The Bluestocking 347: Douglas discourse
a Wodehousian fantasy of Englishness brought to life
Happy Friday!
When I was driving round Pennsylvania, I sampled a lot of U.S. politics podcasts, and my favourite was Hacks on Tap, hosted by David Axelrod and John Heilemann. Axe sounds like a sad cartoon bear, and both hosts were on point with their criticisms—for example, they picked up that this might be nothing more complicated than a right track/wrong track election, which would spell the end of the incumbent.
The latest episode is on Joe Biden’s pardon for his son Hunter, where their guest is former Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie—who, incidentally, was the prosecutor in the case of Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, pardoned by Trump in 2020 and now made Trump’s ambassador to France. (What did Kushner do? Well, Christie has consistently described it as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted...and I was the U.S. attorney in New Jersey”.)
So that’s my recommendation for the week!
Helen
Saving The West, One Polemic At A Time (Prospect)
Telegenic and erudite, [Douglas] Murray is of an English pedigree for which there is seemingly unlimited demand in the US. An acquaintance of his has told me that his accent has grown more pronounced over time. To some Americans, Murray is a set of affectations—a Wodehousian fantasy of Englishness brought to life. The dinner jacket, the knowing arch of the eyebrow, the repository of droll witticisms, the brio and the charm. Confronted with a tiresome interlocutor, Murray will roll his eyes at the folly of those around him, then pause for a moment before saying something deliciously acerbic. And yet he is more than his mannerisms: Murray is a captivating pundit of the right, who speaks with clarity and power.
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James Bloodworth profiles Douglas Murray, who gets indulged (as I do, in fairness) because so many Americans love to listen to a British person being catty.
The Mainstream Media Has Already Lost (Atlantic, gift link)
Nothing symbolizes the changed media landscape of this past election more than [Joe] Rogan’s casual brush-off [of Kamala Harris]. Within a week, his interview with Trump racked up more than 40 million views on YouTube alone, and millions more on other platforms. No single event, apart from the Harris-Trump debate, had a bigger audience this election cycle. By comparison, Harris’s contentious interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, the most popular of the cable networks, drew 8 million viewers to the live broadcast, and another 6.5 million on YouTube.
Those figures demonstrate the absurdity of talking about the “mainstream media” as many still do, especially those who disparage it. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, Americans with a wide range of political views generally agree about which outlets fall within this definition: newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and television networks such as CNN. Everyone else who’s disseminating information at scale is treated like a couple of hipsters running a craft brewery who are valiantly competing with Budweiser. That is simply not true. Rogan is the “mainstream media” now. Elon Musk, too.
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I wrote something about how annoying it is to see people with massive audiences, whose media companies make £££, complain about “the mainstream media”.
Quick Links
“There is discourse about everything, and there is discourse about the discourse, and the entire time you get the feeling that you’ve heard it all before. Even hot takes now come in handfuls, which is perhaps why, every now and then, a journalist is pushed to say something truly mad.” This Eleanor Halls piece on information burnout resonated with me (Pass The Aux, Substack).
“By the end of that afternoon, the warnings about Project 2025’s plans for an “authoritarian, Christian nationalist movement with broad control over American life”—in the words of a flyer I received as part of my “lit pack”—felt too academic for a voter with gray and missing teeth who told me she could not afford dental care. By contrast, just blocks away was a curving street lined with colonial-style homes, with Volvos and S.U.V.s in the driveways, where one smiling Democrat after another opened the doors. Here was the class polarization that would later get so much attention.” (New Yorker, £)
“I hear this a lot from my fellow liberals, and it has been a common postelection cope: Liberals—are simply trying to make the world better, which includes making it more diverse. These simple, noble, obviously good acts send the right into conniptions, sparking all sorts of unseemly backlash, including the ultimate form of backlash: electing Donald Trump not once but twice. This is a ridiculous understanding of circa 2024 American politics and power, and it should be retired as soon as possible.” (What If Liberals Have Agency?, Singal-Minded)
“More candidates stood for election to Parliament in the 2024 general election than in any previous contest: 4,397, comfortably above the previous record in 2010.” Rob Ford on the fragmentation of British politics (Substack)
Rob Ford’s piece gives me a chance to air a theory I’ve been nursing—I would not be surprised if Reform overtake the Conservatives among young men. Looking at America, there’s clearly a market for populist, male-coded politics led by a charismatic caricature among Gen Z guys, and Nigel Farage is better placed to offer that in Britain than Kemi Badenoch. For young men, the Conservatives are the party of your grandparents who don’t think you should be able to own a house. Reform could be the two-fingers-up-at-the-scolds party they’re looking for.
I’m going to end with Rob’s magnificent meme interpretation of what happened in Liz Truss’s Norfolk seat in the 2024 election, because it sparked joy:
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> I wrote something about how annoying it is to see people with massive audiences, whose media companies make £££, complain about “the mainstream media”.
Perhaps, but the "Mainstream Media" are the media of the actually powerful, the ones the bureucrats, upper middle classes, and managerial elites follow, shape, and adhere to, and whose edicts are taken as gospel by the punditry.
That's despite the audience disparity. They would still have that power even if just the public sector heads, unelected bureucrats, academics, and Hill pundits alone read them, and everybody else watched Joe Rogan or something.
In other words, Rogan doesn't dictate "The Narrative".
Thank you for sharing the Douglas Murray piece. A lot of good points in there and all the better for not being an out and out hatchet job.