What did I ever see in Zoe Williams?

I read the Torygraph -- for laughs really. You always know that the Guardian is going to say. The Telegraph is like woa-ah, that's insane -- so more entertaining. They're two jaws in the same trap, tho'. Johann Hari is the worst, man! factually full of shit, for starters.

Whatever happened to Lucy Etherington?

The Telegraph is just as predictable as the Guardian - I'm sure there are a load of Tories who find Monbiot or Cohen just as mental.

xxxpost

Lucy, maybe you did juice it up a bit. Sorry to keep Candymaning you.

However, she has been replaced in my affections by Marina Hyde. Her column in the paper on Saturday was the funniest thing I have read all year.

Decca Aitkenhead, superannuated bright young thing, is back quite often at ver 'niad and at the New Statesman. Awful awful awful.

and for the record, now they've paid me, the guardian is a shit newspaper, period with the WORST music coverage in the english-speaking world!

Williams writes far too slackly and slovenly-ly. I think that she has been promoted beyond her intelligence. I also think that it is slightly harmful that she 'writes for her generation' (mine too) in that slack, slovenly fashion. We ought to be able to do better.

I don't think I know Coren, or Etherington. Who was Etherington?

I ought to make the time to read the Nipper's link properly. Nipper, was it really the funniest thing all year?

I guess the year is young.

xposty

Marina Hyde - yes, glad she's branched out of diary duties. When I used to sit up on the Guardian newsdesk towards the end of my time there I was often amused by the smart comments coming from behind me. She's posh but good.

no i don't want any more!

(I think I need to go and have a lie down)

xpost

Penman trashed Aitkenhead thusly:

Rough précis: sharp columnist with a photogenic byline; down with the garage kids but with a uni education; broadsheet babe who is chilled about her drug-taking... and the agents gathered.

take the first 7 words off that and the last 4 and it pretty much sums up a majority of the hataz on this thread doesn't it?

pretty much sums up a majority of the hataz on this thread doesn't it?

Not really! No agent, no photogenic byline.

Violent speed garage is a music industry creation. It does not represent urban black culture

Decca Aitkenhead
Friday December 21, 2001
The Guardian

Those who still haven't heard of speed garage are unlikely to remain in ignorance for much longer. This sub-genre of black urban dance music has been around for seven or eight years, but arrived in the news headlines in the last month, courtesy of a group called So Solid Crew. So Solid has achieved the distinction of being the first band since the Sex Pistols to become associated with so much violence that its entire UK tour has had to be cancelled.
The Crew are in fact 30 south London youngsters, all but one male, whose hostile, hip-hop-style version of garage has already earned a No 1 hit and two Mobo awards. In May, one of the band was shot in the leg after a nightclub scuffle, then a man was beaten to death leaving their concert in Luton and last month a gunfight broke out during a performance at the Astoria in London's West End, leaving the Crew running for cover and bullets in two audience members.

The band's subsequent public condemnation of violence was emphatic, if perhaps incompatible with its own song lyrics that threaten "to beat your ass up and take you to the morgue".

Comparisons between speed garage and US gangsta rap have ensued, as has the regretful conclusion that black inner-city music is helplessly, hopelessly violent. These boys, well "they just can't help themselves". The story of speed garage is described as the ugly but authentic voice of the ghetto, whereas it would be more accurately perceived as what we do with black culture.

When speed garage first emerged from London's housing estates, it had no stars. Records produced in bedrooms, and sung by unknown girls, were played on pirate radio for clubbers who gathered in abandoned basements on Sunday mornings. Many of its DJs had come from the jungle scene, disenchanted with a genre that had once been underground but was then threatening commercial success, and turning violent.

With speed garage they had beautiful music and a cheerful spirit, but no money or celebrity - and the music industry couldn't have been less interested. Assuming there was no money to be made, record companies left garage alone.

But after a few garage tunes made a surprise appearance in the Top 10, and the resort of Aiya Napa on Cyprus was talked of as the new Ibiza, speed garage became too tempting to ignore. Music industry wisdom holds that to make money out of dance music, you must give it a face - and so why not 30 faces? Step forward So Solid Crew.

Of all the available talent to choose from, you might wonder why the industry opted for So Solid. At a stroke, all the imagination and intricacy of garage was bulldozed out of the way by 30 aggressive halfwits in boilersuits, strutting about on stage honking like geese into microphones. Although lacking any discernible talent, this gaggle of thugs were nevertheless playlisted, and thought to merit an extravagant video, a clothing line, a UK tour and a torrent of music press interest.

Top of the Pops felt it could really do something with them, fashion magazines dressed them up for interviews and suddenly everyone was excited. Here, at last, was a marketable brand they could sell to the white kids in Wiltshire.

Officially, the industry is selling organic black urban Britain. That black urban Britain was peacefully producing speed garage for years in obscurity is overlooked. Likewise, in theory So Solid was a refreshing and promising new phenomenon - until the unfortunate events of recent months. But the primary appeal of So Solid to the music industry was precisely its volatile menace of violence: because now that people are getting shot, speed garage is something to talk about. It is a cultural issue, a debating point, a moral panic.

At a gig tagged Stop The Violence In UK Garage earlier this month, one of the DJs who created speed garage in the days before mainstream music was interested made an urgent appeal: "Music is the way out of violence, not the way in. Some record labels forget that today."

But voices like his are drowned by the brash creations of the industry, angry youngsters desperate to make money, who are told they've been given a mandate to speak on behalf of the disenfranchised ghetto, but are only being paid to titillate. When the disenfranchised ghetto was singing lyrical garage melodies, nobody was listening.

And now we wring our hands at the incorrigible violence of black urban Britain. Aren't they awful, we say. But what can you do?

But seriously Dave, these papers are for a spread of people from ages 16 to the grave. They aren't going to be covering grime as it happens, you know? Obviously they could be less egregiously shit, but... that's mainstream journalism innit?

try that Enrique?

and no PF, I'd put you definitely in the category that doesn't describe.

i wonder if 'selling out' is really a post-1968 concept. even then, as i say, godard did 'em, and so did other lefty directors.

The Beatles were ostracised by the rest of the UK music scene after Beatle wigs went on sale.

-- God Bows to Meth (noodle_vagu...), January 31st, 2007.

and their reputation never recovered!

see bill hicks entire rubbish routine on such - as marcello mentions.

M&W been doing ads for ages now. so waht.

"that's not writing," as my boss used to say, imperiously. "it's typing." i was really impressed by his aphoristic skill, until i realised he'd borrowed it off truman capote.

said former boss now works at the guardian. perhaps i could ask him to try one of his apophthegms on zoe williams. something like: "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS DECENT IN THE WORLD, FUCK OFF AND STOP WRITING THIS PISH."

Did Morecambe and Wise ever do ads? Or were they too big for that?

Also the Secret Lemonade Drinker as every schoolboy knows was the dad of PUNK PIRANHA ELVIS COSTELLO

it's not like david mitchell sets out his store as some kind of post-eltonian poli'ical firebrand.

Public Information innit, not The Man

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2267872,00.html

[The concept of selling-out has changed so much since the 60s - the split between high and low culture, marketing and entertainment, authentic creativity and its agency-conjured simulacrum. Back then, if you took money from The Man, you were a sell-out. Giving yourself up to an advert is no longer the end of anyone's pretensions to creativity. Sixty per cent of advertising is more creative, and wittier, than 90% of mainstream situation comedy (I am, of course, making these figures up). And that's before you even mention the postmodern drive against posturing generally, which holds any ideology beyond "whatever it takes for an easy life" to be openly ridiculous.]

That really WAS awful.

What did I ever see in Marina Hyde?

rly tho, this is student paper-level.

also the foals, fucking guys.

Ah yes, MH, who said at the weekend that Suzanne Shaw had a mental age of nine because she didn't know who Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were.

No I don't know why I bother continuing to waste money on the kind of crap I'd buy the Telegraph if I wanted to read, either.

Someone there beat me to the Terrorvision joek :(

How strange:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/24/britishidentity

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/contributor/2007/09/28/zoe_williams_140x140.jpg

Oh for ILX avatars

That article really is odd, veering all over the place. I guess it's another of her 15-minute jobs.

Basically it's like this:

She's told to write 600 words about this Debrett book.

Despite there being no substantive evidence of any complaints about manners coming from the Left she goes ahead and scribbles incoherently about it anyway.

Her arguments are confused and her conclusion is obfuscatory, if indeed one exists.

A properly trained journalist would have known better, including the basics of how to structure an argument; perhaps she should read the booklet on journalism included with today's paper.

Meanwhile, here's her latest, highly original piece.

Utter "Will this do?" bollocks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/19/zoe-williams-mps-expenses-comment

a Jill McSweeney (consultant) who, amazing, is the only name in the world without any results on Google

errrrrr no

'amazing'

Results 1 - 10 of about 112 for "Jill McSweeney". (0.27 seconds)

although, if you add "(consultant)"...

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs = telling a journalist how to use Google

"redactions"?

help review mps expense claims forms! only 26287 pages to go!
http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/

^ guardian thread is better place for that

dear zoe, there are ways and means of validating and celebrating female sexuality, and you have chosen the one that invokes bullshit evolutionary psychology and generic statements that do far more harm than good

i am very disappointed

her thing about lord freud last week was good though

link?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/04/lord-freud-food-banks

suzy, explain how decca aitkenhead fucked over london