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f4f3A letter from David Hockney, one of Britain, sorry, England's most bankable artist, was printed on the front page of Saturday's Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1717612,00.html
A nicotine addict, he whines on for a couple of hundred words about not being able to blow smoke from his cancer sticks over anyone he feels like. Not particularly unusual - anyone who's had to take a bottle or a dummy out of a toddler's mouth will have heard much the same complaint.
For some reason, though he sees this as being an attack on the English, and in the process of laying this out has the following little swipe at the chancellor:
"Gorrdon Brrrown is a prig P.R.I.G., a dreary atheistic Calvinistic prig, who I'm sure will never be elected in England."
In case anyone has missed the linguistic subtlety displayed, the rolled R in Brown's name is meant to emphasise that he is Scottish. I can't quite understand his use of "atheistic" (tending towards atheism, not actually an atheist) in front off "Calvanistic" which describes his religion.
I'm tempted to play the old substitution game: "Ali-eee Hussain", "Shylockian miser', "England will never vote for a black Prime Minister" sort of thing, but, the more I read his little rant, the more angry I get that our only avowedly left-wing broadsheet can give this racist moron the oxygen of publicity. If they'd put the letter in the back, along with anyone else's, I wouldn't be so annoyed - Hackney, as an addict should be allowed his opinions along with the rest of his ilk - to be honest, I'd prefer that there were still smoke filled pubs were he could spew out his nonsense without it leaving a bad smell in my nostrils, and a worse taste in my mouth. Printing this up front is, I'd suggest, irresponsible reporting by the Guardian.
Or am I, as he accuses the media, missing the ridiculous side of this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1717612,00.html
A nicotine addict, he whines on for a couple of hundred words about not being able to blow smoke from his cancer sticks over anyone he feels like. Not particularly unusual - anyone who's had to take a bottle or a dummy out of a toddler's mouth will have heard much the same complaint.
For some reason, though he sees this as being an attack on the English, and in the process of laying this out has the following little swipe at the chancellor:
"Gorrdon Brrrown is a prig P.R.I.G., a dreary atheistic Calvinistic prig, who I'm sure will never be elected in England."
In case anyone has missed the linguistic subtlety displayed, the rolled R in Brown's name is meant to emphasise that he is Scottish. I can't quite understand his use of "atheistic" (tending towards atheism, not actually an atheist) in front off "Calvanistic" which describes his religion.
I'm tempted to play the old substitution game: "Ali-eee Hussain", "Shylockian miser', "England will never vote for a black Prime Minister" sort of thing, but, the more I read his little rant, the more angry I get that our only avowedly left-wing broadsheet can give this racist moron the oxygen of publicity. If they'd put the letter in the back, along with anyone else's, I wouldn't be so annoyed - Hackney, as an addict should be allowed his opinions along with the rest of his ilk - to be honest, I'd prefer that there were still smoke filled pubs were he could spew out his nonsense without it leaving a bad smell in my nostrils, and a worse taste in my mouth. Printing this up front is, I'd suggest, irresponsible reporting by the Guardian.
Or am I, as he accuses the media, missing the ridiculous side of this?
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 09:58 am (UTC)As an ex-smoker, I still object to the nanny-state banning of smoking.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:11 am (UTC)I'm not convinced of his seriousness - bearing in mind that I haven't actually read the piece. I'm speaking more as an ex-smoker. I had (have) no desire to inflict potentially cancer-causing smoke on a barworker, or anyone else, but there is a large portion of holier-than-thou-ness about a ban in certain places of a legal drug from which the government derives a very large amount of revenue. There is a degree of the ludicrous in his using both atheistic & calvinist in the same sentence as descriptors of the same person, for instance.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:23 am (UTC)He's doing the media merry-go-round:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4288918.stm
and he thinks everyone not agreeing with him is "dreary".
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:48 am (UTC)