Sunday, December 09, 2007
The Turner Prize and Nick Cohen
I didn't comment on the ludicrous award of The Turner Prize to Mark Wallinger's State Britain. This was primarily because I don't think the Turner is worth trashing any more. It has no artistic significance - I don't know anybody who thinks it has - and simply exists as one more pointlessly eccentric, slightly shabby corner of British life like Jeffrey Archer or rich, elderly men who wear bright red corduroy trousers. The great Nick Cohen, the only sane man of the left, puts me to shame today by identifying the true significance of the Wallinger award. It is, he shows, a particularly egregious and exact example of la trahison des clercs. Precisely. There is nothing more to be said except that I wish I'd said it first.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Indeed, a great piece by Cohen...
ReplyDelete(and on the lesser matter of bright red trousers, this is a very strange and baffling phenomenon - bright red is one of a range of equally hideous colours, from salmon pink to shocking yellow, sported by the seriously posh as they get older - what are they trying to say? Is it anything more than I Am Seriously Posh?)
They perform the same function as the bright jackets on railway workers, save on the moors and hills. Where the wearing of a coat of such a colour- regardless how faded- might prove in that environment and with the company more of a invite than healthy. The britches might also hark to the cherry bottoms of that Light Brigade.
ReplyDeleteTrendy media intelligentsia types have got themselves into paroxysms of hatred over Iraq. It's all so Absolutely Fabulous in it's hyperbole and limp reasoning. We've had plays about Bush/Blair, about Hutton, the imbecilic and sinister Michael Moore. Nick Cohen continues to fight a good leftist fight. More power to him. Like his fellow Cheshire Manc, Ricky Hatton, you've got to admire his bolshiness. Fortunately, the Galloways and Pilger's are no Floyd Mayweather.
ReplyDeleteIf 'great' is meant in the sense of 'gutless, truthless relativist', then yes, Nick Cohen is great. Otherwise he is simply a gutless, truthless relatavist. But since we're all such clever, ironic, and ever so realistic realists, ie gutless, truthless relatavists, then Nick Cohen as a paragon of gutless, truthless relatavism is truly a shining light, and makes us lesser lights feel good about being gutless, truthless relatavists. "Because you are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm so I spit you out of my mouth."
ReplyDeleteI'm a relatavist in the sense of the haphazard spelling of relativist
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way, keep mentioning how G Brown is a dreadful autocrat not to be trusted, as was Blair and the neo-cons, but of course when such dreadful not to be trusted autocrats go to war they, by some mysterious alchemical process, have been transformed from the horrors they so clearly are into deep idealists, whose blunders in embarking on wars are merely the result of their well-intentioned intense idealism; and these blunders are not even so much blunders as simply shoddiness in the execution of their well-intentioned war-mongering. Who would have thought such greedy, manipulative men had so much idealism in them?
ReplyDeleteBrilliant piece by Cohen.
ReplyDelete"They share with Haw the inability to walk and chew gum at the same time - to oppose George W Bush while supporting the victims of Baathism and Islamism."
A perfect encapsulation of the futility of talking about Iraq with 99% of leftists.
Speaking of Bush... Well, of those opposed to him, anyway... Remember the topic of Oprah Winfrey's power coming up on this site? Andrew K., silly boy, didn't think a talk show host could have any. He might want to take a gander over the big water now: One O is backing another and if you don't think Oprah's endorsing Obama is going to get him gazillions of votes, then you don't know nuttin' about the most influential woman in the U.S. of A.
ReplyDeleteNice post Susan B. I have read that Oprah managed to get Anna Karenina to the top of US bestseller lists. These sophisticates so underestimate those with popular appeal! Only in America though. When Simon Cowell (or David Beckham for that matter) manages to get Ulysses into the UK top 100 bestsellers, UK popular culture will have matched yours.
ReplyDelete