Worst white man on the cover of the New Statesman's 'Great White Male' issue

Also NME, Mojo, Uncut, The Word and the resultant BBC music coverage. I despise probably more things about that crowd but there certainly were good things in there too.

not to diminish the pain and suffering caused by the war criminals on this list but i suspect an american version of this issue would be unimaginably worse.

They are? What work is Jon Snow doing now that is esp. noteworthy? (I'm biased 'cuz detest him)

His reporting from Gaza earlier this year got him some props. Channel 4 News in general is better than any of its rivals at the moment.

I'm also led to believe that Self's last novel is his best, but I'm in no hurry to read it because my experience is that he's a decent short story writer and a terrible novelist (mostly because his novels are basically overextended shorts).

Dylan Jones is getting off too easily here, he's probably the platonic ideal:

n 1999, Jones moved to Condé Nast and took over GQ. He is credited with bringing in a roster of high quality writers including Dominic Lawson, Will Self, A.A. Gill, Ed Victor and Tom Wolfe, as well as taking the magazine in a more political direction. He notably hired Boris Johnson as the magazine's car correspondent. GQ was also the first magazine to feature David Cameron on its cover, soon after he became leader of the Conservative Party.

Jones was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to the publishing and British fashion industries.

Parris was an actual Tory MP.

absent from the list but prob the guiding hand: Jason Cowley

like Perry and Williams. share fizzles' amis ambivalence.

voted Botton.

Can I cast a vote against ever reading anything by Alan The Bottom, and instead suggest that everyone actually reads A La Recherce Du Temps Perdu? It deserves its rep!
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, November 24, 2002 8:30 PM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think about this post every time Botton impinges on my consciousness for any reason

agree strongly with an extended version, you are always better reading someone he is pontificating on rather than him.

I think it stayed with me more because of 'Alan The Bottom' than anything more high-minded to be honest. and I still haven't read In Search of Lost Time

Botton thinks it's a philosophising novel and tries to 'sell' it to you on those grounds, but it's not what he thinks it is

It's a neuroscience novel of course.

i liked 'war against cliche' and that clive james book has some dope essays idk.

issue seems like someone was trying to cover up 'white male butthurt' w/ 'clever' and failed obv

xp

he was ok about it when I told him that I used his name in a blogpost as a passing example of all that was wrong in british culture because it sounded like bottom.

(i mean I also explained that I thought he was bad for real reasons, it wasn't just 'bottom')

(he got in touch to complain)

Dylan Jones wrote Cameron's biography and paid him for his co-operation

Jones used to sell his review copies to me when I worked in a secondhand bookshop. He was very decent in person - and he got excellent review copies! - although he has obv been involved with some terrible things and people.

Will Self also once sold me a load of his review copies and he was a total arsehole, fwiw.

Thank you, ILX, because I thought I knew Britain's worst cockfarmers but then a thread like this goes and introduces you to a host of new cockfarmers you had little to no idea about.

I dunno. I kinda almost prefer the total unreformed unrepentant cockfarmers because at least you know where you stand with them. The ones who dress their cockfarming up in charm and ~being decent in person~, in a weird way those ones worry me more, like evil dressed up in a pleasant face gets much, much further and people are willing to excuse it and fall for it so much more.

James used to be alright imo – good essayist and critic, & I like the memoirs – but a pompous 'marvels of western literary culture' side of him largely took over. Still quite like him as a poetry critic - solid in the formal corner, breadth of reading, good to disagree with.

Conversely I used to hate Bragg, but now I only hear him if I download an In Our Time, so I am more or less ok with that.

I was optimistic when I first saw the cover - I like Perry & I think the liberal/fabian left can be v v hostile to anything that looks like the politics of cultural privilege or identity – it seemed a viable trojan horse. But really.

Ambitious establishment Tory types are always perfectly decent in person, they're basically trained from birth to be so.

Self is the only one on the list I've met (admittedly 13 years ago now) and I found him genial enough, although I suspect that may not always be the case.

I just read Dylan Jones' wikipedia and an interview from 5 years ago, and to be honest, he just gives me a serious case of the creeps. "Oh, my friends treated my joining the Conservative party as if I'd admitted liking Phil Collins" - as if it were only such a minor aesthetic quibble!

I admit to being a sucker for the Style world and I would happily read GQ in the takeaway next door for the beautiful suits, basically, and the Style but the odious and deeply conservative politics involved with the whole thing, and you realise that the agenda promoted within is totally deliberate and it's just fucking depressing. That subtle or not even so subtle creep of art school boys to the right as they age.

I'm also thinking about that thing upthread, of someone (forget who) saying one should save one's genuine hate and contempt for the politicians.

But when confronted with a list like this, one realises how much of it is down to the commentariat who present this hateful politics and polish the turds and make it all so ~palatable~ and even stylish.

yeah Jones is a particularly vile offender there – Osborne as politician of the year in the GQ awards for instance.

One good thing at least is Toby Young must be fuming he never got asked to contribute.

christ i'd never seen his list of books before. "The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music" , oh man I have not read this but I strongly suspect he is no David Thomson.

(xp lol)

About 287 results for "new wasteman" (0.52 seconds)

Anything entitled "Mr Jones' Rules For The Modern Man" makes me want to smash things, and not in a sexual sense, either, just in a pulverise into tiny bloodsoaked little molecules until there is nothing left sense. :-(

& fwiw Ian Penman on Jones's new Elvis book - a couple of basically contemptuous paras about two-thirds of the way through:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n18/ian-penman/shapeshifter

Just curious - what are people's main beef with Owen Jones?

his valjean

or were people referring to dylan jones?

xp
to be absolutely clear all of my remarks refer to Dylan Jones – I like Owen Jones.

i have no problem with him other than his youth and success

Yeah, Owen Jones' only sins are to be a bit young, a bit hopeful and a bit idealistic. The Jones-baiting of the last few dozen posts is about Dylan Jones.

hmmm 'to be absolutely clear all of my remarks', i'm sounding v pompous there, think the list is infecting me.

ah good. i'm glad that got cleared up.

I voted for Alain de Botton but I've just discovered who Dylan Jones is and I'd like to change it.

One good thing at least is Toby Young must be fuming he never got asked to contribute.

Also Rod Liddle also Richard Dawkins.

Kind of curious though what Dawkins would have said.

Liddle was the other most glaring omission.

maybe something like Tony Parsons contribution to 'The Manifesto'?

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/manifesto-new-man-how-great-white-male-can-stay-relevant

What has the Great White Male ever done for us? Shakespeare and Dickens. Picasso and Matisse. Morrissey and Marr. Jagger and Richards. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the inventors of the new century. The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy. The warriors who protected us, the fathers who held us. Hemingway and Fitzgerald. John F Kennedy and John Cooper Clarke. Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas.

White men, eh? What a waste of space!

I am not convinced that the Great White Male desperately needs a new male manifesto – the past thousand years have gone quite well for us without one. Here’s to the next thousand years, man!

you've got to be shitting me

fuck i should have voted parsons

you weren't shitting at all ;_;

Wow.

I mean, I typed out some more ~offensive~ responses like "go die in a fire" and "choke on your own vomit" or "go fuck yourself with a running chainsaw, Tony fucking Parsons" but realised that my rage is pretty impotent and the only real response possible is just "wow".

can't believe he missed paul weller and bobby moore ;_;

Here’s to the next thousand years, man!

The URL. How the Great White Male can stay relevant. Because this is the problem. The Great White Male is losing his relevance. This shit is beyond satire. I can't even get up bile or rage for this.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web.

The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and the nazis who bravely tried to fight them back

It's not his fault. He was married to Julie Burchill, you know. And living forever in the shadow of his more famous spouse, he is condemned to live like a woman for the rest of his days. How it must shrink his penis to contemplate it.

This is the position taken by most of these ghastly exercises - how can the white man adapt, how can we achieve social justice by modifying the white man's behaviour, how can white men become better white men, etc. The idea of taking a step back and letting others set their own agenda, have their own say, barely occurs.