
Remember, dear readers. Always respect the media.
Re the above, I think we’ll give those a post of their own.
Comments that-a-way.
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/17/elon-musk-defends-soros-attack-rejects-supremacy-claims-in-wild-cnbc-interview/
I see your Atlantic and raise you a Salon.
(Plaintively cries “wait for me” as new post disappears into the distance).
I’d suggest you share that in the new thread.
As teenagers, my sister and her friend worked at fast food places in the mall. A third friend, from a very wealthy family, looked at them before a shift one day (paper hats, folks) and said, earnestly, “I wish I were poor. And had to work.” She wasn’t poor, sadly. Unrelated: sometimes it’s hard to remember that murder is wrong.