Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

About

I started this blog back in November 2007 because I was fed up with reading the same old tripe day after day, telling me things that I knew were untrue, pushing certain stories at the expense of others, and feeding fear. I thought to myself: surely, there must be some room somewhere for an alternative voice? And I found it online, in blogs like Five Chinese Crackers and Chicken Yoghurt and Obsolete.

Finally there was something I could read that treated me like an adult and didn't rehash the same old rubbish time after time; not only that, but here were talented writers who would take on and challenge the received wisdom - they weren't afraid to call out the papers or politicians out when they were peddling rubbish or being lazy. I tried to copy what those better blogs were doing and do it in my own way - which is how we've ended up here.

Nowadays this blog is not just about media myths, although I still do trawl through the papers whenever I get a moment. You could have hoped that the greater access for readers to the internet, where they can fact-check what they're reading in their daily rag, might impose better standards on those newspapers, but if anything, it seems to have gone the other way. They've become more entrenched and are even more obsessed with selling the same old stories, day after day, regardless of what's actually going on, or whether the situation is a little more complicated than they might like.

On Enemies

I picked the name Enemies of Reason because it struck me as at the same time quite powerful and quite ridiculous, almost verging on the pompous, as if I was taking myself a bit too seriously. I like that. I think I first heard it as the title of a documentary by Richard Dawkins, though I understand that Al Gore used the phrase previously, which I wasn't aware of when I chose it. You can take it in a couple of ways - the enemies of reason could be the people who lie to us, or us, for believing those lies.

I don't think newspapers, or media outlets, are the enemies of reason. I think we all are. We're all capable of thinking for ourselves, but we get lazy. We want everything nice and neat and tidy - the goodies wear the white hats, the baddies wear the black hats, and at the end of the third act, the baddies will have been captured or killed, and it's all over. But it's never really that simple. If I see newspapers are being enemies, that's too simplistic as well, because they can be a tremendous force for good, and a brilliant way of getting information to large amounts of people. That they very often don't is what I'm interested in - and why we as readers let them get away with it.

As well as that I like to write about anything else that pops up in my tiny brain. I watch a lot of TV and that tends to turn up here quite often. I have vague nostalgic feelings for the 1980s, so I write about that as well. I also like football, though I've fallen out of love with the beautiful game over recent years - perhaps I'll be able to claw back some enthusiasm as time passes, and write a little more about that. I've also struggled a little with depression over the years, which I detailed in my other blog Farewell Prozac, and I occasionally talk about those kinds of things here as well. I get a bit angsty. It can get annoying. The best thing to do is for us all to hold hands and plough through those times, and wait until they pass, which they usually do. But I do find it helpful writing about that here; it does expiate a certain something.

On Swearing

I swear a lot. I swear a lot in real life. So I swear here. Sometimes, reading a bad newspaper article or listening to some drivel from a politician is like stubbing your toe - and there's only one thing to do. Swearing conveys the anger that I feel, and I'm not really apologetic for it at all. I know it's not to everyone's taste but it's how I do things here and it's very much part of my personality. I know that people will say that if you swear, you aren't a good writer, or if you swear it shows that you haven't got anything to say, and I have some sympathy for that position. At the same time, and with all the love in the world, I would invite you to fuck off if you don't like it.

On Me

You may be interested to know who 'the real me' is. It's not a massive secret, really, though I prefer to use a writing name - the allonym Anton Vowl from Georges Perec's marvellous lipogrammatic novel, La Disparition - to my real name, which is not only rather bland but also the name of an existing writer. I don't want to get all Michael Caine in Batman, but I am of course proud of my real name and my real identity. It's just that it's a lot less hassle to use it on a blog. I don't really have much interest in becoming a minor celebrity with a big picture of my face at the top of the blog or turning up on Sky News doing the newspaper review - if that ever does happen, feel free to kick me up the arse. I'm quite happy being an insignificant little nobody off the internet. That suits me just fine.

It's not just about me, though. I would like to see more writers putting up guest posts or even regular features, if it all goes well. I have had a couple of guest posts in the past and they've gone down very well, so if you have anything you feel you really want to write about, and you think it might interest me, then drop me an email at AntonVowl at Live.co.uk . I'm quite bad at replying to things but I do try to get back to everyone.