Undergrowth, earwigs, and The Evening Standard

March 24, 2017 3:44 AM

You’re worried that having George Osborne as editor might compromise the paper’s editorial independence. What editorial independence? The Standard is a jellyfish, a parasitic worm, a creature with a hole at each end and nothing inbetween: it thinks nothing, it feels nothing, it floats through the infinite dark and waits for a tide to carry it along. Hence the fury.

Sam Kriss, Against the Evening Standard, Idiot Joy Showland (21 March 2017).
posted by Sonny Jim (7 comments total)

If capitalism could speak, it would speak with a child’s voice.

see also:

"The boy himself is a total invention, completely sui generis. The reason he is eleven is because he is in this prepubescent age where he is amoral, with a clear conscience, dealing with people who are immoral, unscrupulous; they realize what scruples are, but push them aside, whereas his good cheer and greed he considers perfectly normal. He thinks this is what you’re supposed to do; he is not going to wait around; he is in a hurry, as you should be in America—get on with it, get going. He is very scrupulous about obeying the letter of the law and then (never making the distinction) evading the spirit of the law at every possible turn. He is in these ways an innocent and is well-meaning, a sincere hypocrite." (William Gaddis on J R, in The Paris Review)
posted by chavenet at 4:28 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I didn't learn a thing about what's so bad about The Evening Standard from that, just that one of those abundant and low-value internet rant guys hates it.
posted by thelonius at 6:32 AM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I kind of hate the conclusions of this piece. To me the osborne appointment is horrifying specifically because the standard is otherwise aimless, editorially! The last thing I want is some pipsqueak with overgrown political ambitions calling the shots!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:39 AM on March 24, 2017

But part of the problem is that the Standard isn't aimless, editorially speaking. It was relentlessly pro-Boris, and it's now straight up owned by a Russian oligarch. The paper didn't start being terrible now, in 2017, just because of the Osborne appointment. It's been part of the political corruption of everyday life in London for quite some time now. Seeing people read it on the tube always squicks me out a little.
posted by Sonny Jim at 7:21 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

When I first moved to London from Scotland I was absolutely shocked to read this paper on the tube. First time I read it on the tube I thought it was a one off infestation. My flat mate at the time found it hilarious that I was so outraged at its existence.
I'm used to it now, of course.
posted by stevedawg at 9:19 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Worth remembering that, before it became a free paper, the vast bulk of its sales were at mainline rail terminals, to commuters getting the hell out of London at the end of the day. It was never a London paper.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 1:13 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I didn't learn a thing about what's so bad about The Evening Standard from that...

* "During the London mayoral election, for instance, there was its despicably Islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan..."

* "its recent appointment of George Osborne ... whose only previous journalistic experience was as a freelancer for the Peterborough diary column at the Daily Telegraph, as editor"

* "that gurning fluff piece on the alt-right, full of grateful remarks on how dapper they all look"

* "In an article on infrastructure maintenance, the opening paragraph – this is entirely real – informs us that ‘Tower Bridge has to close for three months because the road surface is falling apart, the man in charge of it said today.’"

That said, to be fair, this is obviously polemic writing rather than a reasoned argument. Kriss is scratching at a scab more than anything else - the kind of writing unashamedly assuming the reader's understanding of, if not actual agreement with, the urgent need to express ire.

Our city has - and has had for many years - an inescapable freely distributed right-wing propaganda rag owned by a Russian oligarch, still widely known to many as the Daily Boris. Deep in the mists of time, this rag was apparently once a real newspaper, though I am too young to really remember this, and perhaps it was always so. A majority of us - according to all polls and recent Mayoral election results - think this sucks. And it does.

But by inescapable I mean literally inescapable. You can't sit down on the Tube without brushing against a copy. I periodically swear I'll never read it again, but there it is again, right there on the next seat to me, daring me to raise my blood pressure with its small minded nastiness. Daily.

I also learned nothing I didn't already know from the text, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks for the post.
posted by motty at 4:41 PM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]