The Bluestocking, vol 106: The laughing penguin
Happy Friday!
A short newsletter this week, as I'm covering half-term for a couple of colleagues. And what's this first piece I'm recommending? Oh, how embarrassing, it's by me! I wrote the New Statesman cover story this week on the toxic legacy of Theresa May, the PM who legitimised No Deal Brexit. In it, I came back to an issue that I keep prodding at - that we have real trouble identifying and naming bad things done by polite, measured-sounding people.
Case in point: I just read an interview by Politico this morning with Matthew Elliot, the chair of Vote Leave, now running Sajid Javid's leadership campaign. It's a joint interview with his wife Sarah, chairwoman of Republicans Overseas U.K. "Sarah describes herself as a 'Trump convert'," the interview records. "She has been “pleasantly surprised” by his record since he was elected, and says if there were an election tomorrow she would support him." It continues: " I wonder if Matthew was pleased by Trump’s victory. He pauses. Sarah cuts in — 'I can answer this one for you. He loved it!' They’re both laughing. 'There’s something about seeing things being shaken up,' Matthew shrugs. 'And yeah, the Clintons aren’t our favorites.'"
Are you ready for the plot twist? "I wonder how a prime minister Javid would enjoy dealing with Donald Trump, given his past comments about Muslims," asks the interviewer. "'That’s a good question,' Matthew says. “I think that says a lot more about Trump than it does about Saj. And I’m glad we’re in a country in the U.K. where it doesn’t feel like [Javid’s religion] is a big issue at the moment.”
Yes, thank god we don't have the endless anti-Muslim dogwhistling of <checks notes> . . . . your bae Donald Trump.
The toxic legacy of Theresa May
How will Theresa May be remembered? She laughed like a penguin, danced like a robot and dressed like Cruella de Vil after a midlife divorce. She had the political instincts of a problem gambler, with every loss prompting a more desperate roll of the dice. She had no vision. She appointed bullies as her closest advisers. She lost her voice, metaphorically then literally. And she was felled by a slogan she coined herself: no deal is better than a bad deal.
From the start of her premiership, almost everyone got Theresa May wrong – not least Theresa May. Has there ever been a prime minister whose behaviour was so at odds with their public image? May sold herself as the “vicar’s daughter”, a dutiful workhorse who shouldered a burden no one else wanted. But that was never true. She was not dragged from her ploughshare to become Tory leader. She wanted it, even if hiring Chris Grayling to be her campaign manager suggests a subconscious desire to self-sabotage.
Farewell, Theresa.
British sportswriting's access crisis
After a game in April, English national team player Danny Rose told reporters the racist taunts he suffered from fans meant he couldn’t “wait to see the back of” soccer. Incredibly, reporters embargoed that story till 10:30 p.m. the following day.
You hear echoes of old-line British trade unionism in embargoes, said former Independent sports editor Ed Malyon. Sometimes, you just hear the sound of hackery. “Around October or November time in the football season,” said Liew, “somebody, generally at one of the tabloids, will get a particularly productive interview or a particularly productive set of interviews from the mixed zone and will suggest … holding it for Boxing Day.”
Boxing Day is the day after Christmas. “It’s bonkers, right?” Liew said.
I had no idea this was happening in sports journalism. Mental.
Group Chats Are Making The Internet Fun Again
Like any social network, the group chat has its own social mores and prerogatives. Every group chat contains recognizable archetypes — the out-of-it person who asks “wait, what?” about every conversation; the (psychologically self-actualized and professionally successful) member who keeps the group chat on mute, meaning they don’t get alerted every time someone sees a Cobb salad — and undergoes regular cycles of high and low activity, depending on the schedules and time zones of participants. Every group chat has smaller orbiting sub-chats featuring new constellations of the original group’s members, created to plan surprise parties, or, worse, to complain about the guy who keeps asking “what, what?”
Who would have thought that it's more fun to talk to your friends in private than on an open network where random strangers interrupt to tell you off for talking about Game of Thrones while Syria is a mess.
Quick Links:
I've been meaning to include this New Yorker profile of Edward St Aubyn, author of the Patrick Melrose novels, for a while. It's a perfect example of how to drip a little acid into a piece, while letting the reader draw their own conclusions.
"Constant pressure in my profession has made me go to great lengths to minimize how much labor I perform outside of work. I once made my boyfriend pay me for the hours I spent booking flights and hotels for our vacation." What a heroine. This piece also has a great recommendation to deal with the fact that work/life balance is impossible: think of your life in seasons. This is the season where the front hedge will just have to look like the Amazon rainforest, because you're doing something else.
See you next time. . .