As an internationally acclaimed blogger (Is this right? – ed), I have plenty of ‘Why do I bother?’ moments . I had yet another one this morning, which I will come to soon. You may have gathered that I do not have a paywall on the simple grounds that if I did two things would happen. No one would read it and I would make even less money than I do now, via Ko Fi (coffee, geddit?) which would rather negate the original aim of Eclectic Blue which is, or perhaps more accurately was, a device intended to bring my work to the masses. Like Facebook, this blog is, and will always be, free, despite running at a loss. And why? Because I love to write, that’s why.
I am extremely flattered when anyone reads my work, whether they think it’s any good or not, because in the end every blog I publish represents the best I can do at a given time. But, as I said in today’s introduction those ‘Why do I bother?’ moments do appear from time-to-time.
Today’s came via – surprise, surprise! – the Mail on Sunday, in the form of Boris Johnson’s weekly column. As ever, it’s a tawdry example of cheap laughs and punching down, as you might expect from this establishment clown who comes to us via Eton College, Oxford University and, I still have trouble believing this, 10 Downing Street.
This week’s column is classic Johnson. The Netflix drama Adolescence is at the heart of Johnson’s diatribe. It’s ‘brilliantly acted tosh,’ declared Johnson, adding that it’s ‘irrelevant to the problem of knife crime in schools‘. Then he really goes to town on the issue of showing the programme in schools: ‘Don’t waste the time of teachers and pupils with a load of sermonising twaddle about sexism,’ he rages, instead blaming Keir Starmer, who is the one ‘doing REAL damage to the life-chances of teenagers … (with his) spiteful Pol Pot hatred of anything that looks like aspiration.’ Given that Pol Pot was directly responsible for the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s which killed about two million people, it seems a strange comparison, but I suppose you need to take into account the character of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
The Oxford academic Glen O’Hara describes Johnson thus: ‘A man so full of hate and lies that all he can do is emit malevolent, disgusting vomit and bile. His very existence shames himself, anyone who publishes him and let’s face it the whole country.‘ And here he still is, along with Liz Truss the worst prime minister in our history, a serial liar, narcissist, gaslighter and bullshitter getting paid a million quid a year for emitting ‘malevolent, disgusting vomit and bile.’
What a joke it is to see Johnson writing, apparently in all seriousness, about aspiration. No one could be further from the idea of a meritocracy, having been handed wealth and privilege from the moment of his birth and a myriad of opportunities, like writing for the biggest Sunday ‘newspaper’ in the land on the basis of his shit-stirring polemic and rhetoric. Am I jealous, then? Am I fuck.
I take great pride in being honest in everything I do. I am not perfect – far from it – and I have made errors, some in terms of dishonesty, that I am not proud of. Since I started to take my writing seriously, I have at first consciously and now entirely unconsciously, sought to be honest, and to avoid gaslighting. That matters to me. This might sound odd to some but I’d rather write an honest and minor blog with a small number of readers for nothing than lie through my teeth for a million quid. Johnson writes, in the style of many Mail writers, by playing to the prejudices of its readers.
I read his column today so you don’t have to and I won’t be linking to the Mail’s website because it only encourages them, but one absolute lie, one of many, in today’s piece where he rails against going ‘back to a world where all must have prizes‘, as if in recent times there should be no winners nor losers in for example children’s sports. This chimes with the Mail’s elderly middle class readership who spend all their time dreaming about olden times which never really happened. (There’s actually a more complex argument at work, which of course Johnson overlooks, where it very important that all children are encouraged to participate in as many sports as possible and the teaching of skills is more important than winning at all costs, but that’s for another day.)
So, again; why do I bother? It’s what I do and it’s because I can and actually I am luckier in at least one way than the unsuccessful writers who came before me. And that’s because of the internet and the invention of blogs, which gives me at least in theory the same reach as anyone else on the planet.
In almost every facet of life, where you have come from in terms of class makes a difference. If you come from a rich family and went to a private school, you are far more likely to succeed in the arts, especially in acting and music (including popular music), sports like cricket and rugby union and obviously in the world of writing. It’s far more likely that my failure to make it big in the literary world is down to my innate lack of writing talent, but I can’t help feeling that with the advantages given to the upper orders, people like Johnson who churn out lazy, populist dross for £20,000 a pop, I might perhaps have done better. I don’t care now.
I gave it a good shot and I will continue to give it good shots until I can write no more. I’m proud of what I do. If Johnson is proud of the copy he hands to the Mail, I feel a kind of pity for him. I would like to think I am true to myself. Suggesting that Keir Starmer is a greater threat to young people than knife crime suggests a sick mind or maybe just someone so far beyond reality that it no longer matters. I’ll say it’s both.
Join me again next time on Eclectic Blue. And it’s all free.
