The Gentleman Bitch.

Requiescat in Pace.

The soixante-huitard turned chickenhawk Christopher Hitchens once said that he had a kind of "penis envy" for Gore Vidal. Indeed the young contrarian had based himself on Gore Vidal and the two met in 1970 at the New Statesman. Eventually the slender Hitchens became the dauphin to Vidal's contrarianism and would later become one of many porky opponents to be outlived by Gore. Over the years the gadfly had stung William F Buckley as a "crypto-Nazi" only to apologise on the grounds that the term "crypto-Fascist" is much more accurate. Truman Capote felt the sting when Vidal described him as a "filthy animal that has found its way into the house". Later Capote's passing prompted the infamous remark "That was a good career move." Then there was Norman Mailer whose positions on women's rights prompted Gore to criticise his old friend. It was at a Manhattan dinner party in 1977 that Mailer threw a whiskey in Gore Vidal's face before heat-butting and punching him. To this violence Vidal quipped "And, once again, words fail Norman Mailer."

On that note Gore Vidal once described himself as a 'gentleman bitch' in his role as a provocateur of historians and the political class. He showed no mercy in his scathing attacks against deserving enemies and reached into areas as seemingly varied as politics, religion, history and literature. As a polymath he tried his hand at novels first then plays and scripts for film as the commentariat turned against him over The City and the Pillar. The mainstream media, with The New York Times in the lead, waged a campaign against Gore Vidal refusing to review his work. Out of this relatively dark time in Vidal worked on Ben-Hur (uncredited) as well as Visit to a Small Planet and a political drama set on a fictional campaign trail The Best Man. History is not without irony as Ronald Reagan auditioned to play the lead in the film adaptation of The Best Man. Reagan was turned down on the grounds that he did not appear presidential. Eventually Vidalian fiction was rehabilitated in the eye of the Establishment, but he remained a controversial figure.

The essay was his preferred form, placing him in the line of great litterateurs, for it was the form which he felt he had mastered and he hoped he would be remembered as an essayist above all else. There is a degree of self-awareness, detachment and cool about Vidal that led Italo Calvino to conclude that he has no unconscious. In his own words Gore stated "I am exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water." He was as much a fixture of American life, its discourse, culture and narratives even in the capacity of opposition which he practiced. Even though Gore was a prominent commentator he remained out of the field for the most part. He could have been a politician with his family background and connections. Indeed he came close to becoming a player in the 1960s. After the disillusionment he experienced Vidal contented himself with the role of gadfly and cynic. In the words of Alexander Cockburn "Cynicism is the birth of opposition."

The contrarian tradition to which Gore Vidal belongs may properly be traced back to the Cynics of Ancient Greece. The taunting and mockery of all power by Diogenes, whether it be the waggling of a plucked rooster at Plato or telling Alexander the Great to get out of the light. It is the case that Gore was more than content to stand on the side-lines, for the most part, and attack both the Democrats and the Republicans. He deemed both parties to be just two right-wings of the Property Party. Vidal wasn't a perfect cynic, for he knew how to appeal to power at times and did so in support of George McGovern, then Jesse Jackson and later Barack Obama. But Gore Vidal remained much more of a cynic than his former dauphin Christopher Hitchens. He hadn't voted since 1964, when he did so to support Lyndon B Johnson, which severs him from the Democrats at the ballot box. Vidal explored the third party option in the form of the People's Party, a left-wing populist party looking to build on New Deal liberalism.

As a controversial figure, right up until the end, he outlived many old opponents and even the unseated dauphin only for Hitch to slander him a conspiracy theorist and anti-Semite. This is over Gore's provocative comments on the "War on Terrorism" waged by the Bush administration, let alone his long-time criticisms of neoconservatives and Israel. He first courted controversy as a proponent of gay rights, though he was strictly anti-essentialist in his insistence that there are only homosexual acts and no homosexual persons. Similarly Vidal maintained that the issue of race was a real one, even if just politically. He never bought into the language of liberal multiculturalism and political correctness. The reasoning here is that the issue is not cultural, the US is a case of a monoculture with plenty of room for hatred along racial lines. This was the same man who once rubbed shoulders with the Kennedys, Tennessee Williams and Paul Newman (he didn't mind name-dropping either). The irony of all this is that the ideal Vidalian narrator is a person who sees as much as possible, but is seen the least himself.

See also:
Proposals to Improve the US Government
Vidal looks back on his remarkable life
The Profile of a Writer
Documentary on Vidal
Hot Talk with Gore Vidal 
The Education of Gore Vidal 

The Animal Spirit of Rupert Murdoch.

Risk and Reward.

Originally, Rupert Murdoch won the bid to takeover The News of the World in 1968 from old money Sir William Carr and soon cornered the shareholders before shoving Carr out of the picture completely in 1969. Sir William Carr had picked Murdoch over Bob Maxwell because Maxwell was a Czech and he found Rupert Murdoch to be a "gentleman", the Establishment found Murdoch most "ungentlemanly" for giving Carr the boot. Murdoch went on to buy The Sun and drag John Profumo through the mud once again for shagging Christine Keeler back in 1963 when Profumo was Secretary of State for War. The affair had scandalised high society and wrecked a government. The issue for the Establishment was that Profumo had been rehabilitated after his charitable work in the East End, Murdoch was simply out to destroy a man for profit. Now with the public disgusted Rupert Murdoch has slashed off the infected limb of his own media-body, there is no room for sentimentality with this old fart. There are bigger things at stake, as in BSkyB.

Everyone was just so appalled to find that the media empire of Rupert Murdoch is not just limited to a narrow right-wing agenda to prop up his favourite politicians and it has reflexively hacked the phones of not just the rich and powerful but dead soldiers too. We find that the Conservative Party and the police - both of whom have helped Murdoch crush a strike in the past - are entangled in the conspiracy ran out of the Murdoch red-top. It is clear that there is no low that the parasites in the press will not stoop to for a good yawn. Of course, it took the revelation of bugs in the phones of the victims of terrorism, warfare and serial killers as celebrities are fair game and politicians are the scum of the earth to most people. It should be no surprise if we consider that it was the Murdoch press that published vicious lies about the Hillsborough disaster, including the smears that fans robbed the dead, attacked police officers and urinated on paramedics. To some it would seem that Rebekah Brooks has proven that gingers have no soul! But it is Rupert Murdoch who has no soul whilst the lower minions would only be replaced if they were not complicit.

After the most recent revelations in the phone-hacking scandal I wonder if Kelvin MacKenzie is still thanking God for Rupert Murdoch. No doubt the answer from that meat-headed shit sack would be an emphatic "YES!" Murdoch would express no less from a Thatcherite pig he has fed well over the years in his role as editor of The Sun. MacKenzie maintained The Sun as a buffet for the working-class where they were spoon-fed a diet of sex, death and football meshed in a conservative agenda on immigration, gay rights, multiculturalism and welfare. Kelvin MacKenzie once said of his readers "You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news)." Whatever pays the mortgage is alright at News International.

The public outrage struck as the Yuppie Mephistopheles was on the verge of the biggest deal of his life and it has been delayed until September, which gives the Mephistopheles some breathing room and some time to do a bit of "spring cleaning" to ensure a smooth deal before the year is out. There is little chance that the Coalition will oppose the demands of the man who threw the support of 40% of British media behind the Conservative Party in 2010 and, as usual, Murdoch's man won the election. This should not be a surprise as Murdoch backed Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. That is the reason we found David Cameron was ever so keen to put Jeremy Hunt on the job after the hilarious outburst from Vince Cable, who would apparently act as a "Gang of One" against Rupert Murdoch. Of course, Vince Fable was not meant to be biased against Murdoch so the government found someone who could ease the deal through in a quiet way. That's where Jez Cunt came in handy!

In his article in The Guardian Kelvin MacKenzie inquired "Cynical eyebrows were raised when Murdoch gave assurances over the independent future of Sky News. Why?" First of all, out of the 247 editors who work for Rupert Murdoch none opposed the Iraq war. It is clear that there is no problem of independence when all the editors are reactionary pigs. Even Rupert Murdoch has admitted that News International supported the foreign policy of the Bush administration on the Middle East in particular. It was Rupert Murdoch who immediately throw Fox behind the Republican Party in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s, beginning with a fawning tribute to Ronald Reagan at the Republican Convention. There was a cultural shift in emphasis at Fox when Murdoch took over, race issues and AIDS were at the top of the list at the time. The channel became a lot more sophisticated after Roger Ailes, a long-time mudslinger for the GOP, was put in charge of the newly launched Fox News Channel. It was Rupert Murdoch who contributed $1 million to the Republican Party in 2010.

Remember this is the same man who has meant to have taken on the Establishment, it took "guts" and "management skill" to do so according to Kelvin MacKenzie who has nothing but celebratory words for the Murdoch monopoly. News International is a family business which Rupert built up from his inheritance and will no doubt be passed down to young James in a few years. This is not particularly different from the Old Boys' Network of the Establishment, which Murdoch has railed against only as a buccaneer capitalist with no time for tradition and society. It was not "risk" that the Murdoch press was built on, but cold calculations which oiled the wheels and restrained anyone who got in the way of a smooth running operation. Notice as soon as the advertising goes AWOL there is an immediate reaction from Murdoch, we find Glenn Beck has been axed as his rating dwindled and Waitrose boycotted his lunacy. It is the same at The News of the World, Murdoch was "standing by" Rebekah Brooks and the paper until the public disgust was too costly.

Just as Kelvin MacKenzie wishes that there were hundreds of Rupert Murdochs in Britain to "wipe out" unemployment, as if the cure of unemployment is entrepreneurial adventurism, we find that it is the staff at The News of the World who are paying the price for the contemptible practices of a media outlet. Though it must be noted that the individuals who write for the Murdoch press are there because they hold particular beliefs in most cases, otherwise they would be somewhere else and this goes for the BBC crowd too. At the same time, it is not the case that every employee (particularly the lowest of the low) of News International is a right-wing maniac who has enriched themselves at the expense of the political discourse. It is not a concession of the 'trickle-down' variety to be concerned for the jobs that have been destroyed by Murdoch to secure a grubby business deal. This is precisely what the "animal spirit of capitalism" is all about, Rupert Murdoch kills jobs not creates jobs.

As Laurie Penny points out it is imperative that the momentum of rage against News International is allowed to fade away only for the Mephistopheles to assimilate BSkyB. The Conservatives want this all to go away for obvious reasons given the close relationship between government and media, let alone Andy Coulson's role in Cameron's anti-climactic rise. The Labour Party are clearly impotent with Ed Miliband making a pathetic call for Rebekah Brooks to resign, it looks even more pathetic as the entire newspaper is thrown away just a few days later. This means that the media oligarch is at least responsive to public outrage against his odious rags. Perhaps it is time to build a bonfire out of copies of The Sun and The Times, for we cannot allow this man to buy 60% of BSkyB and dominate over 40% of the media in this country. The concentration of such power in the hands of one man is intolerable just from a slight glimpse at his record.

Sign this petition and attend any protests you can!

The Narcissist Chef and the Oliver Army.

The Messiah is Back!

Cower, brief mortals, in the face of Jamie Oliver, the kitchen-dwelling Messiah who will lead you away from your life of sinful indulgence and into the promised land of raspberry vinaigrette and shaved ginger in everything. After smiting the Turkey Twizzler from our school kitchens, Jamie has set his shoulder to the wheel to rid the world of fat people forever. And he’s absolutely right to do so. Those fucking fatties, who needs them? Wasting space, sweating profusely, clogging up malls, encouraging rogue parts of the brain to visually speculate on their sex life, I hate those fat bastards. And Jamie’s got help; David Starkey, an arsehole with horn-rimmed glasses, taking a break from taking massive liberties with history and annoying everyone with even the vaguest knowledge of the Tudors, has decided to join the crusade against the well fed.

So we’ve got not one, but two celebrities telling us that lard-arses need to slim down or risk a trip to the fat-gulag, and they’re damn right to do so. If any of our readers are fat, then we want them to put down this paper and go be fat someplace else. Now. NOW! SCHNELL! The one word that keeps echoing inside the cranium whenever Jamie Oliver does anything these days is “Masturbation”, of a vigorous and mightily offensive variety (except for Jamie’s ego). He just jerks and jerks and jerks until his great pillow-like face is puffy and red and the nation is on its knees lapping up his ejaculate and crying for more, because it’s as delicious as one of his runny meals.

Really, there’s so much wrong with his “Dream School” (bearing in mind that dreams aren’t real, and can be extremely harrowing) that we would need a flow chart rather than an article to show all the ways. For one thing, it’s cropped up at a bad time for education, and the government, rather than funding a proper school with real teachers for a year, is blowing just as much money on a weeklong school with celebrity teachers touted as “brilliant minds”. Ellen Macarthur sat on a boat that sailed itself, eating muesli bars and intermittently bursting into tears for a few weeks, and now she’s a brilliant mind. I spend all my time in my apartment eating Pot Noodles and having intermittent psychotic breaks. How long is it until I’m declared a “brilliant mind” by the middle-class twat brigade? Or perhaps you’d prefer Alistair Campbell, architect of New Labour, spin doctor and professional goat-fuck? Perhaps Simon Callow, a shrieking ponce masquerading as an actor. Still not satisfied? We’ve got Cherie Blair, who I just can’t look at anymore after the descriptions of the filthy Catholic sex she shared with our erstwhile Prime Minister. This immediately leads us back to that little man with blood on his hands who still hasn’t learnt that you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it suck you off. But we digress…

So, we’ve assembled our rogues gallery of “brilliant minds” we proceed to browbeat kids into swallowing the ideals that Oliver espouses. And it’s utterly, utterly harrowing to watch. The sheer moral presumptuousness of it all is enough to make us spit out our Turkey Twizzlers, compounded with the horrific bigotry against people who are more heavy-set than the national average which curdles the blood. Jamie Oliver isn’t doing this out of goodness. He’s doing it because he’s a zealot. He knows better than you, and he’s going to make you follow his ideals because you’re a moron. There’s also the aforementioned self-glorification. His masturbatory ideals aren’t marketed to the people he’s trying to convert, they’re made for all the upper-middle class mothers with small children called Jake, driving around in Chelsea tractors with the radio perma-locked to The Archers, who can nod sagely whenever Jamie declares that fat people should be locked up until they learn, the stupid fat cunts.

The Oliver Twizzler.

What Mr. Oliver and the Twat Brigade have missed is the fact that people have every right to be fat. More than that, the fact that the working classes can afford to be well-fed, and can afford to have a constant supply of food, is a sign that our society is truly successful. Jamie Oliver is doing what Morgan Spurlock did in the USA; having a smug little laugh behind his sleeve at the lower classes, and he should be ashamed of himself. While people of all incomes can afford the occasional McDonald’s or KFC meal, not everyone is able to afford fresh imported ginger or cilantro dressing to drizzle over their noisettes of goat’s cheese and beetroot quiche.

Jamie’s oft-touted line that “people in Africa eat better than we do” is either grossly misinformed at best or a fucking insult at worst. He’s living the celebrity lifestyle as the Yuppie Messiah, and has seemingly forgotten that people just can’t relate to the kind of ideals that he’s spouting. At the same time Oliver seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that in more unequal societies there are higher obesity rates, which we’re all aware of whenever we picture the average Yankee though Jamie’s head seems to be devoid of such imagination. Celebrity chefs are on TV to turn cooking into a spectator-sport that can fill in the innumerable gaps between adverts – which are what really matter to the producers – they’re not there to save us all from the horrors of cholesterol. The famous school dinners campaign which “liberated” our generation from the Turkey Twizzler (which were delicious by the way) and in the end it only succeeded in driving people to ingenious lengths of smuggling junk food into the glorified factory farms for little robots, otherwise known as primary and secondary schools. Just like with obesity there are real problems in education, which cannot be resolved through nutrition and narcissistic feel-good trips.

In education there is a contradiction between jumping through hurdles, by memorising what is just needed to pass exams and then regurgitating on command, versus the kind of critical thought essential to education. Many good teachers try to stimulate thought and creativity, which is often incongruous to the rigid curriculum of ideas of a few “brilliant minds” that we must dutifully ingest. Rather than looking to resolve this contradiction, which often produces conformity on mass, Jamie Oliver emerges with a “quick-fix” solution to massage his ego. Note that this is at a time when pressures of intellectual conformity are being intensified by the government. Funding for the humanities is being cut whilst science and maths are being prioritised, because innovation and creativity in science and maths will contribute to the running of the economy whereas sociology just might lead to greater criticism of the economic order. In the midst of this Jamie Oliver affectively jumps on the Tory bandwagon to have kids swallow the ideas of the ‘brilliant minds’.

At the risk of sounding cold, callous and malicious, which we are, we would not hesitate to say that this whole Dream School project has only redoubled our desire to see Jamie Oliver lowered into a gigantic meat grinder and then moulded into an enormous Oliver Twizzler (please, sir, I want some more) after which we can have David Starkey fired out of a Napoleonic cannon into the side of the HMS Victory, Ellen Macarthur can be placed in a death maze, and Alistair Campbell can be repeatedly kicked in the crotch to the tune of ‘Things can Only get Better’. All of which would conclude with Robert Winston being sawed in half in the name of making science ‘fun’ for kids. We hate to be less eloquent than normal, but Jamie Oliver, you can fuck off.

Note: Originally written by JT White and Josh Ferguson for the Heythrop Lion about a week ago.