Sarah Bryan Miller wonders, just what is an elitist anyway?… Read the rest
History is Potentially Lethal
May 31st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMarxist left and Hindu fundamentalist right subordinate history to political goals in India.… Read the rest
Nonsense at Hay Festival
May 30th, 2003 4:17 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh really, what crap. It’s only snobs and supercilious critics who think bad novels are bad novels. Excuse me, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a bad novel is just a bad novel.
Trollope, whose restrained prose is as elegant as the lady herself, poured haughty scorn on the pretensions of the literary genre, and in particular the “grim lit” the critics seem to adore “that makes you want to slash your wrists”.
Well that’s wrong for a start. ‘Restrained’ prose? Well sure, I suppose. That’s one way to describe it. One might say the same of a train timetable, or a laundry list, or a tax code. That couldn’t be a nice evasive way of … Read the rest
Self-serving Argument #478
May 30th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf you think they write bad novels it is because you are jealous, gloomy and snobbish. Of course.… Read the rest
Watching Someone Dig With a Brush is Boring
May 30th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTV prefers pseudoarchaeology to the real thing.… Read the rest
All Entertainment All the Time
May 30th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJonathan Yardley comments on perpetual entertainment as a form of leisure.… Read the rest
Debunking Edward Said
May 30th, 2003 | By Ibn WarraqThis is an edited version of the article, Debunking Edward Said – Edward
Said and Saidists: or Third World Intellectual Terrorism, which
is here. For the purposes of ease of reading, references and bibliographical
information have been removed from this edited version of the article, but the
longer version is fully referenced. Interested readers should follow the link!
Consider the following observations on the state of affairs in the contemporary
Arab world :
… Read the restThe history of the modern Arab world – with all its political failures,
its human rights abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing
production, the fact that alone of all modern peoples, we have receded in democratic
and technological and scientific development – is disfigured by
No Kidding
May 29th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDemanding schools place pressure on students, research shows. Really?!… Read the rest
Hitchens on Blumenthal
May 29th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA Theodore off-White style and keeping two sets of ethical books.… Read the rest
Interview with E.O. Wilson
May 28th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Ecology’ is about more than saving charismatic large mammals.… Read the rest
Hobsbawm and Hitchens
May 28th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA deferential sparring match at Hay-on-Wye.… Read the rest
Dystopias and Mad Scientists
May 27th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy is science fiction so pessimistic?… Read the rest
‘Flooding the Zone’ a Mistake?
May 26th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSpeed instead of depth, frat boy instead of nerd, football metaphors instead of ethical probity.… Read the rest
MM Logic
May 26th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTelevision studies are mocked now as Shakespeare was then, therefore television studies are no more time-wasting than Shakespeare.… Read the rest
Conflation of ‘Guerilla Theater’ With Politics
May 26th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA politcs of dramatic gestures, style without substance.… Read the rest
Dyslexic, Perhaps?
May 26th, 2003 12:22 am | By Ophelia BensonBut then, the person who wrote that article concluded it with this bit of wisdom by way of her nomination for the 100 Worst Books list:
To kick off, mine is Wuthering Heights – it has all the emotional depth of sixth-form poetry and I feel an intense desire to give all the characters a good slap and tell them to stop being so self-indulgent. Mysteriously, it’s considered a landmark of English literature by many people whose judgment I usually admire.
So clearly I shouldn’t be surprised if she uses words in a silly way. In fact I should be surprised that she’s writing for a major newspaper, that’s what I should be surprised at.… Read the rest
What Overtones?
May 25th, 2003 11:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonAll right. Clearly one of these days I’m just going to have to drop everything and make a real effort to figure out what in hell people are talking about when they call someone or something ‘elitist.’ I’ve said it before but I’m afraid I’m just going to have to say it again, and no doubt I’ll have to say it many more times in the future, because it just keeps on happening – people use it for anything and everything! Snob, clever clogs, intellectual, nerd, bookish person, someone who thinks some things are better than other things, conceited person, anything and everything within a fifty mile radius of either Cambridge or Oxford, quiche-eater, in the UK. In the US … Read the rest
Mound of Feel-good Styrofoam Peanuts
May 25th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMarketing sappy techno-utopian ‘revolution lite’ via PageRank™.… Read the rest
Now It Can Be Told!
May 25th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWomen talk, men sit and stare. Stone the crows.… Read the rest
Yes, Hip Cool Sexy People Are Phobic Too
May 24th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey just hide it better, says Julie Burchill.… Read the rest