I swear, this abomination reads like it was written by a 15 year old sorority girl high on meth, but it’s actually by Boris Johnson’s sister. Really, try reading it — it flits about from topic to topic, from her dog having puppies to prating about her mother’s maiden name to weird complaints about not being sufficiently conservative while saying…
It has been a source of mystery to me and no doubt many others that I manage to host a radio show without landing in the soup more often. I’m always saying things like, ‘But are we allowed to say Liverpool Women’s Hospital any more?’ and ‘I only want to see someone in a surgical face mask in an operating theatre’ and ‘If lockdowns work, why are we having another one and if lockdowns don’t work, why are we having another one?’ But then I realise I am a mere soggy centrist snowflake compared with some.
Don’t worry, strange lady, you’re a right-wing asshole, no question.
And then she drops this on us:
Wow. Humble bragging, name dropping, and casual sympathy for a procurer for a pedophile. I felt like throwing up over everything between the headline and the final line.
She has a radio show and publishes in the Spectator? Man, the United States isn’t the only country parasitized by a colony of superficial twits.
Oh, wow, that’s… wow. Wow. What the fuck?
Of course it isn’t! We perfected the genre hundreds of years ago, then set them loose on your shores to make a nuisance of themselves.
Mind you, this one is an especially severe case. I’d probably have thought it parody if that name wasn’t attached. Having said as much, however, this is exactly the sort of thing the Spectator was set up to publish – it’s right-wing trash from stem to stern intended to make posh wankers feel comfortable in their position of overweening privilege. Our incompetent Prime Minister used to be the editor, which tells you all you really need to know about the disagreeable thing.
Well, duh.
It’s not a surprise in the slightest. Many Brits still think their empire is a thing. Only the conservatives of th– oh, wait, what am I saying… it’s the influence of the Murdoch media empire again. Silly me.
Murdoch also rules AUS.
It’s insane and somewhat depressing. I’m happy I don’t live in any of the directly affected countries, but I fear that it may come to my shores soon enough..
*I think I over-edited and left a bit out there.
The Conservatives (aka Tories) are absolutely complicit and culpable. It’s just that I think their influence is dwarfed by Murdoch.
“Man, the United States isn’t the only country parasitized by a colony of superficial twits.” Everywhere the Brutish went the lunacy followed.
It is really simple.
The Johnson Family are a synthesis of Privilege, Entertainment, Journalism and Politics.
Boris Johnson was nominally a Journalist before he went into ‘serious’ politics.
I say nominally a journalist because he was writing for Tory establishment publications, The Daily Telegraph (colloquially know as The Torygraph) and it publishing stablemate The Spectator Magazine, but had been previously fired by The Times for making up quotes.
Rachel Johnson is in a similar vein in so much as she is a bit of a media darling because she occasionally throws a bone to her fellow pundits by publicly disagreeing with her PM brother. She has worked on some of the big right wing UK newspapers and the BBC.
Stanley Johnson, the father, has appeared on ‘reality’ TV show in recent years and is always good for quote.
They are a three ring circus whom the Media and Political class love because they are seen by both classes as ‘one of us’.
Her comments give a fittingly terrible example of right-wing “thinking”.
For masking, she prefers to pretend that no nuance is possible and that everything must either be a perfect cure or is totally worthless, with no in between. Yet, when it comes to an enabler of abuses by the top 1%, she suddenly can see many different nuances and no need to persuade anyone that an intermediate view is right. As with most people with power, it seems unquestionable that they should hold the privilege of picking when to see different shades and when to deny them. The basic principle is that, while “laws” and stuff may exist on paper, it is they and fellow members of the club of the powerful who get to pick what they mean in each case. Just like walking down the street with a gun, it totally depends on if you’re “the black” as the Rittenhouse judge said, or if you look like his friends who text him during a trial.
The right wing loves very tough laws, but with judges who can see the other side when it looks like a friend. Hypocrisy.
In such cases, it’s highly desirable at least to have an editor who
knows where to put the capital letters and periods.
Fun fact: Rachel Johnson ran as a candidate for the “centrist” Change UK party in the EU parliamentary elections (when we still had those). The party consisted of pro remain ex-tories and Labour defectors that felt Jeremy Corbyn was too much of a nazi/communist/IRA supporter. Somehow they didn’t have much success. At least it got a few awful people out of politics.
Sir, you have slandered teenage meth addicts. I’m sure they could write prose far more coherent than this.
I wonder if Boris will make her a lord like he did their brother. Though he may have done that to punish his brother, who seems to have quit politics in order to spend less time with his family.
Behold the Meritocracy!
I’m not surprised that this drivel gets published in tory-friendly spaces, but I’m still a little surprised she’s a regular for the Spectator. It usually puts on a veneer of civility and reasoned argument through competent prose. Apparently the right-wing media have fallen so far that even their supposed intellectual flagships are now reduced to spitting out this sub-Bulwer-Lytton twaddle just to curry favour with Johnson.
“…are now reduced to spitting out this sub-Bulwer-Lytton twaddle…” An injustice to Bulwer-Lytton, or an over estimation of the quality of the public’s appreciation of the quality of writing:
Scientific Evaluation of Charles Dickens: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09296174.2012.754602
(Not a surprise to me, I have always disliked Dickens’ twaddle)
Cancel-envy. I don’t know if it’s a word but many conservative grifters would love to get “backlash” or “cancelled” so they can milk money from the gullible followers. Her intentions here cannot be more obvious.
Bruce, @7:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” – Frank Wilhoit
If we’re going through the family properly, has anyone pointed out that Stanley’s been accused of sexual assault?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59303410
If you think she is strange ,you should check jacob reese mogg’s sister .She also ran as a candidate for some wackaloon party ,it might have been ukip.
@mond #6:
And there’s also Jo Johnson, who, during his decade-long attempt at pretending to have a political career, lurched from one government post to another with such frequency that with one exception he barely spent more than a year in any one position. This, as any ex-minister could tell you, is not long enough to learn the brief sufficient to achieve anything above fuck all. Eventually Jo fell out with his older brother over Brexit and left politics, only for his brother — newly installed as Prime Minister — to reward his younger brother’s achievements with ennoblement and consequently return him to politics. Jo is now free to spend the remainder of his life achieving fuck all in the House of Lords while drawing three hundred quid a day in expenses.
If you think his sister is a tool, wait til you find out about his gropey dad:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59303410
Right-wing ‘journalist’ Isabel Oakeshott, whose inexplainably meteoric rise is a complete mystery defended him by saying he’s just a bit ‘handsy’:
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/handsy-stanley-johnson-fury-after-right-wing-journalist-says-police-should-focus-on-real-crimes-301599/
The Johnsons and their acolytes are a plague.