Pot in not taking Kettle black shocker

2/ a separate thread???!

We sauntered in limpingly. The noble potter Grayson Perry insisted on standing his round of full English breakfasts. Steaming with sweat and grease, the oils found fair purchase in our abdomens. Maff's Caff. We mused and mutated. Facc Maccs. Scottish phobia; the easy virtue of Adam Smith still met with noblesse resistance this far west of Tintagel House, from which I had purchased a selection of Charlie Richardson phone tap logbooks for four quid in 1971.

BRUNO LIVE WANDSWORTH TOWN HALL. MOMUS WAS FITTED UP BY MARY CHAIN. xTY&*SEEEN SKREECHIN KRU. GOD CHOPS THE TREE OFF OUR SIN HEAD.

The New Pornographers indeed. I looked at conceptual artist Jimmy Cauty and he returned my steadfast gaze in kind. No need to hear the record now; we had already experienced it on these walls. In the grease. Nothing fits in Fulham. The staggering Blue Elephant marks the boundary. After Dawes Road it's no man's land. We had to make a move. I suggested a breezy early morning stroll to Bicester. By the time we had extracted ourselves from the mud caking the electrified fences (CITIZENS KEEP OUT) circumlocuting the outlying fields of Garsington, Renchi had finally navigated the Thames Water Tower. Salvation through the colour blue. Derek Jarman's Dungeness drowning in Shepherds Bush.

What I can get out of that entry is great, but I'm afraid it's a ref I don't get, Forest. Plus Dixon folded what? 1960 and the BBC was definitely more progressive than ITV in the 60s.

Hoggartists Simon or Richard?

Dixon, rather astonishingly, ran on the BBC until 1976, when Jack Warner was already in his eighties.

I genuinely have no idea whether or not Simon (and the equally dreadful Paul) Hoggart are related to Richard! My use of the term "Hoggartism" was meant to refer to the puritan-socialist resistance to American-led popular culture which was at least partially responsible for the new upper working class' rejection of Labour in the 1959 election; in my as-yet unwritten piece on the Daily Mirror, which will probably be up on the blog later today, I'll mention that the paper (read by vast numbers of ITV-watching Labour-voting industrial working-class people when we still had etc etc) organised mass burnings of the 1962 Pilkington Report, which condemned ITV in the most paternalistic terms, and which had been very strongly influenced by Hoggart. As for Antonia Forest, the most complete website on her actual works is http://www.maulu.demon.co.uk/AF but there is much else out there; a google will lead you to everything I mentioned, among other things ...

The unfortunate truth though is that he had more influence on bringing about the Macmillan landslide than he did on the Wilson one. Not necessarily a criticism if viewed from an ideologically purist perspective, but surely a criticism if - like me, ultimately - your first priority is Labour's electoral prowess.

Re: Hoggart -- I don't think they were related, I just knew you disliked both!! That's v interesting about Pilkington, but it's probably doubled-edged in that Pilkington also made possible a lot of what was good about the BBC even if it was 'paternalistic' -- which is a very tricky term, surely? I mean is it paternalistic to recommend, advocate, endorse?

I think Hoggart was more liberal than socialist, and just thought that US domination of radio, cinema screens, etc, was no better than old establishment cultural autarky, and advocated a wider mix. I suppose that's paternalistic, but the content of US pop culture back then was equally so (John Wayne, Rat Pack, etc), leaving aside the wider issue of British government policy being so influenced by Washington and the trouble that caused for our place in Europe (not to mention for the people of Vietnam, Libya, etc).

I've googled Forest, but I never knew her work when younger.

1978 -- also year of BBC's never seen since 'Law and Order' 4-parter, a Tony Garnett series on, erm, law and order. Never sold for export! Often lumped in with 'Brimstone and Treacle' and Clarke's original 'Scum' (and Ian McEwan's 'Solid Geometry', fibnally adapted for TV last autumn).

I have it in my head that they look almost identical but I may just be remembering two separate images of Simon.

You have to remember that what you saw upthread was my practical centre-left politician side, and also my "well, yes, I *do* enjoy Lil' Jon and the East Side Boyz and it causes some pain to flaunt it but it would cause more pain to hide it" side - my total unrestrained idealist side, which I've displayed here in the past, would have been considerably more sympathetic to "The Uses of Literacy" et al. I'd be wary of connecting closeness to Washington in foreign policy with American cultural dominance, though (speaks someone who has long been guilty of same) - Germany stood up to the US admirably over Iraq, yes, but it's practically impossible to criticise the influence of hip-hop there without being called a neo-Nazi, whereas here practically everyone understands the difference (obviously there are historical reasons, and quite understandable ones at that).

One surprising thing about Pilkington, incidentally - the Daily Express (paper of the lower middle classes who weren't afraid of commercialism but - crucially - in 1962 still aspired to ultimately being seen as "above" it) agreed with its anti-ITV slant, not least because it had always been anti-ITV in the pre-Thatcher petit-bourgeois sense. The Daily Telegraph, paper of the landed classes which the anti-ITV petit-bourgeois were aspiring to join, actually disagreed with the Pilkington report and called it "elitist" or somesuch (can't recall their exact phraseology re. Pilkington, but it was the kind of thing that the Mirror might have said about the Telegraph itself).

I never really knew about Antonia Forest until I was 20 - I vaguely remembered the names of Kingscote school and Nicola and Lawrie Marlow from an old 70s children's quiz book which alluded to them, but she was out of print and out of vogue by my (and your) time. Any responses from the googling yet?

I always get a bit queasy when people of "the left" take that [anti-Pop Idol] slant

Aye. Thing is, I read heat, watch Pop Idol and other lesser reality shows, listen to US chart pop, etc, etc, etc, and most of it fairly non-ironically. For example, the most positive review of Beyonce's new movie 'The Fighting Temptations' was by me in T1m3 0ut. But the thing is I think many of these products do shore up nasty modes of thinking -- I mean, cinema-wise, I have *literally* heard colleagues (in their thirties) use the word 'sk1nnies' to mean Africans since, and only since, the film 'Black Hawk Down'. Small example, but I think chilling.

The films I really love are European, and there the problem with US culture is not its content but its distribution stranglehold. I urge everyone to see Belvaux's 'Trilogy', but have to wish them good luck if they live outside the great cities. If, however, they wish to see 'The Matrix' then they have no problem. That's just wack. There is some connect between US cultural and political domination -- Britain's postwar financial dependence on US loans came with the end of protectionism in the cinema -- maybe a good thing, maybe not. (And if we're going to enter knee-jerk left territory, see Frances Stonor Saunders' 'Who Paid the Piper?' about the CIA's role in the magazine 'Encounter' (among other things).)