Daniel Finkelstein considers a well-worn phrase:

Between 2003-2008, I found more than 200 different murderers or murder victims who were described by their neighbours as “keeping themselves to themselves.”

Several examples are quoted, including this rather infamous one:

In the dark, someone was at the stank, pulling masses of rotting flesh from the drains, slopping them into black bag after black bag. It was their neighbour Dennis Nilsen. A civil servant who kept himself to himself.

But why is this not entirely helpful phrase deployed so readily?

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that people who keep themselves to themselves are substantially more likely to be murdered or murderers than other members of the population. I suppose this is possible. But I did note that there were more than 50 footballers who were also described as keeping themselves to themselves in training. This – and the fact that the phrase appears to be British and isn’t used to describe for instance American murderers or murder victims – leads me to the second explanation.

This is that we all copy each other when asked to provide descriptions by the media. The political scientist James Stimson notes that opinion pollsters frequently get people to opine on issues they don’t actually have an opinion about. He calls these fake opinions “non-attitudes.” I suspect “he kept himself to himself” is the crime equivalent of a non-attitude. The neighbour doesn’t actually know anything. Although perhaps their ignorance is caused by the murderer or murder victim actually keeping themselves to themselves.

Over the holiday weekend I somehow missed the Guardian’s latest musings on Thatcher and the arts. The writer Hanif Kureishi offers this:

[I]n the longer term, her effect has been disastrous. Thatcher, like the Queen, is basically vulgar, and has little cultural sophistication or understanding. But unlike the Queen, she actively hated culture, as she recognised that it was a form of dissent.

Ah yes, “dissent.” That’s up there with Polly Toynbee’s conviction that subsidised literary festivals are not only “hot new debating arenas” and “as good a measure of well-being as any,” but also, crucially, make up for “the nation’s democratic deficit.” Naturally, this is advanced as a basis for additional taxpayer subsidy of the art forms Polly happens to like, and in which she has a platform. (There is, sadly, no public subsidy of my CD collection or Battlestar Galactica box sets, for which I expect to pay full price. But then if I want some political edge to my entertainment, I’m more likely to turn to, say, South Park than the woolly blatherings of DBC Pierre or the plays of David Hare. No doubt that makes me a hater of culture.) Toynbee devotees may also recall her enthusiasm for the idea that “disruptive 16-year-old boys” should be taken out of class to spend a term being taught the finer points of dance, resulting in a “transformation in the whole year group.”  

But on the subject of dissent, one might wonder whether publicly subsidised art and theatre will tend to favour a political outlook in which the subsidy on which it depends is most vigorously endorsed, thus leading to uniformity, inhibition and a political comfort zone. Which raises the question of what “dissent” actually means when the status quo in London’s dramatic circles is, as we’ve seen, overwhelmingly leftwing. It seems to me the nature of arts and theatrical funding has at least some bearing on the political tenor of artistic establishments and much of the work that’s produced. In the case of museums and orchestras this may not be particularly relevant. But there’s no shortage of overtly politicised “art” that peddles an ideological message or badmouths the terribly bourgeois values of the terrible bourgeois people who are nonetheless expected to pay for it with their taxes. In such cases, objections are easy to understand. If people wish to use art to propagate a leftwing political message, perhaps they should find a suitably likeminded sponsor, or do it on their own dime.

For all its faults, the Guardian can be counted on to steer one’s mind to subjects whose political import had previously been overlooked. It’s difficult to forget Adharanand Finn mulling the politics of showering, or Cath Elliott’s timely ruminations on KitKat bars and peanut butter residue. Today, Tracy Quan ponders the socio-political significance of Michelle Obama’s upper arms, while posing that thorniest of questions: Are Biceps the New Breasts?

Like the J Crew outfits women are buying en masse, the first lady’s biceps are quickly becoming the next must have on our list. Women at every stage of life are finding ways to emulate Michelle, wanting to bond with her physically, whether through exercise or the display of flesh. I just can’t imagine feeling this way about Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton, can you? Neither seemed to be physically in love with herself the way Michelle is. No wonder her body lends itself so nicely to political myth.

Shamefully, I hadn’t hitherto considered Mrs Obama’s upper arms, or those of ladies generally, as the stuff of “political myth.” I shall, of course, try harder to register these things. I’ll also try to fathom the correct political response to Ms Quan’s belief that,

Those of us who regard our breasts as a private treat are always in need of alternative cleavage.

Amidst this celebration of the First Lady’s forelimbs, readers are warned,

We should avoid treating the female biceps as a visual trophy. Whether we oppose or welcome its display, it’s a mistake to get too fixated on a particular muscle.

Indeed.

Getting your arms to such an exalted place involves the use of many different muscles. Indeed, Michelle shouldn’t be known for “one body part” but rather for the way she uses her lats, traps, rhoms and delts – muscles in the back and shoulder – to get there… The bicep is a showy muscle, ripe for comic symbolism. Think of Popeye.

Actually, Popeye isn’t memorable for his biceps, which are rarely seen and are generally depicted as somewhat puny. Ms Quan is perhaps thinking of Popeye’s distinctive facial deformity, or more probably his forearms, the alarming proportions of which suggest a need for immediate medical attention.

I’d be more impressed if the symbol of our strength were the first lady’s less-talked-about triceps. This is the harder muscle to train, and a real challenge for most women. Also, the state of your triceps is what really determines whether you should go sleeveless in the first place. Michelle’s are unimpeachable.

Swoon.

Ms Quan has been hailed as “the only chick-lit writer to discuss indentured labour… and the proper purse in which to carry a dildo.”

Readers may recall Theo Hobson’s rather colourful assertions regarding James Bond. Among them, his belief that the implausibly competent fictional spy is  

a deeply malign cultural presence. He represents a nasty, cowardly part of us that ought to have been killed off long ago.

And that,

Bond is a big factor in the sexual malfunction of our times; the difficulty we have finding life-long partners, and the normalisation of pornography.

Yesterday, one of Hobson’s Guardian colleagues turned her righteous disapproval to the subject of science fiction and its

paucity of simple respect and human understanding.

A paucity demonstrated by the genre’s alleged inability to

create women who are not token geishas (or, given the genre, wild assassin women, escaping court hookers or muscly babes in bronze breastplates), non-white characters who are not noble magical heathens with psychic abilities and a strong connection to the earth, or perverted gay interplanetary warlords.

“Perverted gay interplanetary warlords” sounds promising and readers may wish to Google further and report back with their discoveries. However, the claim that the world of science fiction is inordinately populated by “homophobic white male straight writers” and “woman-hating racists” – none of whom are named – sits uneasily with the author’s admission that science fiction fandom is noted for its breadth and inclusivity and a propensity for discussing “sex, race, whatever.” Nor is it entirely consonant with her own extended list of suitably inclusive authors. Indeed, so extensive is this list, and so numerous are the writers and characters unfairly omitted from it, one might suppose the author of this article is intent on disproving her own premise. (One might even wonder if the real objection here is that some science fiction doesn’t yet comply with how she feels it ought to be. Which seems rather at odds with the title of her article, Planet Diversity.) The author also concedes that the popular series Battlestar Galactica is actually rather good, not least because its most interesting characters come in various ages, shapes and colours and are very often female. We are, however, told that for every BSG – or Buffy, or Voyager, or Firefly, or Alien – there’s

a homosocial all-male fantasy fest like the film Dark Knight.

Well, I too was disappointed by Chris Nolan’s overpraised, overlong Batman sequel and its glib ambiguities, but its grievous status as a “homosocial all-male fantasy fest” somehow escaped my notice. I shall, of course, try harder to detect such things in future. After all, the forces of patriarchal oppression are everywhere and eternal vigilance is required:

We should take it as given that sex, race and sexuality bigotry manifest in cultural works just as they do in society. Outrage against such bigotry is met with bafflement by apolitical people who simply don’t get what the big issue is and are too lazy and complacent to fight the status quo.

The animated, nay heroic, author of this article is Bidisha, a woman so unassuming she declares only one name and describes herself as “a non-white angry political female.” She also defines racism as, exclusively, “despising non-whites.” So no bigotry there. Those who’ve followed Bidisha’s penetrating insights will surely recall her no less remarkable assertions regarding the sexualisation of the Olympics and its “brutalising” and “devastating” effects on the male psyche.

Mick Hartley on Freud, Marx and Hegel – and being antiquated. 

Freud didn’t cure anyone, or come to his conclusions through the hard work of trial and error. The analytic situation was merely the backdrop for what was really going on: myth-making on a grand scale… To use [Freud’s theorising] to explain Western literature, as generations of academics have done, following Freud’s example, is to hold up a mirror and believe you’re seeing through a window.

Thomas Sowell on some economic fallacies. (h/t, Lattenomics.) 

If it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

Norman Geras on Seumas Milne’s latest apologia for Hamas.

Milne tactfully passes over what Hamas’s charter reveals about it: that it is a programmatically anti-Semitic organization which quotes from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and promises the killing of Jews. How is it thinkable that a Guardian journalist doesn’t notice this or, if he does, discounts it? It’s thinkable. In fact, it’s getting to be an old story. [There] was a time when it was kind of shocking.

Yet now it’s a routine pathology among a large part of the left, perhaps the larger part, and its mainstream British publication.