Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

"It is much more noble and easier to write condescending fuckwit copy about female rock bands than write about legit concernism in the provinces" old Harissian proverb.

At least we know he's never heard Springsteen.

line breaks in the mobile version made me do a double-take:

the still overlooked genre-
cum-upsurge known as riot grrrl

fp'd for making me think about john harris' cum upsurge

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/24/truth-british-soldiers-northern-ireland-troops

QTWTAIY?

god that really made me think

If it's good enough for the IRA it's good enough for the British Army, sez the Guardian.

i have a soft spot for Priestley but dear god he is the all-time champion of DO YOU SEE? middlebrowcore

also interested to identify the "we" in that headline

That Manchester E.N. story is brutal. That poor woman.

The Maybot has appointed a minister for suicide prevention, so everything is OK now.

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/27/blind-date-tom-catherine?__twitter_impression=true

Would you introduce him to your friends?
Probably not. Tom has never been to Surrey, which wouldn’t go down well.

Guardian core readership revealed.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/02/guardian-editorial-response-transgender-rights-uk

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/03/pina-colada-song-improbability-data-journalist-crunches-numbers-james-ball

rupert holmes' autocuckoldry classic

i managed a couple of skimmed paragraphs of that before gently murderous rage made me stop

And this particular track – a US No 1 on its release in 1979 (although it recharted in 1980, making it the only pop song to hold the top spot in different decades)

bollocks

Didn’t hack comedians mostly stop doing the “go line-by-line thru a song taking it literally” bit 20 years ago?

Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Paul Foot Award
Nominations: Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils

lol these awards are clearly fucking worthless.

xp

that sounds like standard R4/Edinburgh fringe comedy gold that has people dying from broken spleens etc.

men who look like old lesbians

https://duaw26jehqd4r.cloudfront.net/items/3w1741021r2f021a0y20/IMG_8797.jpg

Jfc

Saw that the other day and it crashed my brain.

Here are the nominees for 2018 #TheTrashies Awards. Strangely some of them seem to appear on the @CommentAwards #EiCA18 shortlist too ¯_(ツ)_/¯

— The Trashies (@TheTrashiesUK) November 5, 2018

congrats to the Graun for managing 10 trashie noms this year!

https://amp.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/nov/13/coming-out-as-working-class-difficulties-gay

Dear oh dear

You really have no idea what it’s like for Americans from single-parent/working-class homes who manage to get to very selective tertiary education, do you? I thought he nailed it.

It's based on flawed logic - he admits it to students at Vanderbilt, who he assumes none of which are from working class backgrounds, so that high school kids in blue collar areas can be told it'll be ok. There's no thread there at all.

Did you read the last paragraph?

Yes, that's why I referred to it.if that's his goal then telling non-working class students (his own assumption) in 'very selective tertiary education' (to borrow Suzy's phrase) doesn't go any way to achieving it.

Alternatively, if publicity in general is an aim, what's the Guardian's standing in the sort of communities that only have a "tiny, rural high school, where there was no college counselor, no one to expose the children of sharecroppers to options after graduation beyond working on a farm or in a factory"?

It's a start. He himself went to Vanderbilt before getting hired there, so clearly not all of their students come from privileged backgrounds. Some of them could indeed contribute towards that long-term goal back home if exposed to this kind of discourse. Not ambitious enough? Perhaps. But that's a different matter.

The article is uber simplistic. Maybe it grates because who needs another white working class article. Ugh.

The more articles about the working class, the better. Though I do agree that the tendency to reserve this term to white people in the US is infuriating.

And how is he that banal, dry of a writer for teaching creative writing?

xpost I though this was written by a brit at first and was interested.

I just looked up the college profile data for Vanderbilt from 1999-2000. ~40% of the predominately white undergrad class received need based financial aid. The article was a missed opportunity.

Again: are any posters (who aren’t me) sharing their opinions on this guy the former recipients of full financial aid (tuition and accommodation) at a US college/uni of the calibre and expense of a Vanderbilt?

I went to UVa so that was public. And my mom was a chinese restaurant waitress and dad in navy, I didn't qualify for need based financial aid.

xpost I though this was written by a brit at first and was interested.

Like that would happen, amirite uptheworkers etc

Yeah, I kind of wanted to know if britain has the same fetishization of the (white) working class. I am approximately the same age as this guy and I always assumed a large enough amount of people attending universities all over the US came from a working class background, especially based upon the age/generation of parents "Coming out" as working class as a thing to overcome seems counterproductive to changing what makes most of america (education, healthcare, fresh food, housing) unaffordable for the majority. I could've and wanted to attend several elite private universities but thought it was an unnecessary, bad financial decision when I had cheaper options.

surprise: it does

my bootstraps are having a coming out party.

How are the issues of education, healthcare, fresh food and housing unrelated to the working class condition? If you're not middle class or above, you're part of the working class, no matter your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Those concerns aren't erased as a result; it's just an additional category to consider. Or am I failing to grasp the finer semantic hues?

I think I missed a punctuation (.) after "generation of parents". Trying to figure out where I was jumbly. Like, coming out as working class has been this weird humblebrag in the US forever; it's something to overcome instead of changing the system that preserves it. Did that address it?

I should probably have put low-income instead of working class there in the part about the systemic preservation of it.

Ah, I see what you mean. That sounds like a very US-specific (and frankly depressing) take on the working class. Not that other countries don't have this problem, it's just less prevalent. Such is my impression, at least.

As ogmor said there is a similar fetishization of the working class in the UK, not least amongst working class people ourselves. It coexists alongside the prejudices and discrimination that working class people experience everywhere in the world.

I was trying to find the exact definitions of working class, blue collar, low-income etc. Because a lot of blue collar jobs pay really, really well. I almost became a union electrician in my 20s.