A Question for Royal Baby Reporters; Or, What Have I Become?

Update on 4 May 2020

I originally wrote this post as a kind of allegory of what I saw more and more of during my later days at Swansea University--people collaborating with the rapid spread of neo-liberal practices in UK universities. At that time I thought a lot about how people respond when such forces make themselves felt: some resist; some act like nothing's happening because they're either vulnerable, or cowardly, or foolish; others collaborate, some for the reasons just described, others out of ideological commitment or amoral ambition. This post is about the collaborators. And about how to avoid becoming one. And now it comes back to my mind as I watch the UK news and see Chris Witty and all the other NHS medical higher-ups standing alongside Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Patel, and that idiot foreign secretary whose name I've temporarily forgotten and can't be arsed to look up, or whatever minister happens to be misinforming everyone on any given day. I wonder--as they knowingly mangle the figures of the dead and actively collaborate with the cover up of the homicidal austerity-crippling of the NHS and government incompetence as causes of so many unnecessary deaths, and with the succcess narrative that this cynical government is concocting before our eyes--if they wonder: what have I become?       

Update on 22 December 2013

Last night on BBC 2 I watched a programme called “Moments in Time” about memorable news photos of 2013. It focused mostly on the truths photos can reveal, only occasionally hinting at how they can deceive, or how the media can use them to create their own realities, like Dick Cheney does. It was an interesting programme all the same, yet one part of it was quite disturbing, at least to me.  That was a section about how a Daily Express photographer ensconced himself for four days in July in a fourth-floor room opposite St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington in order to secure a photo that from a high-angle that would show the face of the then-expected Prince George. There was no critical comment on this, no questioning the ethics of such subterfuge to obtain the kind of picture that the baby’s parents seemed to be trying to avoid. Odious Boris-sister Rachel Johnson was the only commentator, and she just emitted unctuous guffs about how the picture would make even the “most cynical republican” go out and buy a “coronation mug”. Well, I’ve got news for you, Odious Boris-sister Rachel Johnson. No it wouldn’t. Because, as the post below argues, the people on the street waiting for the birth, and especially the one hiding in a garret, who I didn’t know about before, were “basically doing the same job as the ones who chased this baby’s grandmother into that tunnel in Paris.” It’s only monarchists who find this kind of thing acceptable.

Anyway, here's the original post of 22 July 2013.

It seems that a royal baby is about to be born. This sentence suggests that this post may be out of date very soon, indeed perhaps before it’s even written, but it won’t be because it’s not really about the baby, so please carry on reading. So, anyway, for several days, dozens of journalists and TV reporters, maybe hundreds, have been waiting outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, in Paddington, in London. Waiting. Waiting and waiting. Waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby. And why are they waiting? So that they might be able to take a photo of the woman, or the baby, or the father, or maybe the father hanging the baby out of a window in what would soon be a legendary display of Michael-Jackson-style parenting. But probably not. The most they’ll probably get is some pictures of the parents and their minders eventually leaving the hospital in some days’ time carrying some lump of sumptuous swaddling in which there is, somewhere, quite deliberately quite well hidden, a baby. The parents might show a bit of the baby, maybe a peek of part of its new-born face. But even if the reporters get that, who the hell cares? All babies look the same anyway.  Just small, pudge-faced sub-humans incapable of expressing anything facially or otherwise except dumb incomprehension at who or even what they are supposed to be. So what they’re waiting for, these journalists and reporters, is, basically, nothing. What they’re really there for is for the sake of being there, of being in roughly the same vicinity, when a young woman . . . has a baby. The utter douchebags. 

Indeed they’ve been waiting so long now that they have in fact become news. Last night I saw the reporters  . . . on the news, reported on by other reporters while sitting under umbrellas doubling as parasols in London’s unseasonable summertime sunshine, smoking cigarettes, eating crisps, especially the ones who really need to stop eating crisps, while waiting. Waiting and waiting.  Waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby. I almost feel sorry for them. Some of them, anyway. Nicholas Witchell, for example, seems like a nice man, though certainly a deeply vacuous one, and I certainly felt sorry for him after the abuse he received from Prince Charles, that unconstitutional-secret-MP-letter-writing-tax-money-taking-tax-dodging-homeopathy-believing-in-new-architecture-hating-Poundbury-creating-shit-biscuit-selling buffoon. And maybe some of these reporters are as nice and to-be-pitied as Nicholas Witchell. Maybe some of them love what they do and genuinely, believe they are actually contributing something to society. But, in aggregate, these people are basically doing the same job as the ones who chased this baby’s grandmother into that tunnel that night in Paris. They are hoping, in fact actively planning, that this new human being’s life begins in a storm of flashbulbs, just as the other one’s ended. As if we are no more the wiser about these things now than we were then. Which, evidently, we are not.*

And so I ask myself, while they’re sitting there, waiting, waiting and waiting, waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby, if they are using the time to ask themselves a question: what have I become? For some of them, answering that question won’t be as difficult as it ought to be. Some of them might be perfectly happy with what they are. Maybe they think they’re truly improving the lives of this country’s many royal watchers and enthusiasts, and that doing so is not at all related to anything one might call an always dangerous and occasionally fatal pantomime of modern monarchy. Maybe they really don’t think of themselves as the privatised, out-sourced PR machine of an insanely outdated insult to modern concepts of democracy and equality. Maybe they don’t think of themselves as justifying the giving of millions of taxpayers’ pounds to already-very-rich tax dodgers with countless enormous houses, while their colleagues act as the privatised, out-sourced hate-generating machine for The Collaboration Government, justifying the deprivation of taxpayers’ money to those who are in immediate danger of losing the one home they have. 

That, of course, is just some people’s opinion (yes, including mine, though I’m no republican hard-liner, believing indeed that there are worse and more dangerous insults to modern democracy, such as Nick Clegg and David Cameron**). But at the very least some of them might wonder, as they sit there waiting, waiting, waiting, for a young woman . . . to have a baby, what became of their original ambitions? Is this what they thought they’d be doing in July 2013 when they first conceived the idea of a career in journalism? As they sit there, do they wonder what became of the dreams they had when they started their journalism degrees? Did they apply for their first jobs hoping to combat evil in the world? Hoping to expose corruption in business or politics, or business and politics? Did they hope to reveal poverty in unknown places, to make people want to make it a thing of the past? Did they hope to report on wars in the hoping of doing at least a little bit to end all wars? Did they hope, all those years ago, to try to make the world a better place? If so, do they wonder, now, as they sit there, waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby, scattered across the pavement and the road, almost literally the litter of their former hopes and dreams: what have I become?

And why did I become what I am, they might also ask? Some no doubt are there because they want to be. These people are either ideologically committed to individualism (their own, that is, always) over all other concerns, or they’re just sociopaths. It doesn’t much matter which, even if there’s any actual difference, which there isn’t. Most people of course are not quite so venal. They will be there more or less reluctantly, perhaps wishing they were doing something more worthy, but are, perhaps they say to themselves, just following orders. I kind of understand. It’s very difficult not to be institutionalised in these ways, in the media or indeed in all kinds of institutions, with all the carrots that institutions offer and the sticks they beat you with. Militant individualists/sociopaths love carrots. They love carrots so much they’ll do anything for them. They’ll dress their actions up as giving people what they want, and they’d be at least partly right—but that of course happily for them coincides with their institutions’ profit-maximising economic models, and the more profits they make for the institution the more they as individuals will be promoted and paid by their institutions. So it’s really just about the carrots. The others, the more reluctant, generally love carrots too. I mean, who doesn’t like a carrot? But they will generally be more scared of the sticks than they are lustful of the carrots. And sticks are scary. Institutions can use sticks to just poke you and demoralise you, they can beat you with them, and they can even use them to chase you off their premises so that you end up on the street. Though not this time as a paid-up member of the institutionalised or even freelance paparazzi: this time as a tramp. 

What lesson is there, then, in the sight of these reporters on the road, these standing, sitting, squatting, crisp-eating street statues of sold-out dreams? For the incorrigibly individualistic and sociopathic, obviously none. But for those who’ve been turned that way, and for the rest, the reluctant but scared, maybe. For those starting their careers, like those students I just saw graduate, our future most-likely leaders, certainly. Yes, we all have to compromise to one degree or another. No one can be perfect in an imperfect world. But there are some general rules one can follow. First, I suppose, remember, or don’t forget, your ideals and dreams. Then, measure your life’s achievements, at any stage in that life, against those (assuming they involved making the world a better place rather than a worse one). Conversely, don’t measure yourself by the often spurious affirmation of the kind of people you would once have despised. Grow your own carrots, in other words. Obviously, these are indeed general rules, but I suppose in each particular case where you might want to apply them, you can ask: does doing this mean that I, at least metaphorically speaking, am eating, sleeping, and excreting in the street in the hope of making other human beings’ lives less private, pleasant, and safe than they ought to be? And if enough people follow these general guidelines, if enough people really want to make the world a better place, then together perhaps we can make it one.        

* This is the point Hilary Mantel was making in that article (only, obviously, much more intelligently and eloquently than me).

** Obviously I’m joking, though I’m also totally serious, and I will expand upon and attempt to justify this seemingly ludicrous statement some time soon.

Why I don’t hate the Boden Bumpkins; Or, why I really quite like Mumford & Sons

The appearance of Mumford & Sons at Glastonbury pleased a lot of people, but, if my twitter timeline is anything to go by, it also generated a lot of hate.  Well, I say hate.  It was actually mostly just piss-taking, but, nevertheless, piss-taking with some resentment included.  Here’s why I think the resentment is misguided, or at least misdirected.

The first thing that emerges from the mockery is that it doesn’t really derive from tastes in music or from regard for the Mumfords’ musical talent.  The former if not the latter comes up sometimes, but something else is happening.  The main critique seems to be that they went to public (i.e. private) school, that they’re posh, that they must therefore owe their success to privilege above talent, and that they’re therefore not authentic (whatever authenticity is).  Let me say first, I think I kind of get this animus.  Music, like sports, is supposed to be one of society’s few level playing fields, where working-class people with talent get a rare fair shot, so it’s aggravating to see those who are over-privileged in other areas eating up the scraps as well as the lion’s share of life’s offerings. That’s perhaps more true now than ever.  Twenty years ago our poshest of posh actors called themselves such relatively ordinary things as Hugh Grant, then along came someone who openly referred to himself as Rupert Everett, and now we’ve gone the full Benedict Cumberbatch.  And of course, most fundamentally (and seriously), and not at all unrelatedly, our Blatcherite classless society has given us a government of Old Etonian, Bullingdon millionaires who are clearly intent on consigning the post-war experiment in (greater) social democracy and fairness to the history books they think it belongs in.  It seems there is nothing we can do to stop the poshist take-over the world, so what we do is mock.  Indeed in these days and times I’ve even indulged myself in some Mumford mickey-taking, calling them the Boden Bumpkins on previous occasions as well as here.  But I still think it’s not right.    

Let’s leave aside the economic inaccessibility and social exclusiveness of such sports as boating, golf, motor racing, tennis, etc., and let’s leave aside this and the previous governments’ selling off of sports fields and thereby profiteering from the destruction of ordinary people’s dreams, not to mention the nation’s health and all the other general benefits that come from universal accessibility to sport and exercise facilities, though the myth of the music industry as a field of fair play will come under attack shortly.  Surely the real problem here is not that the Mumford boys went to public schools but that anyone does.  Believe that private schools should be allowed to exist if you will, but let’s be honest about them.  The entire point of public schools is to give the kids whose parents can afford them an unfair advantage over those whose parents can’t.  Wealthy people do not fork out x-thousands of pounds a year for something they could have for free without expecting something back in return.  Therefore no serious discussion of equal opportunity can begin without the proposition to abolish class segregation in education.  So, ridiculing Mumford & Sons for being public schoolboys may be cathartic, but it doesn’t help us deal with poshism any more than mocking Hitler’s missing man-egg helped defeat Nazism.  In any case, what would we prefer Mumford and his Sons to do?  Go into the wildcat wing of the banking industry and aid and abet the economic ruination of the nation on its next tiresomely predictable occasion?  In fact, rather than that, they’ve chosen to entertain people and enrich people’s lives with their music.  Good for them, I say.  And let’s hope the next Fred Goodwin wants to spend a bit more time fiddling with his banjo and a bit less time spunking the nation's money away.

You may or not like the Mumfords’ music.  Personally, I do.  I love bluegrass, folk, and rock & roll, and I think the Mumfordian fusion makes a fantastic sound.  I find their song lyrics a bit obscure, being more of a “Because you’re mine, I walk the line” kind of guy.  But that’s purely personal taste and, in any case, that line’s already taken and people need to try something new.  But the resentment isn’t so much borne of taste as of a sense that poshos can’t be “authentic”.  I leave it to people more expert than me to question the very notion of authenticity, but I admit again that Mumford & Sons are up against it on this count.  Public schoolboys doing folk music?  Not as obviously or as pathetically and dispiritingly fabricated as Gordon Brown pretending to listen to the Polar Baboons, but I see the point.  And yet, John Lennon wasn’t the working-class hero he wanted to be, yet he generally gets more pleb-cred than the poorer Paul McCartney.  Also, those regarded as unimpeachably authentic both by background and artistic integrity are rarely consistently so.  In the 1970s and ’80s, though it pains me to admit it, Johnny Cash made more cheese than France.  Anyway, perhaps the Mumfords’ undisguised poshness is a sort of unlikely gift; their literariness mixed with mandolins gives us something new and interesting, like an unexpectedly entertaining cameo by Laurence Olivier in an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard.  And, in any case, perhaps the Mumfords actually do have a kind of “authenticity”.  They were schoolmates who formed a band, whatever school their parents sent them to, and by all accounts they worked hard, touring endlessly to gain a diverse and highly appreciative fan-base.  They write their own songs and they play their own instruments, which brings up what they’re importantly not.  They’re not just another boyband/girlband rolling off the production line of Cowell Enterprises.  And they’re not Justin Beiber, that monstrous pop goblin and corporate-sponsored totem of the industrialised, for-profit sexualisation of the under-age-female marketing opportunity.  So, okay, Mumford & Sons may not be genuine good ol’ boys, but they’re  really not the genuinely bad guys either.