Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Blagsta]

So laurie's not been back here or on Twatter then?

No one knows, she blocked everyone.

 

[TruXta]

No one knows, she blocked everyone.

She ain't blocked me.

 

[Firky]

Dossier sounds good, my suggestion to SP was an open letter to her (CC to the IWCA).

He's also got a very good idea himself but that's one for the future.

 

[JimW]

She ain't blocked me.

That's your failure to draw a clear class line, you horrible liberal vacillator.

 

[rekil]

That's what I'm talking about.

That look in Obama's eyes? 'Fuck you, rich boy, I'm smart as hell and this is what I'm best at?' That. Is UNSPEAKABLY sexy.

 

[TruXta]

Just had a peek, she's back to self-promotion. Fair play, it's about the only good use for Twatter anyhoo.

 

[rekil]

Full page open letter in the guardian. How much?

 

[TruXta]

What is this?

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed
Had coffee with @Dymaxion. Have now begun recruiting for the Post-Geographical Polyqueer Sex Mafia.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

 

[JimW]

Full page open letter in the guardian. How much?

The cost of your very soul

 

[TruXta]

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/03/29/rates-display-guardian.pdf for ad rates

 

[ViolentPanda]

Anyway, why do people care so much about Laurie Penny? "It's not about Laura, it's about journalism!" - Bollocks.

No, it's about a type of journalism which continually crosses the border with fiction; which relates the life and experiences of the author rather than the subject, and merely uses subjects as pegs on which to hang self-referential anecdotage; which happily "lifts" and decontextualises the work and words of others.
And about a specific type of journalist that does this sort of thing: Children of privilege whose experiences have very little in common with the sort of political and social activism they use as a vehicle for their careerism.

Not "Bollocks" at all, in other words.

 

[TruXta]

No, it's about a type of journalism which continually crosses the border with fiction; which relates the life and experiences of the author rather than the subject, and merely uses subjects as pegs on which to hang self-referential anecdotage; which happily "lifts" and decontextualises the work and words of others.
And about a specific type of journalist that does this sort of thing: Children of privilege whose experiences have very little in common with the sort of political and social activism they use as a vehicle for their careerism.

Not "Bollocks" at all, in other words.

We are all Laurie Penny.

 

[Blagsta]

She ain't blocked me.

Pfffft, liberal

 

[TruXta]

Pfffft, liberal

I just don't use Twitter except for stalking. Anyway, it's apparently about 10K for a full page in the Graun.

 

[DotCommunist]

thats a bit steep

 

[TruXta]

thats a bit steep

I was looking to you, yes I was.

 

[sam goloden]

why do anything in life LLETSA?

Her antics yesterday has given some an energy and spur to 'do' something about her type in a more constructive way, it's either channel that energy into a more structural critique of the type of people that the system produces, or use it in a more bitter and negative way by just sniping at her as an individual on message boards like this (or even more derivative and pointless to snipe at the people at who snipe at her on messages boards like this, i mean you never seem to tire of telling us about how you're not bothered by her or any of this, why do you bother?)

Fair enough if that's what you want to spend time doing. I'm still at a loss to know, however, why you attach such importance to what these people of the chattering classes do when they won't affect the kind of people you'd presumably still address your politics to in any way.

And so, when you've put Laura in her place those people who follow Laura will notice, as will a handful of messageboard obsessives. The world outside the window will look the same.

And who's this LLETSA that everybody keeps referring to?

 

[butchersapron]

You can choose not to believe it if you wish, but I am a journalist and I tell the truth. Sorry if that truth makes you uncomfortable.

...

The posts you link to, far from being ‘accurate’, are snide, pissy, poorly-written personal attacks. They’re the blog equivalent of calling someone up, heavy-breathing at them down the phone for a while and then getting enraged when they don’t respond. If people want to see me as a cartoon punching-bag, then fine, but they can hardly get pissy at me for refusing to respond to their childish rants. I have far, far more important things to do

 

[sihhi]

This is Molly Crabbapple in The New Inquiry:

"In June, a company I work with flew me out to Amsterdam, ostensibly to create art about the city. But the artists in Dam Square could watercolor a sweeter canal than me. Instead, I drew people. Escorts and porn filmmakers and digital rights activists and women who co-built artspaces in abandoned bomb shelters. Because artists are the shy kids in the corner, and a sketchpad is a lockpick to the greater world."
http://thenewinquiry.com/features/amsterdam-demimonde/
offering a bizarrely romanticised version of escort prostitution/sex work for the top layer:

This is sort of how the New Inquiry and the new US left intellectual scene sees itself - a poster by another artist for its sub drive:

 

[TruXta]

And who's this LLETSA that everybody keeps referring to?

If he's not you he's your intellectual doppelganger.

 

[sihhi]

Note particularly the top left side of that poster in the style of a flow chart

Celebrities => dead end. Fair enough. OK, but then The New Inquiry on a number of occasions explicitly discusses celebrities in these kinds of terms:

And since capital is a relation between itself and its opposite, labor (or the revolutionary subject or whatever you’d like to call it), it’s never totally clear whose voice is speaking in these cultural products at any given instant. Is it capital who’s saying, “Now is our time”? Is it labor who’s singing, “till the world ends”? It’s interesting that this last line comes from britney’s latest single, because two strong contenders for her wobbly position as most profitable female pop singer, gaga and ke$ha, occupy these two voices, the one of capital singing to its nemesis and the one of that nemesis singing back to capital. but in a bonus trick, what they sing is a sort of liar’s paradox. Neither can say outright which one it is, because as dialectical poles, each voice depends on the other for its own identity. so we get gaga, whose art is fame, money, and power, saying more or less, “I’m not capital. Capital is a liar.” ke$ha, on the other hand, identifies with the nemesis by seeming to claim, “I am capital. Capital is a liar.” to oppose capital is to try and ramp up its contradictory position, so ke$ha, in glam-prole drag, sings as if she were capital: “we’re taking control / we get what we want / we do what you don’t.” for capital to oppose the proletariat, it must flatter the latter’s freedom from its clutches, so gaga tries: “I’m your biggest fan / I’ll follow you until you love me.” ...
Capital is ahead of us at the moment, and if you spent any time at the occupations you may have noticed a lot of the occupiers still parroting Christina Aguilera’s dreadlocked “You are beautiful / In every single way.” but the content of popular music, what’s edgy enough to really capture public attention, has changed a lot since Christina topped the charts. The only feeling left for the music industry to sell back to us is crisis, and it makes for really great dance music. You see this play out in the tastes on the radical left: The last explicitly anarchist party I went to promised “plenty of ke$ha” on the facebook invite without a bit of irony. but there’s a kind of aphasia, an inability for these songs to say what they’re about.

 

[Blagsta]

This is Molly Crabbapple in The New Inquiry:

"In June, a company I work with flew me out to Amsterdam, ostensibly to create art about the city. But the artists in Dam Square could watercolor a sweeter canal than me. Instead, I drew people. Escorts and porn filmmakers and digital rights activists and women who co-built artspaces in abandoned bomb shelters. Because artists are the shy kids in the corner, and a sketchpad is a lockpick to the greater world."
http://thenewinquiry.com/features/amsterdam-demimonde/
offering a bizarrely romanticised version of escort prostitution/sex work for the top layer:

This is sort of how the New Inquiry and the new US left intellectual scene sees itself - a poster by another artist for its sub drive:

They should volunteer for a sex worker street outreach team. Rub out some of that teenage romanticism.

 

[butchersapron]

Note particularly the top left side of that poster in the style of a flow chart

Celebrities => dead end. Fair enough. OK, but then The New Inquiry on a number of occasions explicitly discusses celebrities in these kinds of terms:

Note the construction of the 'us' in that last paragraph.

 

[Firky]

What has the ceiling fan got do with the flow chart (upper right hand corner)?

Trying to work out what that is.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We are all Laurie Penny.

Really? Where's my wonga for my New Statesman column, then?

 

[sam goloden]

Agree totally Love Detective.

This stuff alienates pretty much everyone outside an incredibly small group of posh university graduates, and if it becomes synonymous with "anarchism" or "the radical left" it'll lead directly to it's total and utter defeat in the battle of ideas.

Thirty years too late, I'm afraid.

 

[JimW]

This is Molly Crabbapple in The New Inquiry:..

'Shy kid in the corner' is definitely the first thing springs to mind with her carry-on

 

[sihhi]

What has the ceiling fan got do with the flow chart (upper right hand corner)?

Trying to work out what that is.

It's a drone. Have you apologised yet, btw?

 

[TruXta]

Really? Where's my wonga for my New Statesman column, then?

I nicked it.

 

[Firky]

It's a drone. Have you apologised yet, btw?

See back there for my reply with regards to that.