Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

um how dare you guess that for no reason whatsoever, she has merely been ~just asking questions~ in the graun for at least six years

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/11/caitlyn-jenner-transgender-feminism-woman

You don’t have to link it

I’ll just take your word for it

Anyway I’m glad whoever this is is suffering social consequences from her former friends

I’m just an alien observer here but isn’t this the same Grauniad that harped on Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism for years? Is “just asking questions” now their editorial policy?

Just a mode of intellectual enquiry now, no matter if people get killed at least it's an interesting discussion at dinner parties.

Noticed in the column Tracer screengrabbed that HF called Corbyn ‘adjacent to antisemites’ so I guess the lawyers are watching? She went on that horrible Enough is Enough demo so her actual views are more than that.

observer is even more foul than usual today. in addition to the freeman thing, there's an editorial about how trans people should be up for debate forever and suggesting otherwise, plebs, is antifeminist. plus a foghorn racist piece about batley and spen by-election.

Toby Helm(et)

Toby Belm, please.

Zoe Ball’s pay cut means BBC’s highest-paid star is still a man

Hmm, seems to hint it was a man before, so.. Rubbish headline.

Not sure about Philippa Perry's tough approach on this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/11/ask-philippa-perry-will-my-menopausal-wife-ever-want-to-have-sex-with-me-again

She wants to make questioner think more deeply, but it does come across a bit 'internet hardman'.

from the intro to the reply:

There you are, living with your sexy wife and, oh dear, you don’t know if you are ever going to get a shag again. Not that you put it like that, that’s just how I read it. You are very measured in your email, showing me just how well you behave, almost as though you’re walking on egg-shells. Got me wondering whether you must walk around your wife on egg-shells, too.

Yeah, thought this was a terrible response. Guy’s not blameless and needs to ask himself some questions but this just seemed like a pile on.

Be hilarious if she is like this to every letter that after a while she stops ppl from writing in.

I didn't see her reply as being particularly "tough guy", and read in her voice a much more empathetic tone than Mariella Frostrup brought to the page over the last couple of years. Also, Perry is writing as a therapist, not just a columnist, and so she's offering advice and inviting the letter-writer to examine their own behaviour and take same agency, and even suggesting practical methods in doing so. She's aiming to help them solve the issue, not just making them feel better in the moment. I mean, also I didn't read her chiding the letter-writer in the slightest.

"She's aiming to help them solve the issue, not just making them feel better in the moment."

Yeah, that's what I read. I could imagine the letter writer feeling a bit "But ... but ... I've done research!"

I have a particular dislike for the "Not that you put it like that, that's just how I read it" formula which anyone who has experienced microaggressions in the workplace will instantly recognise as the classic "that's just my reframing of what you said - hey! don't blame me for the reactions that your words generate in me, they're your words " excuse in being aggressive.

I'd be more reassured by the answer overall if I thought the answer was likely to help the questioner examine their behaviour and take some agency. But I'm not sure about the usefulness of the scenarios - there are at least four more things that could be going on here.. I think they're just too open-ended and speculative:
And anorexia can be the body’s way of trying to solve a problem that has not been articulated and quite often after psychological investigation that problem seems to be the patient’s lack of autonomy in their life. Of course, I do not know enough about your dynamic to say whether it was like this for your wife, I’m voicing it only as a possibility. If you became too parent-like and controlling, this might have been her body’s way of rebelling.

I don't think columnists such as Mariella do just aim to make the questioner feel better in the moment btw

I mean everything Perry wrote sounded and felt like something a professional trained therapist/counsellor with years and years of experience would say, and I didn't find that any of it read tough or "internet hardman" at all, but ymmv. Therapists/counsellors will reframe what a patient has said as a way to get them to confront the situation as they see it from a different perspective, it seems it would be a fruitful way of approaching.

I'm not saying Mariella just aimed to make the questioner feel better in the moment, but I am saying that often Mariella's columns read like she was playing internet hardman because - at least for the last couple of years - she seemed burned out and impatient and not interested in the people writing in, or quick to identify the complainant as "actually the bad person". I've enjoyed Perry's columns so far because she doesn't bring that energy, and her answers have seemed empathetic and productive.

Lolol

Not only will I not pay for the Guardian, this is so bad it's making me wonder whether there's a way I can steal from it pic.twitter.com/o75AoJWs0n

— jan 🇵🇸 (@janhopi) July 12, 2021

I see Philippa Perry discussed this on twitter (kudos to her for doing so). I've often wondered what constraints columnists have to work with and what goes on that we don't see.

It’s harsh, it’s speculative, and it’s the best I could do. I wrote to him personally as well where I had more space for sugar coating. He replied and appreciated my efforts. I can see he’s doing what he thinks is right but it wasn’t getting them anywhere.

— Philippa_Perry (@Philippa_Perry) July 11, 2021

She’s a pretty good egg generally (I met her years ago when I went round to interview Grayson and at the time she was consultant psychologist for Big Brother).

i kinda get they're proud of hyde and crace -- they seem popular even tho i think they're both rubbish, him especially -- but is behr on the list for the same reason, or morely likely bcz he'll pout ands feel left out if mom and dad don't give him a lollipop? it's the internet so i've no doubt *someone* has linked a behr piece and called it "insightful! brilliant!" but come on lads he's a world-famous idiot

any fule kno

Bradshaw is a movie critic I trust less than even Commode - he's the absolute worst. He doesn't even review Sean Penn's latest turkey, he actually attempts to get invited round his yard so he can fuck him.

brb letting el chapo's henchmen know abt the tryst so they can take out the two of them in one go

Mark S is right -- no-one likes Behr, except Hyde, Freeman, d'Ancona, et al themselves.

Not only will I not pay for the Guardian, this is so bad it's making me wonder whether there's a way I can steal from it

that can't be real!!

i trust Commode 100% thru the simple expedient of assuming the opposite of anything he says is true

philippa perry seems like a terrible person sorry

I find where the toilet paper is stored and replace a missing roll: this, I think to myself, is mutual aid.

Suddenly each vodka maté feels like a bulwark against an uncertain future.

I mean, not that I haven't had dippy thoughts at a rave.

What a load of bulwarks

But yeah I will prob have similar feelings of bonhomie if I’m ever off my tits in a club again, provided I don’t have a panic attack

http://artsoftheworkingclass.org/text/dawn-foster-1986-2021

"Having just completed a blog for them about my gender reassignment and dealt with a couple of minor breakdowns, I was furious with The Guardian’s sister paper, The Observer, for publishing a transphobic screed by Julie Burchill. Dawn had worked on it, saying it was impossible to decide what was acceptable below the line when the article was so full of hatred."

and the Manic Street Preachers, who funded a memorial bench in Newport despite Dawn not being a fan of theirs

hah hah very sad lol!

there is stuff in Dawn's family background I can very much relate to. I have a sister who was conceived when my mother was raped at 15 years old by a violent scumbag who was also the father of an uncle of mine. She really wasn't the type of person who is allowed to succeed in UK media, not smug and posh enough, but she fucking towered above that shower of wankers at the Graun.

Latitude perhaps has the image of being among the more genteel of the larger festivals – aside from the headlining bands, there are ballet performances by the lakeside, literary debates, ballroom dancing, esoteric cabaret, even, naturally for the middle classes, wild swimming.

naturally

hah! if you want to try a figuratively swimming in raw effluent vibe some of the highlights of the arts politics & science stage include "Mark Kermode Live in 3d" and "Jess Phillips MP" and "Supergrass Special".

that last one is actually a lad who dobbed in 17 members of the Ra during the 80s

oh I was hoping it was going to be Gaz and his chums moving their political views and insights from the pub table to a public forum for the first time!

a beerhall push, if you will

lol that's just what I expect from the SS

If this is the headline it doesn't seem worth reading?

Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

I can't believe I was once deluded enough to think she was one of the better ones.

I feel like she WAS one of the better ones until you lot started banging on about how bad she was, and then she actually became that bad

I Blame ILX

she was already bad, but was more quietly bad when the "IRA twat" put her in his shadow cabinet.

yeah there was definitely good things about her, and the way she talked about her own life experiences as education secretary was really eloquent and expansive and helped illuminate the corbyn-era vision of education against the asset-stripped notions that endure in a society obsessed with oxbridge/russell group prestige. This is a vision that only makes sense in the context of an overall commitment to anti-austerity, anti-racism though and these are two ideals she has proven she has no fealty towards whatsoever. her behaviour during the deputy-leader campaign really showed her true colours on the latter quite clearly.

she has always attracted a lot of sexist and classist abuse (including from Kieth) which was obv because a good looking bird with a regional accent and a quite individualist fashion sense will always be a target of misogyny and contempt in UK politics, and also attract support in some places if they are reactionary enough. She could have been so much more but I think her nativist concerns aren't just her going with the flow and are quite deeply held convictions of hers. Watching her move against Kieth wasn't even that good entertainment because two sides of the same coin.

guardian still more just than the sum of its worst elements (bad as they are):

The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis, by @Yohannkhttps://t.co/60fgnryRfa

— The Guardian Long Read (@gdnlongread) August 5, 2021