Home Truths

ps anyone watching POPULAR will understand that as usual american teen tv is exploring these issues more intelligently (= dialectically heh) than peel ever did, or even PiL and you KNOW how much i heart lydon

Here is my home truth: the advertising/marketing industry is THE MOST CONSERVATIVE of ALL, no question. It is imperialist, sexist, racist patronising, totalitarian, and utterly mediocre, colonising anything 'new' - and if you give an ad exec one inch, they'll take the mile eventually. In fact, anyone in ANY line of work who mentions their brand more than once in the first ten minutes of interaction must be taken away and shot in the spirit of revolutionary insurrection. Or at the very least this is a reliable guide for spotting assholes who aren't geniuses.

The current climate in consumer magazines, where advertisers claim to be tightening their belts, is detrimental to freedom of expression because the magazines in question are tripping over themselves to win favour with the stealth conservatives who make up the industry (look, I don't care how cool the toys are that you buy with your £50k a year are, if you use your economic power to prevent someone from disagreeing with you in public, you are on the same primrose path as Pinochet).

A few years ago I suggested a piece where advertisers would be called into question for appropriating the ideas of the creative types (eg. Gillian Wearing) regularly featured in the magazine, which never ran shy of profiling, for example, the McLibel trial people or grassroots anti-government protestors. But when faced with a criticism of the advertisers buying space in the magazine, my editor said no to such a piece because she was scared the advertisers would pull their spending if criticised (it was okay to criticise McDonalds because they didn't buy space, and the government because we do ostensibly live in a democracy in Britain). There was a similar problem with the criticism of 'foundations' run by fashion companies to give artists money for projects, eg. the Prada Foundation. As a friend of mine, a very prominent artist, said, 'Oh, a *foundation*. If it makes them feel any more intelligent, fine. But it has TAX DODGE written all over it.' These companies want to be seen as having a link with the cutting edge of the culture, to elevate themselves above mere 'shopping', but quickly display their true colours if challenged with the sort of discourse found at the cutting edge, where people argue about intent, content motivation and appropriation.

I've met virtually no-one who has achieved *nothing*. Of course stuff like building a boat, renovating a house, running a marathon, learning a couple of languages, coming out as gay at 30, working for charity, and juggling work and family through serious illness, probably rates as *nothing* vs the ability to flaunt a surface knowledge of two or three philosophers. (These examples btw were taken from my immediate family and folks at work).

**We live in a world in which the dogma is 'we're all equal, we're all as valuable as each other'. But that doesn't mean we're all the same. I, and most people I know, are people who were ostracised at school as 'freaks'. And school was the last contact we had with 'normal' people. We gravitated to people like ourselves -- by and large self-employed, artistic, creative people**

What Gareth said. If you bothered to find out, instead of holing-up with fellow pseuds 24-7, you'd see what people had to offer, and value what they know, respect the way they live. Problem is, they might just spot that you're a ridiculous, pompous bigot.

Equality: we are supposed to enjoy equal protection under the law regardless of sex, income, beliefs or race. Talent of an exceptional type can crop up anywhere.

For someone so interested in seeing the world and dinding 'interesting' folks, how can you have so little faith in people? How fucking boring.

If I was Joe Orton I would probably be fucking them, though.

I know it's elitist of me to think that 95 per cent of people are breeding stock who I probably couldn't (or wouldn't) find much in common with, but I'm not bothered about anyone thinking less of me because of that, since I don't hate the masses enough to make them consume innocuous, plebian things dreamt up by my patronising mates in a focus group. But 95 per cent of people are ruled by the other five per cent, and quite willingly too.

Hey, Nick...hitting the Hut for cash? You are now attempting to advertise American fast food. Wasn't this one of those non-negotiable points of no return where you insisted on being taken to the proverbial field and being shot should you ever collude in this way?

Oh, the danger of a friend with a good memory.

Hitting the Hut for cash is either my lowest point yet, or a brilliant strategy to get the sleepwalking masses to pay for the promotion of Super Madrigal Brothers and The Gongs, young American artists on my label who make work which I want widely heard, even though it will cause barfing in approximately 90% of the pizza munchers who, unbeknownst to themselves, are paying for its promotion.

(Note to Momus: Not everyone gets hit upside the head as much as you do. And no, it doesn't make you special either)

If someone finds your life boring, average or in some way mediocre, relax. The important thing is that you do not. Or do you? Is that what this is really all about, someone had the temerity to suggest that certain ways of living are not satisfactory because of the implications of that lifestyle serving the needs of a conservative social agenda, which as a teenager you may have seen in black/white instead of shades of grey?

Is the teenager really so wrong? Would your inner teen be revolted by what you had become, or pleased?

(this particular argt was always completely unwinnable anyway, because it requires re-establishing an opposition that hardly anyone seems to accept or understand any longer, crowd vs star, expert vs punter, elite vs mass, doctor vs patient, general vs grunt, political spinmeister vs ordainry working ppl => you can get it up and working locally, or one zone, reasonably impressively, but as soon as you let it travel it falls to bits)

eg momus jumped along four or five steps becomes mandelson

when you were on that other thread dissing those poor 50s UK artist folks for being down with picasso years too late, and a wee bit tepid with it, i thought => but momus that is YOU — and also it is the Actual Factual Founding Era and Rationale for the ICA heh — and that is why you (and they and the ICA) may be much more interesting than you're (on THAT thread) claiming, because they have querulously refused to get with the Big Canon (= Modern Art = the top ten, same diff).

(i realise there is little real percentage in trying to find convincing common logical ground between Momus postings on difft threads)

This is very funny.

anyway the point i am making is that it cannot be introduced as the argument-winning capper to the debate, the devastating ground on which all agree all agree, because it isn't: i didn't put this in my list becuz i wanted it to stay non-toxic, but i could also have said eg general vs grunt, men vs women, white vs black... see? it can be shifted into a territory where you suddenly think, ok, hold on, yes, now i'm anti-elitism

what i am getting at is that there is no longer an agreed-on CENTRE to this "elite" argt => that an elite that you may APPROVE of in one area of yr life (for example, i like ppl who can WRITE, tho i have a quite idiosyncratic definition of that) is very likely the OPPOSITE of an elite in other areas of yr life (great artists are rubbish husbands, say). The argt is unwinnable because no one today will say YAY 12-LIZARDS (even if they secretly believe it) (which you dave q do not, tho some of yr critics on this board believe you do)

Presenting it as the "hi-lo debate" is completely misconceiving it: that's no longer the shape of the argument (and — as i said above — trying to re-establish it as being basically this shape is a mug's game...) If my brain were to turn to mush and I were suddenly to say, "Yes!! High was right all along and always", surely the first thing I'd take off my computer would be my Momus and Brazen Hussies MP3s...

'SOMETHING GOOD ON TELLY ALERT' thread: 1 post. Mmm Pies: 76.

Come on, admit it, you love it!

Oh but I think there are several who HAVE heard his music and consider that also.

Ethan, what the fuck.

lol home truths