butchersapron
Bring back hanging
This post highlights exactly why you are such a valuable poster.
Urban v's the Commentariat
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emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
It automatically become one, which i wasn't expecting. But I really meant turning a word into a link rater than posting the full thing which was what I wanted to do.
I can't decide what I think about Crabapple. She seems sincere but a little bit naive, politically, however skilled she might be at attracting attention and the monetizing thing. Her political 'analysis' seems to consist in aphorisms, sloganeering and the odd bombshell "did you know" factoid...and her writing contains too many (highly convenient) pen portraits of characters who just happen to come out with the apposite killer quote at just the right symbolic juncture...which puts me too much in mind of Hari and Penny. (Although, maybe people have started speaking in utterances which do indeed transfer seemlessly as Hashtags. That said, I think her stuff maintains a semblance of balance and objectivity which those other two just don't have access to. My big issue with Crabapple, which it's impossible to get around, is the drawings; they're just all a bit shit.
She says on their she doing something inspired by Thompson and Steadman but neither her nor Taibi in in the same league. Fair play to her, steadman's a valid role-model, but it's all too derivative...even her rhetoric is a throwback to a kinda sixties counter-cultural knowing irony. I'm not sure what it is she brings which is original or unique, even what she would bring if she could draw. I'm giving her 3.5 out of 10, with the rider that I think she's potentially a 4.2. (It's good to quantify stuff....qualitative judgements have had their day)
She says on their she doing something inspired by Thompson and Steadman but neither her nor Taibi in in the same league. Fair play to her, steadman's a valid role-model, but it's all too derivative...even her rhetoric is a throwback to a kinda sixties counter-cultural knowing irony. I'm not sure what it is she brings which is original or unique, even what she would bring if she could draw. I'm giving her 3.5 out of 10, with the rider that I think she's potentially a 4.2. (It's good to quantify stuff....qualitative judgements have had their day)
Also...fair play to her awareness wise for raising 'starting sentence with "so"'. Every cunt does that these days.
So fuck? So what?...these are the only valid uses of 'so' at the start of a sentence...except maybe 'so long', 'so long suckers' or 'so much to do, so little..."
I heard something like this the other day.
"So tell me about your childhood"
"So I was born in..." Although it sounded a bit like "so, I was born in..."
So what's the deal with this?
So fuck? So what?...these are the only valid uses of 'so' at the start of a sentence...except maybe 'so long', 'so long suckers' or 'so much to do, so little..."
I heard something like this the other day.
"So tell me about your childhood"
"So I was born in..." Although it sounded a bit like "so, I was born in..."
So what's the deal with this?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Seamus Heaney translates the "hwaet" at the start of Beowulf as "so" and has a long bit in his intro on why he does it - long been a verbal marker for "listen up, i'm going to tell you something" in various versions of colloquial English, basically IIRC his point.
So there.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Clarkson's relationship to influence is pretty much the same as Dell Boy falling through the bar is to comedy.
Fair enough, but in that case the 'so' inaugurates the great classic of Anglo Saxon literature which probably merits a 'listen'. Does the 'so' in 'So I'm going to the shops now.'?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Not sure really, just happened to have read that nugget just the other day and couldn't resist using it
Maybe that "so I'm going..." works like you have an ongoing monologue in your head about what you're about so when you say it it's like a marker of continuity. Off the top of my head.
Wasn't that voted top sit-com moment of the century or something. That's quite a claim to make about Clarkson. I don't think he's a influence, as such, because 'influence' would seem more naturally attached to some action or change. Clarkson's only a force of reaction. He confirms prejudices and validates petty annoyances as legitimate. He'd like to go back to fifties as long as he cold take his cars and gadgets and motorways.
Not sure really, just happened to have read that nugget just the other day and couldn't resist using it
Maybe that "so I'm going..." works like you have an ongoing monologue in your head about what you're about so when you say it it's like a marker of continuity. Off the top of my head.
That's what I thought. My kids seem to have that. They talk to themselves when they're doing stuff. My lad utters 'milk' when he's opening the fridge door while making a cup of tea, for instance. It really fucks me off...not sure why, though.
ska invita
back on the other side
a lot of people i know aren't really engaged in any debate, or more accurately are not really thinking critically in any thorough, tested way. The debate is kind of one-way. Thats why the shallow waves of mass culture (including Top Gear) do have a very general effect, and why its relatively easy to stoke up hate and blame, and create right-wing cultural norms. Right-wing shock-jock type columnists, of which Jeremy Clarkson is a UK type, definitely do have influence, and in the UK just as in the US often have a huge audience. Agree with Newbie, im surprised this is any anyway controversial. There are 7 million sun readers, and i think he writes in other murdoch papers from time to time. If you have that massive audience of course you have influence. Uncontroversial.
annoying as that is at least she's been honest and isnt pretending to be anything other than a middle-class, privileged, champagne-in-the-fridge and absynthe-at-the-bar, pseudo-radical, <readily owning up to all those counts.
ska invita
back on the other side
reactionary influence is still influence
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Was Dell Boy falling through the bar a major influence on comedy?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's right, everyone else is a mug - just an empty vessel asnd they simply get filled up by stuff beamed directly into their brain. How did you break out of this vicious cycle? That's a question that needs an answer btw.
What's newbie saying (the latest version anyway) and what am i saying? What's the difference?
andysays
Love and solidarity
Yep, and the influence is mostly that of confirming prejudices which already exist, or are being stoked up in other, more deliberate ways, but Clarkson and his ilk, at the very least, make it more difficult for alternate points of view to get heard above the general media babble, or get taken seriously when they are heard.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Amazing - in 2013 battle is to say the right things in the media, to get the right message into dummys heads by changing the media message. One way transmission stuff that totally ignores reception and interpretation and was crude 50 years ago. I thought you were andy wilson? Are you not?
andysays
Love and solidarity
No one is saying that "everyone else is a mug", that's your exaggerated interpretation.
And all of us, to some extent or other, are influenced by exposure to this shit, no one, unless you'd like to argue otherwise, has completely broken out of that influence.
Indubitably. As was the candlearbra scene, which I saw again last night.
andysays
Love and solidarity
No, no I'm not.
Who is Andy Wilson (or rather which of the many Andy Wilsons do you mean)?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Ska is and you're saying the same thing behind his back. No sense of the collective construction of social reality beyond one way traffic - 'it' goes into passive victims -who gobble it up whilst others tut and say look at them reading the paper and watching x-factor.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Surely that merely marks you as someone who likes watching cod-amiable buffoons on telly, while living in an anrcho-lifestylist bubble?
Clarkson represents a boss-class presentation of appeal to working class males. Of course, as a viewer of Top gear, you'll be aware that much of his studio audience are Jaspers and Jemimas.
Why does Laurie Penny "matter"? Because she and those like her present "top-down" commentary on situations they don't understand and/or haven't experienced except in a glancing "couple of years of student squalor" way. They present "solutions" to social problems that are not solutions, and they (however much they may call themselves "left wing" or even "anarchist") present a politics that is no different from what currently exists, except in a few ameliorative details.
You may not care about people speaking for you and at you, but not to you. Some of us do.
Yeah, like zero's a number, the empty set's a set and a blank canvass is a 'depiction' of absence. Which all kinda depends on definitions, conventions and semantics. All might be more idiomatically rendered as 'fuck all'.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Well, can you expand on what you said because it sure as hell looks like you were saying that you agree with ska when you said yeah, i agree and that no one else is thinking critically and that a large reason why is because they are so dumb they are programmed by media - either to confirm old prejudices or produce new ones (and it's telling that thought, reflection can only be seen as being based on prejudices - as well as being externally prompted and maintained in this mode of thought).
Wilson ex of swp and now of AMM.
Yeah. I imagine so.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Mmm, I'd argue that part of the reason that Clarkson gets responses to his "debate" is because he reflects back to his audience what he perceives to be/what his writers perceive to be their own views to a much greater degree than La Pennionara does/wishes to. She's about representing her views to stimulate her audience, not act as an echo chamber for them. Of course, their motivations are similar (earning a living, and garnering influence), but apart from that they're a poor comparison overall.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Again, you're creating bollocks strawman versions of what I and others are saying, the easier to knock them down.
Of course we have to recognise the collective construction of social reality - nothing I've said has contradicted that - I'm simply suggesting that for you or I or anyone else to contribute to that construction is more difficult/less effective than it is for Clarkson (but neither impossible or not worth attempting) because
- He has a massive reach, both on TV and through other media
- He is pushing an establishment/pro-capitalist/anti w/c agenda which is part of the dominant ideology, and therefore has a huge advantage. Compared to him, you or I will tend to be seen as an eccentric lone voice.
The thing you posted yesterday about Illuminati etc is a good example of how such things might be challenged, so I'm certainly not saying it's impossible, but simply asserting that Clarkson etc don't have a significant influence, and refusing to explore how that influence works is helping no one.
And not that it matters, but I'm not that or any other Andy Wilson, and if you thought that I had ever been a member of the SWP, then either you've totally misread some or all of what I've written, or I've somehow managed to give a completely false view of my history and opinions...
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Such a major influence that Buster Keaton's estate sued for breach of copyright in the first case, and Laurel & Hardy's estates in the second.
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