Competition Time!
OK, this is really one of those silly posts where I try to link a few interesting things and pretend that they're really connected.
I don't know if you've noticed but the hot new publishing genre for 2007 was 'liberals are bad'. Nick Cohen published the first edition of "What's Left?" (has anyone read the second edition and compared the two?), Andrew Anthony threw in a whiney effort (with some revisionism of his earlier descriptions of his schooling). Now, or sometime this century, Jonah Goldberg will be credited as the author of a book which may be called "Liberal Fascism" and which may have a subtitle like "The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods". (He's had other, equally silly subtitles.) Now this is interesting because I've just joined the Facebook group for Raj Patel's excellent new book about the politics of the world's food system, Stuffed and Starved so I think I'm exactly the sort of liberal Jonah has in his sights. Also today, Chris Brooke has a Rivers of Blood: Links Round-Up post which I highly recommend. Where these ideas collide is that I wrote a post about Jonah Goldberg's mind boggling lack of knowledge about Enoch Powell ("British scholar and -- briefly -- politician" I ask you) which didn't stop him endorsing that speech as a prediction of 9/11 or something. Nick Cohen's latest in the Observer sees him getting worried about immigration - not immigration per se but the amount of immigration, and these new immigrants, they're not the immigrants we grew up with, they're different, they're like foreign foreigners.
So, your task should you choose to accept it, is to review Jonah Goldberg's unwritten opus in the style of Nick "Seals of Dacre" Cohen. I believe someone round here has a 'Simply Red' CD no one else wants. Don't say we don't spoil you. We may throw in a guest post on AaroWatch. Second prize: two guest posts.
Oh, and vote for Jon Swift in those award things. Don't listen to Alex Ranting in Yorkshire who's backing Sadly, No! Jon Swift is one of my Facebook friends. That should count for something.
I don't know if you've noticed but the hot new publishing genre for 2007 was 'liberals are bad'. Nick Cohen published the first edition of "What's Left?" (has anyone read the second edition and compared the two?), Andrew Anthony threw in a whiney effort (with some revisionism of his earlier descriptions of his schooling). Now, or sometime this century, Jonah Goldberg will be credited as the author of a book which may be called "Liberal Fascism" and which may have a subtitle like "The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods". (He's had other, equally silly subtitles.) Now this is interesting because I've just joined the Facebook group for Raj Patel's excellent new book about the politics of the world's food system, Stuffed and Starved so I think I'm exactly the sort of liberal Jonah has in his sights. Also today, Chris Brooke has a Rivers of Blood: Links Round-Up post which I highly recommend. Where these ideas collide is that I wrote a post about Jonah Goldberg's mind boggling lack of knowledge about Enoch Powell ("British scholar and -- briefly -- politician" I ask you) which didn't stop him endorsing that speech as a prediction of 9/11 or something. Nick Cohen's latest in the Observer sees him getting worried about immigration - not immigration per se but the amount of immigration, and these new immigrants, they're not the immigrants we grew up with, they're different, they're like foreign foreigners.
So, your task should you choose to accept it, is to review Jonah Goldberg's unwritten opus in the style of Nick "Seals of Dacre" Cohen. I believe someone round here has a 'Simply Red' CD no one else wants. Don't say we don't spoil you. We may throw in a guest post on AaroWatch. Second prize: two guest posts.
Oh, and vote for Jon Swift in those award things. Don't listen to Alex Ranting in Yorkshire who's backing Sadly, No! Jon Swift is one of my Facebook friends. That should count for something.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 11/05/2007 08:42:00 PM
4 Comments:
Third prize, two Simply Red CDs?
I have no idea who this Goldberg fellow is (and what are these Facebooks of which you speak?), but I think there is something of value in the misread phrase "liberal Jonah". Is that a role the Decents would wish upon themselves or us?
BTW, you really ought to read the reason why I think you should vote for S/N; the leading wingnut challenger was responsible for a disgusting campaign to cut off the funding of someone's cancer treatment, who later died. Let's not split the vote.
>>has anyone read the second edition and compared the two
.
I think someone did... the thing about the dedication of the book, and the thing about Said, those two were definitely removed. I've only flicked through the first ed but the Said point seemed quite important...
The misquotation of Chris Harman on p309 - in which Cohen inserted the word "secretly" to make Harman sound more sinister - has been corrected in the second edition. (Though the word "secretly" remains in the end-note reference at the back of the book, no doubt because of the publisher's laziness.)
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