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

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She did. It's in Tip #7 in "How to look good at a protest" that butchers posted.
Crikey. I didn't get that far. My eyes had glazed over by number 4.

Nobody’s going to be looking at your fucking feet, unless you’re stupid enough to try and kick a copper in the head, in which case you’re drunk or you’re a sociopath, and either way you shouldn’t be on the march.
Oooooh. I hope she tells the Greeks.
 
To touch on a point a couple of people raised a bit back in the thread, of course there's a risk the thread could be accused of taking everything that comes rushing from her Thoughtless Red Marker Pen of Justice and taking it apart, but what she's putting out into the world as an overall "body of work" is that she can neither escape nor even wants to escape what she is.
 
The more I find out about Penny Red the more I think she is not half as interesting as the fictional character with her name that has been created on this thread. The article about 'how to look good on a protest' is just a piece of light-hearted hack writing and I don't think she is being serious. It is also a few years old. I have found some YouTube extracts of her speaking and she says nothing enlightening or even mildly interesting. If she can get newspapers to pay for her writing currently while she has a minor fame, then good luck to her. It won't last long because there is no substance to her commentary.
 
The more I find out about Penny Red the more I think she is not half as interesting as the fictional character with her name that has been created on this thread. The article about 'how to look good on a protest' is just a piece of light-hearted hack writing and I don't think she is being serious. It is also a few years old. I have found some YouTube extracts of her speaking and she says nothing enlightening or even mildly interesting. If she can get newspapers to pay for her writing currently while she has a minor fame, then good luck to her. It won't last long because there is no substance to her commentary.

Hmm. I must admit I was inclined to go easy on her too - now that I'm middle-aged I've got a bit indulgent about young people striking poses and I agree things like the 'looking good on a protest' piece are obviously meant to be a joke so getting aerated about them is daft.

But I'm glad this thread exists, because the 'fictional character with her name' is the one that I bought into when I read maybe 2 of her pieces in the New Statesman and thought, she's ok, she's sound, she's a lefty and I try not to get into slagging off people on the left, even if I don't agree with everything they are saying. The reality is that she isn't a lefty, she's a desperate narcissistic poseur and liar whose primary goal is her own personal and professional advancement. "Radical" politics is just another means of furthering her career. And even for an old cynic like myself it is gobsmacking how serious journalistic entities like the Independent and the NS have bought into her fantasy self and made her a figurehead for a movement and so on.It is shockingly bad judgement and not good for her ego problem either.

She needs to go and get a proper job for 5 years somewhere, live out of the limelight and do some growing up. But she obviously won't, she'll just be a shouty professional controverseur and we'll all have to listen to her opinions for decades and be told she's speaking for us*. Christ what a country.




*until she switches horses of course
 
although i guess she's already trying to ride two different horses, imagine the introduction of a third horse - that would be two horses going in different directions and then another horse that she's been on since the start just galloping around aimlessly trying to get noticed and avoiding being made into dog food
 
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We can but hope.
 
although i guess she's already trying to ride two different horses, imagine the introduction of a third horse - that would be two horses going in different directions and then another horse that she's been on since the start just galloping around aimlessly trying to get noticed and avoiding being made into dog food

I can see where you are coming from
 
All this stuff about horse riding is clearly thinly veiled misogyny, trying to imply she's a prostitute or something. And anyway, neither St. Laurie nor her savage red crayon of justice would even consider horse riding - it's cruel to animals and clearly symbolic of patriarchy.
 
although i guess she's already trying to ride two different horses, imagine the introduction of a third horse - that would be two horses going in different directions and then another horse that she's been on since the start just galloping around aimlessly trying to get noticed and avoiding being made into dog food

or she could become the new patti smith
 
another horse that she's been on since the start just galloping around aimlessly trying to get noticed and avoiding being made into dog food

This is it - she's got more in common with some semi-intellectual X Factor contestant than anything else, the desperation to be in the limelight. And her blustering bullshit when she was pwned by Starkey was more reminiscent of the Bob Diamond/Rupert Murdoch School of Modern British Public Life ; just deny deny deny, doesn't matter what crap you come out with, just stay on the front foot, throw counter-accusations, never admit a thing. Primary school playground.

The absence of any moral skeleton or moral compass or any inner life at all is stunning. As a human being, she is damaged goods.
 
In a few years she'll still be writing a column or two, and now and again saying how embarrassed she is when looking back at her 'radical' phase.
 
Think it's interesting how obsessed some people are with her on here. Does it really matter whether she changes her political outlet in ten years...who doesn't evolve their thinking over time??
 
Think it's interesting how obsessed some people are with her on here. Does it really matter whether she changes her political outlet in ten years...who doesn't evolve their thinking over time??

she's already told us how her privileged position in life makes her a more committed leftist than the rest of us - so surely we'd expect a bit more consistency, and erm..commitment from one so unfeasibly committed
 
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