Grrrr to Guardian Readers

Articles like this piss me off. Not because I care about Beethoven, Bono or the Beatles but because the Guardian loves to print items which reassure the culture-vulture, upper-middle highbrow, conservatory-building classes that bling, novelty ringtones, reality TV and dumbing down isn’t taking over the world and that they still matter. It was the same last month when the Guardian ran a 2 page feature on how and why Spring Watch with Annoyingbill Oddie was overtaking Big Brother in the ratings. Smug encouragement that their way of life is not yet obsolete. Even when they praise “low” culture, they compare it to something they can relate to – thus crazy frog is like Bob Dylan, Eminem is like Manley Hopkins (or was it Keats?). This way they have of needing to understand what it is those people who trim their hedges and empty their rubbish and deliver their mail see in all this newfangled modern stuff is teeth-grindingly irritating, like Victorian do-gooders visiting working class homes to poke about and dispense words of wisdom. Personally, I have no interest in priapic amphibians or what Science and Maxwell have been up to this year in Elstree. I, as ever, am interested in hi-fi lo-fi amateur life.

Grrrr to Guardian Readers

Articles like this piss me off. Not because I care about Beethoven, Bono or the Beatles but because the Guardian loves to print items which reassure the culture-vulture, upper-middle highbrow, conservatory-building classes that bling, novelty ringtones, reality TV and dumbing down isn’t taking over the world and that they still matter. It was the same last month when the Guardian ran a 2 page feature on how and why Spring Watch with Annoyingbill Oddie was overtaking Big Brother in the ratings. Smug encouragement that their way of life is not yet obsolete. Even when they praise “low” culture, they compare it to something they can relate to – thus crazy frog is like Bob Dylan, Eminem is like Manley Hopkins (or was it Keats?). This way they have of needing to understand what it is those people who trim their hedges and empty their rubbish and deliver their mail see in all this newfangled modern stuff is teeth-grindingly irritating, like Victorian do-gooders visiting working class homes to poke about and dispense words of wisdom. Personally, I have no interest in priapic amphibians or what Science and Maxwell have been up to this year in Elstree. I, as ever, am interested in hi-fi lo-fi amateur life.