Aunt Sallys
It's kind of a recent development with me, but I find myself increasingly unwilling to try and dunk the Aunt Sallys nowadays. There seems little satisfaction with the outcome - you tell someone who's written something stupid they've written something stupid; but by doing so, you give them an enormous amount of attention, albeit negative, and reward them for their poverty of insight or imagination by getting their article talked about, tweeted and blogged about all over the place.
Part of me can't help feeling that some articles, like Charlotte Metcalf's of yesterday which I wrote about on here, are a bit flamebaity. I pointed to the fact that the Poundland elements have been done to death before (and since, in this Evening Standard article, for example); others have pointed me in the direction of this Metcalf article from earlier in the year (doesn't link to the Mail, so feel free to click!) in which the same 'middle class poor' themes were explored.
Less than ten years ago, that was me, but today it's like peering through a window in my past. Like so many middle-class people, I slid into poverty when fees for my work froze or plummeted and the cost of living soared.
I am currently one of thousands of middleclass paupers out there putting on a brave face and pretending nothing has changed when, in fact, beneath the glossy varnish of the facade, our entire way of life is crumbling under the crushing pressure of the credit crunch.
You can point to the fact that Metcalf claims £500 a week isn't a spectacular income - and sure, it's not the breadline; but it's not a wonderfully comfortable amount of money to try and keep a family afloat, either. It's a bit more subtle than the writer pleading poverty when they're not poor; it's about people noticing the difference in their lives that the recession has brought, and struggling to keep up the facade of wealth with their peers despite not having the readies any more. It's all relative.
And besides, I tend to feel that a lot of these columns are merely put up there in the first place to put the authors in the crosshairs.
There's something else, too. When Janet Street Porter came out with a torrent of nonsense about how depression was just a trendy illness, there were strong rumours that it wasn't even she who had written the words (Private Eye covered it at the time). The indication was that her byline had simply been slapped on a nasty piece of work written by someone else, which was designed to stick the boot into a recently departed employee who had claimed they were depressed. Which makes me wonder if a lot of these articles serve a couple of functions: to garner a lot of heat and light by irritating bleeding heart lefties like me; and to stick the dagger into someone behind the scenes in a bit of nastiness.
As Bad Hedgehog pointed out under the previous Metcalf post, they also provide a handy Aunt Sally for readers, commenters and passing bleeding hearts alike. You can question the extent to which the author is complicit in this, a willing participant knowing they're going to be flamed in the comments, or whether they're being exploited by the publishers. But a couple of things are clear to me, I think. Personal abuse of the writer doesn't help anyone; and it just doesn't achieve a great deal to chuck rotten fruit sometimes.
Of course there are times, as was the case with Jan Moir's abysmal efforts after Stephen Gately's death, or Allison Pearson's sneery finger-pointing after the death of Scarlett Keeling, when something is truly hideous and unpleasant, then I think there's a case to be made for verbalising the rage that is felt upon reading the garbage on the page. But saying you're quite badly off when you're not so badly off? Is that really worth getting that worked up about? As I've said before with regards to Liz Jones's bleatings re her financial situation, it's hard to work out where the real person ends and the proll begins, where the human being stops and the flamebaitery starts.
I find it difficult to get so angry at someone who seems simply unaware of the fact they're not as badly off as they might think. I end up thinking, so what? If they genuinely feel that way, then they're ignorant, and unloading a can of whoopass on them isn't going to change that; it might be more useful to calmly point out where they're going wrong, and just how wrong they can be. If they don't genuinely feel that way, and it's just a caricature or a type of trolling designed to put a stick in the hornets' nest, then why give them the satisfaction of getting worked up about it?
I don't feel the same level of anger towards Aunt Sallys like Charlotte Metcalf or Liz Jones as I do to the truly unpleasant columnists. I even end up having a bit of sympathy. You might that's wrong, but I hope you can understand why I might feel that way.
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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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December 6th, 2010 - 16:28
No, £500 a week is not *spectacular*, but it’s not the only income in the Metcalf household and it’s ‘earned’ for writing this shite, which is what some people will find irksome, including yours truly. If I could earn that for doing that, I’d sign up straight away.
December 6th, 2010 - 16:37
Yes, I understand your feelings, but have to admit she stirred a good deal of anger in me. I think it was her use of the words ‘poverty-stricken’ that triggered outright anger, because up until that point I was merely deeply offended by her words.
This blog post, http://big-fashionista.blogspot.com/2010/12/sad-tale-or-major-fail.html from BigFashionista sort of explains how I felt about the whole thing. The opportunity for a really good, interesting, enlightening piece was completely missed because of the ‘poor me’ overload.
I probably shouldn’t have fallen for it, but consider me well and truly baited. Blast those bloody opinions – everybody’s got one, but they’re not all the same.
I would also say that habitually shopping in Harrods doesn’t seem to be an average, middle-class pastime, so perhaps Ms Metcalfe’s definition of herself as such is slightly wide of the mark, which may have triggered a bit of outrage from middle class people.
December 6th, 2010 - 18:05
I don’t have a problem at all with people feeling outrage and anger towards the stunningly self-absorbed Ms Metcalf, per se. At least, the relationship between non-Mail readers and Ms Metcalf isn’t the one I’m interested in. I’m more interested in the relationship between the Mail and its regular readers, and how Ms Metcalf has been used as a tool to consolidate this relationship.
It’s human nature to feel that one is the innocent victim of any ill-fortune — it’s also human nature to tend to see things in binary terms, and to feel satisfaction on hearing one’s opinions or prejudices confirmed. Tabloid newspapers exploit these irrational little quirks to great effect, as we know. In the case of the Daily Mail, its readers, and the recession; Mail readers feel satisfaction at being told that they are the “true” victims of the recession. The Mail usually gives them this reward by telling them so directly. But once in a while, mixing things up has greater impact. By providing a target in the shape of Ms Metcalf, the Mail evokes an upwelling of anger/outrage/FURY!!! (or whatever they want to call it) in their readers. A *shared* upwelling of anger, and a *shared* positioning of themselves as the true “squeezed middle”, the true victims of the recession. Strong emotions, and underlining of readers’ belief that they are the innocent hard-done-to victims: these things sell papers.
Of course, as well as the intended consequences, there are some unintended… no, scratch that, *less intended* consequences. Positioning Mail readers as hard done to victims erases the experience of the very poor — people who rely on benefits to survive at all, people with disabilities who rely on Incapacity Benefit or Disability Living Allowance, people in low paid work with families to clothe, feed and keep warm. This is not to say that no Daily Mail readers are genuinely hard up. But the Daily Mail has long had an agenda of looking down on the very poor and marginalised, classing them as scroungers or lazy, and encouraging readers to believe that benefits means a life of luxury. Using Ms Metcalf as a target of ire allows them to continue quite easily with this. Loathe this rich whinger, but feel not sorry for the very poorest; instead feel sorry for yourselves.
Ms Metcalf strikes me as someone who is not so much carrying a knapsack of invisible and unexamined privilege as she is dragging a Wembley Arena’s worth of flight cases of the stuff. As such, I would be very very surprised if it would have occured to her for one second that her piece would attract so much ire, far less that she was being used by the Mail. I’m sure the person who commissioned it was ever so ever so nice to her.
As Anton points out, the flamebait and Aunt Sally articles in the press tend to come from freelancers and the less embedded columnists, not from staff reporters.
December 7th, 2010 - 13:15
I understand what you mean by not getting worked up by this article, especially in comparison with some of the outright offensive drivel the Mail publish on an almost hourly basis.
I, however, got very angry. I got angry because for me, as a married father of 3 and the only wage earner in the house due to the shortsighted Scottish Governments betrayal of newly qualified teachers (my wife being one of them), £500 per week would represent a doubling of my take home pay. And we get by. Just, but we get by. We do so by cutting back on all the non essentials and making no effort to keep up with friends by creating a facade of wealth, only to then whinge about finding it difficult to put food on the table. We prioritise, something Ms Metcalf seems to think doesn’t matter purely because she is middle class.
To have someone write the drivel she has put out, claiming “poverty” and referring to her family as “middle class paupers” is grossly offensive, not to people like me, who are just doing what they have to, but to people who are in genuine poverty. Those for whom the phrase “slid into poverty” means literally no food, basic or no shelter and a fear for your and your children’s lives. This is an odious, self pitying piece by someone for whom materialism seems to have enveloped them and warped any sense of perspective.
Whew! That feels better. Thanks.
December 8th, 2010 - 09:55
I’ll take £500 a week if Metcalfe thinks it’s a pittance. I earn less than half her wage, and I’m certainly not getting paid to write guff like that.