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Tamsin bloody Omond

JimW said:
There was an excellent set of hand-wringing articles in the liberal press about 'hatred for the rich' which was worryingly prevalent - just had a quick Google and there's even local-version wiki articles about it. So obviously it's not a one-way process :D
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Read as fear of the poor.

What are the Chinese words for "concerns" and "clasped chins"?
 
Captain Hurrah said:
Just thinking about the proles revolting over the last few years (probably just seen as plain revolting to a lot of pretensions aspirants) but even the more aware among them must make a connection between their relative comfort and the squalor of millions. Any examples of Beanery in a Chinese context?
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There's been a Chinese version of 'orientalism' with loads of affectless urbanite sheading off to Tibet to find themselves, or playing dress-up and singing 'spiritual' songs (in Chinese) in a Tibetan style. Grim. The green movement draws a similar sort to back home, but not quite so bad and more sensible people too (as it's blindingly obvious here how fucked the environemnt is)
 
JimW said:
There was an excellent set of hand-wringing articles in the liberal press about 'hatred for the rich' which was worryingly prevalent - just had a quick Google and there's even local-version wiki articles about it. So obviously it's not a one-way process :D
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My goodness things in China are moving fast, they've already developed their version of the Guardian. Mind you I suppose the liberal were wringing their hands here already by the 1850s.
 
JimW said:
There's been a Chinese version of 'orientalism' with loads of affectless urbanite sheading off to Tibet to find themselves, or playing dress-up and singing 'spiritual' songs (in Chinese) in a Tibetan style. Grim. The green movement draws a similar sort to back home, but not quite so bad and more sensible people too (as it's blindingly obvious here how fucked the environemnt is)
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Yeah, I read something (can't remember what exactly and where), but it was in the wake of the Han/Uyghur rioting in that city, Urumqi, in 2009. It was about the Chinese middle class going all faddish and Bean over minority foods and clothing. Or people in other countries, like Mongolians and Kyrgyz. Hats, bags and grilled animals.
 
Random said:
Mostly I've just been asking you questions, haven't I?
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Not without some heavy hints of a view of the media as reflecting the choices people have already made. That comes pretty close to suggesting that we live in a 'peoples' capitalism' to me.
 
What about Russia, Capt Hurrah? Isn't there a similar mainstream media message of consumerism, but most people are actually very poor and unlikely to meet the aspirations?
 
LLETSA said:
Not without some heavy hints of a view of the media as reflecting the choices people have already made. That comes pretty close to suggesting that we live in a 'peoples' capitalism' to me.
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You've been reading something into my questions that doesn't exist. Here's let me spell it out - I don't think that what is produced in the media really reflects what people want to see in the media. The process of creating the mass media is, on the whole, very undemocratic and driven by a small clique and reflects their prejudices.
 
Random said:
What about Russia, Capt Hurrah? Isn't there a similar mainstream media message of consumerism, but most people are actually very poor and unlikely to meet the aspirations?
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As said, though, it doesn't matter if the aspirations can't be met as long as the message is absorbed and accepted by the majority. That applies here, where political organisation is still relatively free. It certainly applies in Russia, where organising against the system could conceivably get you killed.
 
kyser_soze said:
... Which can then cause the kids problems at home if their parents don't have the same skillsets. This situation is more readily recognisable in 'first child at university' experiences. Tony Harrison's poem V, and much of his ealier work sums it up better than any worthy treatise on the matter:
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But it would only cause problems with one generation, after that everyone would have standard table manners and the problem could be fixed :)

Ok perhaps that is simplistic.

But I like the idea that people can trancend their born class, I hate the very term class, we are all just humans, but we seem to erect subtle barriers to entry of our silly little social groups. It stinks, but it is true.

I like the idea that working class people can network as well as a Tamsin, because some individuals can, but I accept that it is not the case for the majority.

But equally, a lot of the animosity against Omond in the earlier part of this thread seems to focus on the fact that she is upper middle class. I dislike that as much as any other class based discrimination. She can do whatever she can do and good luck to her, and everyone else.
 
Random said:
You've been reading something into my questions that doesn't exist. Here's let me spell it out - I don't think that what is produced in the media really reflects what people want to see in the media. The process of creating the mass media is, on the whole, very undemocratic and driven by a small clique and reflects their prejudices.
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If you'd said that in the first place it could have saved us both a bit of typing.
 
Random said:
What about Russia, Capt Hurrah? Isn't there a similar mainstream media message of consumerism, but most people are actually very poor and unlikely to meet the aspirations?
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Indeed. But unlike here in the UK, worse poverty on the material side of things is much more widespread. The intelligentsia (which has specific meaning in a Russian context) has not always been rich, and in most cases in Soviet times had living standards the same or not too dissimilar to skilled workers. Their sense of being a cut above is less to do with the accumilation of lots of stuff, but more based on education (formal and high*) and cultural tastes, although the two are connected. The very rich are vulgar. Mind you, they are anywhere.

*Which is partly why I once had a silly cow in Moscow transposing her own prejudices and treating me less than courteously when she discovered I don't live in London and have never been to a university.
 
The intelligentsia (which has specific meaning in a Russian context) has not always been rich, and in most cases in Soviet times had living standards the same or not too dissimilar to skilled workers. Their sense of being a cut above is less to do with the accumilation of lots of stuff, but more based on education (formal and high) and cultural tastes, although the two are connected.
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So basically the same as intelligensia elsewhere then - compensate for not earning the big bucks by congratulating themselves on having impeccable taste, better modes of 'thinking' etc.
 
kyser_soze said:
So basically the same as intelligensia elsewhere then - compensate for not earning the big bucks by congratulating themselves on having impeccable taste, better modes of 'thinking' etc.
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In one way. But with a big broad sweeping brush, intelligentsia used to identify people of a particular class formation, originating way back when in the dvorianstvo (House Servants to the Tsars), between the peasant serfs, meschanin artisans and the much higher up nobles, and who emerged out of the changed social landscape when Ivan Grozny's (and those of his class for whom such changed favoured) earlier dog and broom strategy lay the groundwork for the destruction of the old Boyars, not just physically, but further changed the state and the rules of land ownership.
 
Captain Hurrah said:
Indeed. But unlike here in the UK, worse poverty on the material side of things is much more widespread. The intelligentsia (which has specific meaning in a Russian context) has not always been rich, and in most cases in Soviet times had living standards the same or not too dissimilar to skilled workers. Their sense of being a cut above is less to do with the accumilation of lots of stuff, but more based on education (formal and high*) and cultural tastes, although the two are connected. The very rich are vulgar. Mind you, they are anywhere.

*Which is partly why I once had a silly cow in Moscow transposing her own prejudices and treating me less than courteously when she discovered I don't live in London and have never been to a university.
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In my experience, no contempt can ever match that shown by members of the old Soviet intelligentsia (the majority who lost out when the Soviet system fell) for the vulgarity of the so-called New Russian rich. It isn't anything to do with the failure of communism-the majority of the Soviet intelligentsia had no belief in the Communist-ruled system in its later decades. It's something that stretches far back into Russian history. Russians generally seem to set far more store by education and what they see as good taste than they do by material wealth. It is in this sense that theorists who say that Russia has an essential antipathetical stance towards capitalism are correct. It helps explain the hostility shown by the vast majority towards the oligarchs (although anti-semitism also plays a major role.)
 
The same mind-set (minus the education bit in most cases) applies to the remants of the old European families that have 'heritage'. Hell, the very term 'nouveau riche' was coined as an insult, as are the comments reserved for the excessively visible spending of the rich w/c - altho I guess that tends to manifest more now from the middle & upper middle classes. Which I realise directly contradicts my first sentence.
 
Captain Hurrah said:
The lower down nobles had the means and leisure time to indulge themselves with education.
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Presumably it also wasn't seen as something that ill-behoved a nobleman to do as well? I know there are some strands of old r/c culture that viewed education as something other people did.
 
LLETSA said:
In my experience, no contempt can ever match that shown by members of the old Soviet intelligentsia (the majority who lost out when the Soviet system fell) for the vulgarity of the so-called New Russian rich. It isn't anything to do with the failure of communism-the majority of the Soviet intelligentsia had no belief in the Communist-ruled system in its later decades. It's something that stretches far back into Russian history. Russians generally seem to set far more store by education and what they see as good taste than they do by material wealth. It is in this sense that theorists who say that Russia has an essentially antithetical stance towards capitalism are correct. It helps explain the hostility shown by the vast majority towards the oligarchs (although anti-semitism also plays a major role.)
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I have witnessed contempt for both rich and working class. Both seen as vulgar, and I'm sure you're aware of the derogatory epithet "province."

Things that have been imported from the west have been absorbed and reconfigured in a different way, particularly the idea of democracy.
 
kyser_soze said:
Presumably it also wasn't seen as something that ill-behoved a nobleman to do as well? I know there are some strands of old r/c culture that viewed education as something other people did.
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The dvorinastvo were nobility. But not all nobles, even the rich and powerful ones with large estates and serfs from which they supported their lifestyles, regarded education, or a western education, as being important. A fair few were illiterate.
 
Dan U said:
20 pages surely
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Why is how long a thread becomes a problem as long as the discussion remains relevant? I'd still like to know, for instance why it's supposed to be moralistic to make the obvious point that the behaviour, perceptions and opinions of millions are affected by what the mass media churns out.
 
LLETSA said:
Why is how long a thread becomes a problem as long as the discussion remains relevant? I'd still like to know, for instance why it's supposed to be moralistic to make the obvious point that the behaviour, perceptions and opinions of millions are affected by what the mass media churns out.
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Opinion formers like the media are obviously important

But they are changing with newspapers I think being bought less in the net age.

Where people get their information and opinion from now, I am not sure.

What has this to do with Tamsin Omond?
 
@ Lletsa: I suspect that there's a reading of the subtext to your words that you are making a moralistic point about TV and other forms of mass media as being bad for people, implying there are variants of morally approvable media that act as improvers rather than bread & circus distractions and reinforcers of the dominant ideology.
 
weltweit said:
Opinion formers like the media are obviously important

But they are changing with newspapers I think being bought less in the net age.

Where people get their information and opinion from now, I am not sure.

What has this to do with Tamsin Omond?
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Read the thread if you want to know whatit has to do with her.

But of an odd, self-contradictory post as well.
 
LLETSA said:
Read the thread if you want to know whatit has to do with her.

But of an odd, self-contradictory post as well.
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I have read the thread. I was posting in a lot of it in case you hadn't noticed. But there were two subjects going on the same thread!
 
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