Monday, November 17, 2008

The hate. It is good.

I suppose one of the secondary points that I was trying to make in my last post was that we should not be afraid of sneering at people who deserve it.

It can be a zesty, life-affirming experience.

As Charlie Brooker discovers, in the pages of Tatler magazine:

Shaken, I turned to the Little Black Book section, which turned out to be an authoritative A-Z of overprivileged arseholes (most of them still in their early 20s), plus the occasional celeb, rated and compiled by the single biggest group of wankers in the universe.

[...]

Or consider "The Hon Wenty Beaumont": "The growl, the growl - girls go weak for the growl ... Utterly divine Christie's kid who enjoys nothing more than playing Pass the Pig during weekends at the family estate in Northumberland or in Saint-Tropez."

In other words, the only thing these waddling bags of arseflesh have going for them is unrestricted access to a vast and unwarranted fortune. Strip away the coins and it reads like a list of the most boring people in Britain.

[...]

In summary, it's an entire alternate dimension of shit, a galaxy of streaming-eye fart gas, compressed into a few glossy pages. It will have you alternating between rage, jealousy, bewilderment and distress, before dumping you in a bottomless slough of despond. Buy a copy. No, don't. Stand in a shop flipping through the pages, deliberately fraying each corner as you go. Drink it in. Feel your impotent anger levels peaking. The headrush is good for you.

My point exactly.

4 comments:

Francis Sedgemore said...

"It can be a zesty, life-affirming experience."

Yes, but it can also be a draining, soul-destroying activity. Sneering at people is all well and good, in moderation, but there are times when I'd rather just shoot the bastards and have done with it. This would solve the problem and leave me with time and energy to get on with more constructive things.

Satire, on the other hand...

JCWood said...

Indeed. If you're going to sneer, sneer responsibly. And, while we're at it no sneering and driving.

'...there are times when I'd rather just shoot the bastards and have done with it.'

Me too, but this is logistically impractical.

Too many of the fuckers, and they're all spread out in those country houses and in...Saint Tropez.

And bullets of any decent calibre are getting expensive these days.

Guess we're stuck with the odd sneer and some satire.

Francis Sedgemore said...

"Me too, but this is logistically impractical."

Really? There are legions of feral childebeest who I'm sure would gladly lend a hand.

JCWood said...

Good point. It might help keep them off the streets, give them goals, etc.

I'm just not especially good at delegating tasks, unfortunately.