Imagine My Distress

We must pray for her safe return from the bosom of academia.
I’m glad to see standards haven’t fallen at Harvard.

“The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard educates leaders in journalism and elevates the standards of the profession… Laurie Penny… will study the economic history and theory of social movements, with an emphasis on digital culture and linguistics.”

I’d have thought that economics 101 and a class in rudimentary logic might be more beneficial to someone who makes emphatic pronouncements on economic matters, but there you go.

In the comments, one Pete Mowat opines:
Congratulations. An honour indeed, but one earned with relentless hard work and sacrifice that has and should continue to produce great results
This bloke, if he’s real, is surely upholding the patriarchical notion of a damsel in distress, by assuming LP is this delicate snowflake who constantly requires approval?
Someone’s bound to tell him so in a stern voice. I expect he’ll hang his head at a guilty angle. The stupid git.

I feel we ought to be writing pre-emptive letters of apology to every single person living in the United States.
First Piers Morgan, now this.

So, in short, “SMASH THE SYSTEM!, SMASH AUTHORITY!, SMASH… Er… what’s that?, you want to offer me a position at Harvard?”
(One year later)
“SMASH THE SYSTEM!, SMASH AUTHORITY!, BLAH BLAH BLAH”

“SMASH THE SYSTEM!, SMASH AUTHORITY!”
Well, Laurie gets much of her economic, um, insight from the ludicrous narcissist and former Swuppie Richard Seymour. Mr Seymour, who longs for violent “revolution” while loitering safely in academia, sees his writing as an alternative to the “inconsequential shit” that people otherwise read. He says he’s “challenging middlebrow sensibilities” with his “unapologetic intellectual swagger.” Like Laurie, he will lead us to the light, modestly and with no thought for himself.

“leaders in journalism…
elevates the standards of the profession…
Laurie Penny
That can’t be right.”
To be fair, I’m hard-pressed to think of a journalist whose professional standards need elevating more than Laurie Penny’s.

I note she desires to take her writing “to the next level.” Which circle of Prog-journalism hell would that be?

Effing hell…I’ve just regarded her blogmasthead for the first time (why’d a normal human want to go there willingly in the course of business?) and what an insufferable, narcissistic and self-regarding twat that little girl is.
If I was the Master of Wadham when she was up, I’d have had her Sent Down.

Private school – check.
Middle class parents- check.
Oxbridge – check.
Whitey – check.
Ivy League University – check.
Working environment populated by white, privately +/- Oxbridge educated journalists – check.
So when does Laurie get to check her privilege? Come to think of it how much privilege can one person have?

self-righteous nonsense
In that respect, Laurie is ahead of the curve. Having generated so much of it in such extraordinary concentrations.
Must. Fret. Harder.
Yes, quite. Or appear to fret, at least. Presumably, the idea is that one should pointedly avoid any gendered acknowledgement of the person asking you a question, even when that person’s gender is rather obvious, in case you accidentally oppress them. Such are the dramas of Laurie’s speaking events, which tend to resemble inadvertent stand-up comedy. Though I’m still not sure how much of this ostentatious fretting is self-inflicted neurosis, or just another affectation in order to position herself among her peers.
Either way, it must be exhausting.

Having worked in this trade for a decade and more, I have seen dozens of bright-eyed young journalism graduates bounce into newsrooms in the belief that they are going to change the world, only to find that the job entails being sent out to knock doors on god-forsaken sink estates, sitting through interminably dull council meetings and dealing with a procession of crazies who walk in off the street.
Too right, and that’s how it should work. Some serious foot-soldiering on a local rag in your twenties, make a name for yourself with a scoop or two, and work your way up the chain to the nationals.
Nowadays, a relative or a friend of Daddy’s gets you shoehorned into a slot on a national column, while proper journalists are fired in favour of republishing press releases.

I must confess, I’m actually happy about this. One of the joys of reading your site, Mr. Thompson, is seeing the snippets from the UK press (you read the Guardian so I don’t have to!). Over here, our Marxoid journotwits still like to pretend to objectivity, and I have to link to the British press (or, most often, to your site) to show my uninformed acquaintances, “look, this is what they really think of you!”
The faster the American public realizes the open, sneering contempt in which they’re held by the chattering classes, the faster we’ll see some real reform.

Some of Laurie’s counterparts in the 77th Nieman Foundation class sound like a real laugh a minute.
Alicia Stewart, an editor at CNN.com, will study entrepreneurial and editorial models for accurate, nuanced reporting on under-covered communities, with a focus on women and people of color.
Farnaz Fassihi, a senior Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, is based in Beirut. She will study the rise of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, focusing on how they and other Islamic militants on both sides of the sectarian Sunni-Shiite divide are utilizing modern technology to organize, recruit, spread their influence and crush opponents.
I’m sure they are all full of really useful advice to impart to a junior reporter faced with the prospect of doorstepping the owner of a deranged Akita accused of tearing a chunk out of a local kid’s arm.

Hmmm. The impression I get is; She’s stating that she’s now to be going on sabbatical from journalism?

Mr Seymour, who longs for violent “revolution” while loitering safely in academia
Perhaps he could spend a night in Ferguson, MO.
Wearing a cop uniform.

A year working in subsistence agriculture or in a factory would be more useful.
I’m of the firm belief that a year (six months would do) spent in an African village, hauling water for the women to free up their time for other things, would do wonders for overprivileged, professional fretters like Penny.
All her frivolous abstraction would necessarily be torn down by the cold hard realities of subsistence-level farming and high infant mortality. She’d be in the real service of people in need instead of the faux service rendered by Peace Corps and other agencies that swoop in and perform service that’s meant to flatter themselves more than actually help people.
The Africans would also teach her plenty of lessons on humility, humanity, and What Really Matters.
Because they’re not narcissistic harpies with too much time on their hands.
They also know how to avoid deadly snakes. You can’t get better lessons than that.

Reading the “About” section of her site. It begins
Laurie Penny was born in London in 1986 and is not dead yet
Which is almost funny. It is also very slightly reminiscent of the blurb on the back of Terry Pratchett’s books (before he sadly fell ill) which I’m pretty sure used to say:
Terry Pratchett was born 1948 and is not still dead
I’m not going to accuse her of anything naughty, of course. Any other similarities?
————
(similarly, one of Pratchett’s characters, a witch named Granny Weatherwax, used to have a sign saying “I aten’t dead” for when she was in a trance and mentally hijacking an eagle’s body – as you do. He really is a wonderful writer)

“…no, Penny, HAH-vahd. HAH-vahd. Try it again…”

Oh, no, apparently that pronunciation would actually be more ‘A?va?d . . . .
I think.
There is an advantage to not dropping aitches, Rs, and adding glottal stops . . .

Hey Laurie, congratulations on going to the same college as Mitt Romney and George Bush. Its not privilege when your at Harvard right?

Morning. [ Rubs eyes, sips coffee. ]
Stace won’t quit poking the hornet’s nest.
He does have a flair for enraging the bedlamites. Generally by quoting their own words to a larger, less credulous audience.

“They also know how to avoid deadly snakes”
And the Hippos, don’t forget the Hippos. I actually did work in Africa for about 6 months in 19%^ (i.e too long ago for me to decently recall). It definitely does give one a perspective on Western Civilisation and how simply bloody marvelous it all is.

I’m in Boston and I await instructions from the Guild of Evil.

“…in order to take my writing to the next level, I needed to stop careering around chasing stories, go back to school and sit my bum down for some serious reading and nerding out. ”
Because social commentators can never be too far removed from the hoi polloi.