Deliberately idiotic, perhaps
Oh, Liz Jones, Liz Jones, Liz Jones. You write about not having 50p to cross a bridge as if it's like being murdered; you slag off a spelling mistake in a wine list in a beer-based pub for which you clearly aren't the target demographic; you go wandering around a dead woman's house to confect some kind of colour piece, but the only colour you end up painting is a rather dirty, muddy brown. I don't know what to make of you. No Sleep Til Brooklands felt pretty much the same way as I did when I read your piece today.
I've written about you before a few times. Sometimes I don't like you; sometimes I feel a bit sorry for you; sometimes I just can't make up my mind. Are you just stupid, or idiotic, or is the ditsy stupid persona a literary creation, a stroke of genius; or are you just, perhaps, actually incapable of any kind of empathy whatsoever? If it's the latter, I find it hard to rouse a great deal of hatred; and since the latter possibility is some kind of possibility, if not a more plausible possibility, necessarily, than the other two, I don't know where to go. Is it wrong to read what you write, and walk around the room, pacing like an angry ocelot peering through the bars at a fattened sparrow bouncing around, wanting to rip its wings off and tear it to pieces? Is that wrong, or is it the right response to feel? Because I just don't really know whether it is, any more, or not.
Believe me, I want to feel sorry. I want to feel the best of people. I want to think that people aren't toxic lumps of atoms splodged in the way of anything that's kind, or decent, or humane; I want to think of the world as a place in which people are, generally, good; as a place in which people don't make horrendous, appalling, cackhanded judgements about others, and themselves, and stuff - but then there's the evidence, you see, from my eyes, and ears and all of that, and then I wonder. Oh, do I wonder.
Oh, Liz. Liz. I want you to be a naive fool, or someone who simply lacks understanding of other people; there's nothing wrong with that, of course, and maybe I could understand you a little better, or the things you write, if I knew that were the case. It would make sense, then, that you'd bleat on about being poor while having an enormous house and uber-luxurious tastes; it wouldn't be because you were being deliberately idiotic to raise a few hackles - you'd simply be winding others up accidentally, and that would be, well, OK I suppose, given that that's the way you are.
But which are you? I wrestle with this all the time. But I suppose, in the end, I wonder if I should give up the guessing game for good. What does it matter whether you're a clever writer who's made up a comic persona of someone rather snooty who doesn't understand the real world, or whether you're just someone rather snooty who doesn't understand the real world? What does it matter at all, when articles like today's turn up, squeezing that corpse a little more to get some fresh juice out of it? If it's a sly comic persona, it's not funny this time; if it's really you writing that, then I do feel a bit sorry for you, but not very sorry, because it's not very good. Deliberately idiotic, or just idiotic? Maybe it's time to stop guessing, and just look at the words. And they write a pretty sad story.
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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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January 16th, 2011 - 19:11
If it’s a comic persona, then it crossed a line today. Whoever thought that the Liz Jones brand was an appropriate one to apply to a fresh murder investigation is just as reprehensible as the Liz Jones character itself.
Alternatively, Liz Jones is real and she really is that much of a shit. Either way, it’s bloody awful.
January 16th, 2011 - 20:01
Now I feel dirty – I hate those links that lead to the Daily Filth.
Perhaps if you find the predictable slurry emanating from Jones et al at the DM offensive – STOP READING IT!
January 16th, 2011 - 20:32
That last paragraph makes the mind boggle, really.
January 16th, 2011 - 20:33
Jones’s satnav took her to the Suspension Bridge. Her writing took me with her. It’s not her description that allows me to imagine the scene; I have seen it often enough. I have even abseiled in the gorge beyond during my time in those parts. Ocelot I am not, but I feel the frustration – of being able to put myself right on the spot but unable to pitch the fool into the void.
January 16th, 2011 - 21:08
Regardless of whether Miss Jones is the real mccoy or doing a ‘Jeremy Clarkson’ (taking huge pleasure in deliberately antagonisng the liberal-lefty-tree-hugging-lentil-munching brigade)- she is still, and will be forever so, a fucking petit bourgeois, snotty nosed, degenerate C**T.
Let it go Anton my son, just let it go…..(as i clearly have done)
January 17th, 2011 - 09:56
Jones seems to me to be in that class of columnists who’ve become what they write. I don’t think the self-hate and solipsism are a put-on – she really is ghastly – but she knows that her ghastliness is her most saleable commodity, and so do her editors who put her up to this sort of piece just knowing the sort of humanity-baiting stuff she’ll turn out. The end result is, I think that hating her is legit, except it’s what the Mail eds want you to do, and I dislike doing what they suggest.
January 17th, 2011 - 10:53
I’m not angry or even annoyed, just perplexed by the nonsense of it all. Jesus, what a fucking weirdo she must be.
January 17th, 2011 - 11:00
Holy mackeral! Was that really real? Really?
I wish she’d spent her last hours somewhere better…
She obviously aspired to a better life through her pizza choice…
The world allows charging 50p for a bridge but won’t stop bad things happening..
Does the Mail really have such little respect for the feelings of the family that to publish this tripe? There’s literally zero of any jornalistic value in that piece.
January 18th, 2011 - 11:24
You just know that, somewhere in Desmond Towers, someone is looking at a graph showing a sodding great spike in website hits and thinking “Well, that worked like a charm. What can we do next week?”
January 19th, 2011 - 08:20
Except this is the Daily Mail we are talking about and not the Express (prop Mr. Desmond)
January 19th, 2011 - 13:20
Sorry, I get confused as to which cunt runs which shitrag. They all look the same to me. My point remains.
January 22nd, 2011 - 13:23
I always thought they should change her column to: “Liz Jones moans”. I’ve often wondered why the Daily Mail still employ her. There seems to be nothing of interest in her column – just her harping on about having a saggy ass. I stopped reading her when she was married and whining about her husband – she always seemed surprised that he was upset by the fact that she lied to him about her age (he only found out she was much, much older than she pretended to be after they were married).