The Guardian hurts my brain
I'm often quite accurately accused of spending too much time obsessing about the Mail and Express (and Telegraph, and Sun, and Star) at the expense of other media outlets. "What about the Guardian?" people say to me. "What about the BBC? Surely they're just as shit."
It's a fair cop. The others are just as capable of being terrible; though I'd argue they do it less often - much less often when the words "Tanya Gold is away" appear in the Guardian, for example. I've got nothing against the woman personally, but it would seem to be the case that the Guardian have hired a Daily Mail journalist so their readers don't have to go to the Mail itself to exercise that Mail part of their brains - you know, the bit that starts pulsating when you see coppers pulling someone over for speeding, and before you know it, you've started foaming at the mouth about catching law-abiding motorists when they should be out there going after the real criminals, and I'm paying for this, and it's not right...
We've all got it, our Inner Daily Mail. I think it sits in between the bit of your brain that tells you that you need to go to the toilet and the part that makes you go "awww" when you see a puppy. It's quite an ancient part of the brain, I think, but what it also does is make you feel suspicious about new technology. And Gold brilliantly (or not, if you don't like dying in a sea of witless banality) taps into this with this article, about iphones:
Customers, you see – actually, I prefer the word hostages – cannot be bothered to say "application". That is three syllables too far for the avatars. They have better things to do with their time – like having a virtual pint with iBeer. (Hilarious if you are six years old or, because you are a software designer, other people have only ever been a fascinating but terrifying idea to you.) Not drinking? Have an iMilk. It's the same, but it's milk. Except it isn't.
In labour, trying to squeeze a baby out? Try the Birth Buddy app – it will help you track the frequency of your labour contractions. "I can't remember anything about the moment I brought you into the world, child, because I was playing with my iPhone." "I hate you, Mum." (This sentiment was brought to you by iPhone.)
Want to fart, but can't? iFart will fart for you. "Set your phone on a flat surface. The next time the phone is moved, it will fart." Is this where science has brought us? To a farting telephone in a joke shop world?
Gold has a bewildering talent, in that even when I actually broadly agree with what she's writing, I find myself getting angry. Do you know what I mean? There's something excruciating about the whole thing. Sure, a lot of people with iphones are total arses, but on the other hand, that's not the phone's fault; it's the people who are arses' fault. Gold annoys me not in the same way that the Mail or Express annoy me - she's not making up crap about immigrants to suit a prejudiced agenda, for example - but it's the sheer "is that it?"ness about the whole thing. When I read something in a national newspaper, particularly the nationa newspaper I buy most often, I kind of want it to be good. That isn't. It's feeble space-filling.
And yet, it's pretty much Proust when compared with Deborah Orr breathlessly telling us that Sadie Frost is an attractive woman - more than that, that Sadie Frost has 'flesh' like 'flesh' she has never seen before.
No, really.
That's what the whole story's about. You think I'm making this up, and that actually there's more to it, and I'm being reductive and pretending it's worse than it really is. Oh no, go and see for yourselves. And read this, if you can:
I've seen Sadie Frost very close, very recently, with hardly any clothes on, when she appeared on stage in camisole and knickers for a charity fundraising event I attended last year. So I know that her body has very little to communicate to other women at all, except that it is quite exceptionally wondrous.
Sure she's slender, she's toned, and she keeps herself in good nick. Anyone can do that, given the motivation. But Frost's flesh has a special quality. It looks both soft and firm, like no female flesh I've never seen.
I know. You're probably softly crying into the keyboard, having pummeled yourself around the head with your fists, and now you're wondering why I subjected you to this. You may even be thinking: "Jesus Christ, Vowl, I've seen some shit from Littlejohn or Moir in my time - I've even read Allison Pearson and survived - but this is a whole different level of badness." And you'd be right. Drooling over someone's flesh, synecdochising someone into their bare components - it's like something Buffalo Bill might do in Silence of the Lambs, not a proper writer in a proper newspaper. Is it? If it is, it hurts my brain and I don't like it.
And then, just when I think it can't get any worse, it goes and employs Zac Goldsmith to write some crap on Comment is Free:
Actually, I was going to try and put a quote in there. But there's not a single sentence that lends itself to appearing in an article with the Guardian banner. It's dreadfully written, poorly thought out, smearing by association, unreferenced, and comes to a miserably pissweak conclusion which isn't stacked up by anything that's gone before. Is this really how low the bar is for Comment is Free? Or is it only this low if you happen to be some non-dom Tory prick who's about to be sedan-chaired into a nice cosy safe seat, despite having the intelligence of a freshly-coiled dogshit?
You might imagine - or hope - that it's a "Give this twit enough rope" exercise but I'm not so sure, given the context of Gold and Orr. I don't think we can give the Guardian enough credit to do that, when they're happy to fill their space up with such utterly unbearable crap on a regular basis. Of course, Goldsmith's nonsense is demolished in the comments - one of the few occasions on which I haven't looked at the comments under a CiF article without losing the will to live - and there's a good article about it at Liberal Conspiracy here. Now I don't mind the Guardian giving space to Tories, of course not - but I would like to see things that are interesting to read and well written, even if I don't agree with them, rather than the kind of desperate tosh spluttered out by Goldsmith.
While the Mail might make me angry, the Express might make me despair, the Guardian just makes me think: What the fucking hell was that? I know it has a lot of really great writers, but that's what irritates me all the more when it bulks out its content with sawdust. I want to like it; I want to enjoy it. But it won't let me.
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About Me
Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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January 8th, 2010 - 09:49
Other than Charlie, I find the entire roster of G2 colunmnists banal to the point of bum boiling excrutiation. I recall reading pap from Alexander Chancellor, complaining about razors getting a forth blade, with a sense of disbelief. I think – you could be reflecting on Wittgenstein, pondering the injustice of Middle Eastern politics, the future of humankind, even, and you choose to write about flippin RAZORS!! Grow a beard, then, YOU IDIOT!!!
January 8th, 2010 - 10:34
my view is that the guardian is for stuck up tossers with a silver spoon up their arse. but as a result it's still better quality (in places, granted) than those shit 'common' rags the mail and express for real news articles, rather than shouting "PANIC!! SNOW WILL KILL YOU!!!". if only they put the student union price (40p) universally and made the paper a little bit more readable (impossible of weekends).
January 8th, 2010 - 10:38
Tanya Gold has never, ever used an abbreviation. She constantly annoys her family and friends by insisting on using terms like the "world wide web", "television" and "personal computer".
FACT.
January 8th, 2010 - 11:54
Anton,
As usual, right on the money. I’m thoroughbred Guardian reader but it can really be infuriating at times. I distinctly remember the words I wrote to some of my Guardianista friends when I first spotted Tanya Gold in the paper and I’ll just say they weren’t very pleasant. Glad to know I’m not on my own here.
One of my personal grudges with my beloved Guardian is with its coverage of Latin America [I’m originally from Colombia]. Although I really respect the fact that they actually have a man on the ground, I really can’t believe that every time anything of note happens [regardless of the country] Rory Carroll is allowed to regurgitate whatever he’s read in the local media and then somehow end all of his articles by managing to include an implied criticism of whichever lefty leader the country may have or if they don’t, how Hugo Chavez is somehow involved. Really painful to read and he’s been personally responsible for quite a few unread copies of the paper ending up in the recycle bin.
Anyway, sorry to rant and great post.
@gatulino
January 8th, 2010 - 12:46
Best of a bad bunch as far as newspapers are concerned.
But at the risk of revealing just how shallow I really am, I have to say the thing I like best about it is Charlie Brookers' 'Screen Burn'. Hilarious round-up of the weeks telly. Tear inducingly funny, even if you haven't seen any of the programmes he's trashing!
Oh dear. I'll shut up now.
January 8th, 2010 - 13:00
I'm a bit fed up with the Grauniad at the moment. In today's G2, Alexander Chancellor (aged 70) was arguing in favour of ageism. It was yet another occasion when I found myself shouting at the newspaper amid some rather startled bus passengers.
I really shouldn't read *and* drive…
January 8th, 2010 - 13:00
"Tanya Gold has never, ever used an abbreviation. She constantly annoys her family and friends by insisting on using terms like the "world wide web", "television" and "personal computer"."
Was just thinking that myself, 'app' has been around as an abbreviation for 'application' long before the iPhone. Does Gold inside on saying 'telephone' and 'aeroplane' too?
January 8th, 2010 - 13:17
i am glad you wrote that about tanya gold. i reallt can't stand the way she writes, but then feel i have to defend her because the cif-commenters tend to hurl a load of sexist bullshit at her, rather than saying 'tanya, that was dull. please stop'.
the guardian is a funny old place. but if you want to see some excruciatingly shit journalism its produced, check out peaches geldof 3-years-too-late discussion of myspace. i actually wanted to cry.
(then someone sent me a link to her stuff for nylon. and i did cry.)
January 8th, 2010 - 16:33
Anton
Another great blog post. Entirely agree with you about Gold. But:
'Now I don't mind the Guardian giving space to Tories, of course not – but I would like to see things that are interesting to read and well written, even if I don't agree with them, rather than the kind of desperate tosh spluttered out by Goldsmith.'
Do they still pay Harry Phibbs to write that Hitler was a lefty because he nationalised stuff he stole from ethnic minorities?
@Euclides
I entirely agree; given that The Guardian is a leftist newspaper they have been at best lukewarm at the democratic-left revolution in Latin America.
Rather more ambiguously, I feel uneasy at Luke Harding's coverage of Russia. Certainly, the United Russia party has many faults, but the way he implies 'Vladimir Putin' is responsible for everything and tries to implicate that the government is behind every murder is really unpleasant.
January 8th, 2010 - 16:49
I am a daily reader of the Guardian but have also noticed a real decline in the quality of it's journalism in the last year or so. I agree that writers like Tanya Gold and Zac Goldmsith are some of the worst.
The Guardian seems to be using younger writers and also leaning towards the sensationalist, especially in the Comment is Free (CiF) section. I wrote some criticisms of their use of Jennifer Varela and her poor journalism on the CiF site and she was kind enough to reply to the points I raised about her article. The "correspondence" we had can be read at my blog:
http://www.bretthetherington.net/Modules/Blog/Pages/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=452
Her replies are interesting because she not only objected to my complaints about her piece being published at to the NewsTrust Hunt For Bad Journalism (stating that I "felt the need to denounce [her] to the journalism police") but also because she said her piece "did not appear as it was written…[and that] it was cut for word count."
A common problem for journalists everywhere!
January 8th, 2010 - 17:31
To be honest, if the Heresairch took Zac Goldsmiths article seriously, I don't see why you would give it such a bad press. I had to click the link just to find out what you were even writing about. A paragraph of abuse tells me basically nothing about what your issue with it is.
January 9th, 2010 - 20:04
Ahhh, Tanya, Tanya.
Whenever I need a good laugh, I go and have a re-read of this unintentionally hilarious article by Tanya Gold in which she decides to "prove" that men don't want to date intelligent women by going to a speed-dating night and lecturing the men on economics, starting arguments about Israel-Palestine and telling them that she named her cats, "Roe and Wade, after the United States supreme court case that resulted in the legalisation of abortion."
Yes, funnily enough she is still single.
That article is another one that gets taken to pieces in the comments thread.
January 12th, 2010 - 09:41
I followed your link to Zac Goldsmith's article, which was met by a barrowload of comments jumping up and down, many of which cited 'Sense Against Science' against Goldsmith. However if you look at who actually runs SAS day-to-day (as against the dignitaries who sit on the board) the connection to Living Marxism / Spiked / Institute of Ideas etc is rather more striking, at least if George Monbiot got his facts right (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2). In Canterbury where Frank Furedi and many of his followers still have a strong presence LMism looks rather more significant perhaps, but this network of organisations (often sponsored by Pfizer in another East Kent connection) bears more sceptical examination. My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend. (As the Wootton Bassett issue should perhaps remind all parties. Who's a liberal now?)
January 16th, 2010 - 13:35
Paul H,
Can you please elaborate on Frank Furedi?
Thanks,
Brett.