The Bluestocking 372: New Media and natalism
Have you eaten a burrito prepared by an Ethiopian camel farmer?
Happy Friday!
I’ve been watching The Daily Show since… ooh, the Iraq war, so it was a real treat to talk to Jon Stewart about Trump’s language (and the Biden cover-up). This was my last proper episode of Strong Message Here, as I’m now off to promote The Genius Myth for the next month.
Talking of which, the nice people at Bookshop.org have given me a 10 percent discount code: genius10. Enter that at checkout for a cheaper pre-order.
Helen
Fame And Frustration on the New Media Circuit (Vulture, £)
While many of the New Media Circuit’s most influential stops took root during the mid-2010s digital-media boom — Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper was a Barstool breakout, Hot Ones launched under Complex Media’s First We Feast banner, Good Mythical Morning’s Rhett and Link built a YouTube empire out of sincerity — it was the pandemic that really tipped the scales. With productions shut down and celebrities still seeking attention, podcasts and web shows — cheap, nimble, and with not-insignificant built-in audiences — offered a safer alternative to morning shows and soundstages. “That’s when a lot of the old-school publicists who print their emails and have assistants highlight them started taking us seriously,” an executive at a major YouTube channel told me.
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A look at the new rules of a press tour: spray and pray. No more hitting a couple of prestige late-night cable shows, and a magazine profile. Now you have to do a dozen random podcasts and hope something viral happens.
Nigel Farage’s Cynical Pro-Natalism (Unherd)
Nigel Farage stands alone in British politics for his tenacity, his ruthlessness — and his sheer neck. Last week, in a speech outlining Reform’s prospectus for government, he committed the party to lifting the two-child cap on benefits. “Not because we support a ‘benefits culture’,” he said, “but because we believe for lower-paid workers, this actually makes having children just a little bit easier for them.”
George Osborne was the one to implement the two-child cap, but he didn’t invent it. Nor did Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of austerity-era welfare reforms. In fact, the two-child benefits cap was originally a Ukip policy. The Tories adopted it, and then a cowed Labour opposition declined to oppose it, but Farage the arch-Thatcherite truly believed in it (or at least, he seemed to at the time). Benefits, he argued in his 2011 autobiography, Flying Free, infantilised the nation: “Every welfare payment, grant, regulation, intervention of government in health, parenting and other individual responsibility increases dependence and makes change harder.”
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Banger piece by Sarah Ditum on the changing politics of having babies.
Quick Links
Last year I spoke to Sam Parker for his book Good Anger, which is out this week. Sam is also the author of this rather lovely Substack post about how becoming a dad didn’t ruin his life.
“This has been a general pattern in debates with Tyler. I will criticize some very specific point he made, and he’ll challenge whether I am important enough to have standing to debate him. “Oh, have you been to 570 different countries? Have you eaten a burrito prepared by an Ethiopian camel farmer with under-recognized talent? Have you read 800 million books, then made a post about each one consisting of a randomly selected paragraph followed by the words ‘this really makes you think, for those of you paying attention’?”" Very funny drive-by on Tyler Cowen in this Scott Alexander post on USAID (Substack).
“And all of a sudden, I see the weenie. What is going on here? This is crazy. Then I said to myself, “Well, Arnold, hello. You did the same thing in ‘Conan’ and ‘Terminator,’ so don’t complain about it.” I loved Arnie and Patrick Schwarzenegger just riffing (Variety).
Imane Khelif has been banned from boxing until she can produce a sex test result confirming she’s eligible to compete as a female. Big hello to all the people who shouted at me last year after they fell for the Olympic authorities’ spin, obfuscation and falsehoods. Here’s what I wrote then.
Was Laura Mulvey’s famous essay on the male gaze . . . actually bad? (Freya India, Substack)
Bristol NIMBYs are like a special breed of NIMBYs. Incredible stuff. Here they are opposing a disused zoo site becoming a public park, because that would also involve building 200 homes (CapX).
See you next time! Behold my public events this summer, and there is one late-breaking news addition: Brighton on September 3 with Rafael Behr. (I’m certainly getting a high class of interviewer on this tour.) Book for Brighton now!
And yet there are *still* people who fervently believe that Imane Khelif is female. Blows my mind.
The boxing controversy shows pretty shameful - and as you say, dangerous - behaviour - from the sporting authorities. Time to use male pronouns for those competitors who know they’re male…and I include Semenya in that, who fathered children & who says ‘my testicles don’t make me any less of a woman.’ We can have sympathy for athletes in this position, without colluding in the persistent deceit of ‘she/her’.