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Freeking hilarious.


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I feel sorry for the poor, rich, dopey, innocent, over-privileged kid, and I also feel sorry for the nasty legions of poor, disposessed, envious, Guardian-reading, middle-class Brits who piled on cheaply to tear at the corpse, when the nepotism became obvious. A truly ugly bit of work all-round, I'd say to all involved.

All in all, some of our collective, least admirable, ****tiest qualities writ-blog!

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Dispossessed and middle class? Which one?

I think the main thing going on is the lads obvious lack of talent being overcome by nepotism, together with him lying about writing "skins" and the Guardian being so desperate for a "yoof" perspective they let in on their website so all undermining their own credibility. There's also the element of a pile-on but what the hell.

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Well I found the blog amazingly goofy, and the reader response brilliant. See, a dirty secret of journalism is that media people pretty much assume their viewers/readers are mostly uninformed morons who wouldn't know the difference between a responsible piece of hard-assed reporting, and a festering pig sty on really hot Summer day. The assumed reality of the business is that media consumers seem overwhelmingly to prefer fluff stories catering to the lowest common denominator, over information requiring insight and critical thinking.

And far, far, too often, those assumptions basically are correct.

Therefore, by that logic, the Guardian decision makes perfect sense. Guardian readers are assumed to be superficial, self-absorbed, and uninterested in anything resembling authentic journalism. So why not let the 19-year-old son of a travel editor put a insipid blog on the newspaper web site? It's not like the readers would care, even if they were mentally equipped to recognize nepotism and unethical journalism - and as far as the Guardian is concerned pretty much all of their readers couldn't if they tried.

So good for the Guardian readers for calling foul, and good for them for using insulting language. The Guardian management richly deserves it. You can lay several senior editors' monthly paychecks benefits included against however much this kid winds up spending on visiting historical museums, that the next time a flunkie editor has an idea as stupid as allowing his son to blog his party trip to India and Thailand on the newspaper web site, there will be plenty of people higher up on management feeding chain ready to keep that kind of trash from seeing electronic print.

Vicious reader reaction is about the only way to get a newspaper editor's attention.

I wouldn't say the readers are envious, particularly. Sure they would prefer to have had a youth as pampered and entitled as that kid's, but that's not what the readers are all up in arms about. They're mad because one of the country's top newspapers, which advertises itself as a beacon of journalism and free speech, insulted reader intelligence. The readers, who are after all customers paying for a product, had every right to call the newspaper on what it was doing. Since newspaper management clearly assumed the readers were idiots, the readers had not just a right but a moral obligation to pay back newspaper management in its own coin.

Sure the blogger kid came in for some nasty flak, but in the first place it was his Dad or some one like it that exposed this sensitive boy to unfiltered readers howling for his blood, and in the second place an a good deal more important the blog is poorly-written, to my mind only approximately the English language. If you write in a newspaper for the public, you need to be ready to be told when you are screwing up.

Me, I just wish all newspaper readers were like the ones that called the Guardian on its dumb idea. But the length of the response list renews my faith, at least a little, in the level of intelligence of the general reading public. If only all newspaper readers were like the ones that took a shot at the blogger kid...

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The best bit clearly comes in the end:

"every one I've spoken to is making no secret of the fact that Thailand should be pretty damn decadent."

Max, you were only in Thailand five years ago when your father wrote an article about your trip for this very newspaper.

Cast your mind back to that holiday.

That's what Thailand will be like.

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Oh boy it rumbles on and this is just so SO apposite - and published in the Guardian

To quote Peter Wilby in the Guardian....

"...journalism, now a more powerful and coveted career than it used to be, brings into play the triple advantages of the upper-middle classes. First, you need a degree, preferably from Oxbridge, and the fee-charging schools are factories dedicated to getting the necessary A-levels. Second, you increasingly need family money, to finance you through either a postgraduate diploma or an unpaid internship. Third, you need connections - and preferably a metropolitan base - to help you get a foothold. Only after that does your talent as a journalist come into it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/17/comment.mainsection2

AND

the travel editor replies

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/travelog/2008/02/editors_response_to_yesterdays.html

and gets it even more in the neck : )

AND

http://waynetype.blogspot.com/

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I just thought it was the epitome of the malaise of the vicious British middle classes.

1. Talentless nepotism.

2. Resentful reaction.

3. Stoning/pile-on

4. Stoning/pile-on

5. Stoning/pile-on

6. Better educated chaps attempt to put a gloss on it all

No ****ing wonder you're in terminal decline.

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I just thought it was the epitome of the malaise of the vicious British middle classes.

1. Talentless nepotism.

2. Resentful reaction.

3. Stoning/pile-on

4. Stoning/pile-on

5. Stoning/pile-on

6. Better educated chaps attempt to put a gloss on it all

No ****ing wonder you're in terminal decline.

Coo! I suppose becoming the worlds most obese nation you feel the need to throw your weight about a bit by insulting the English middle classes and the "decline" of the UK. : )

Given the backdrop of the Guardians attack on nepotism then current, and its previous stance on fairness, it is hardly surprising that there was a reaction. Hypocrisy never sits well we those who can spell it. : )

Still I suppose in Australia the Press is less tainted to pandering to interests and nepotism.:P

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Now you have to bear in mind Manchester is cold. Penguins frollick in the canals during the summer and you cant go five feet in the city centre without an eskimo trying to sell you the big issue so the heat was a shock I must admit. There was also an alarming lack of rain.

Awesome!

All the best

Andreas

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Me, I just like a pile-on, but I am grateful for the intellectually acceptable reasoning you provided. :D

How is Kyiv these days?

All the best

Andreas

Andreas,

You should see all the clothes the Kyiv women aren't wearing.

Nothing like an AC-poor civilization, and a high pressure front from the Middle East, to make Summer worth living.

Hope you are swilling champagne or whatever it is you do in Euroland these days.

Diesel,

That ManU fan in Mumbai thing was a scream. Too bad the author didn't get the Guardian blog job, that was a talented bit of writing, the Guardian could use him.

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I just thought it was the epitome of the malaise of the vicious British middle classes.

1. Talentless nepotism.

2. Resentful reaction.

3. Stoning/pile-on

4. Stoning/pile-on

5. Stoning/pile-on

6. Better educated chaps attempt to put a gloss on it all

No ****ing wonder you're in terminal decline.

I remember reading that when it came out. I regularly read the Grauniad to keep myself abreast of the latest trendy Islington fads and so that I know what barking-mad BS Labour is going to do next.

What you're seeing there, REVS, my lad, is the reaction of people who don't like to be patronised and who object to a newspaper which consistently and vociferously claims the moral high ground on everything then going and giving some dopey journalist's son money to loaf around in Thailand.

All the major newspapers are having to come to terms with a new horror - the opinion of their readers. They've never had to deal with it before and some of them are struggling. The recent resignation of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis over the government's backing for a 42-day detention without trial delivered the best example yet of the disconnect between the mainstream media and public opinion. All the journalists were disparaging Davis, and in the comments section 80% or more of the public backed his stance. Pretty quickly the journalists were forced to look at how they'd got the mood of the country so very wrong.

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Having had the leader writers and then BBC friends complain about the loutish readers the thread run for another thousand replies: Highlights

This is taken from...

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/14/EditorialCode2007.pdf

"The most important currency of the Guardian is trust. This is as true today as when CP Scott marked the centenary of the founding of the newspaper with his famous essay on journalism in 1921.The purpose of this code is, above all, to protect and foster the bond of trust between the Guardian (in print and online) and its readers, and therefore to protect the integrity of the paper and of the editorial content it carries."

One of the most gifted readers received many plaudits including an offer of marriage and his reply -

FinneyontheWing Feb 20 08, 03:09pm

Dear SKMGweme,

Never have I been so flattered. Unfortunately asking for the address of my parents is rather pointless.

Before we go any further I feel it would be rude no to give you a small background of how I came to be here, meeting you in this most romantic of e-places.

Born 8 years old to a hardcore mother and fictional father, I quickly became interested in the stock market and breastfeeding. I soon had to give up trading however, as it was making my mother's nipples sore. I graduated from breast milk to smack, before quickly redressing the issue and settling on Guinness.

This sort of became a trademark for me, before I stopped being a tw@t and realised that nobody cares what I drink as long as I do it far enough away from them.

I wrote a book at the age of 14 called 'Twitching and Crying: My Problem With the Feeling I Get After I've Had A Wank'. It met with mixed reviews.

I went to school and decided I did not like it very much, but luckily my natural intelligence, good looks and a lot of rimming saw me through to university, where I was kind of a big deal.

I campaigned for both women and black people to be allowed in the university bar, but never at the same time. This was probably my finest hour. During that hour I met many friends, one called Dagley who I have since had sexual intercourse with 11 times.

After University I was briefly imprisoned for manslaughter, but it was a case of mistaken identity. I was released after two months, but was re-imprisoned for sexually assaulting a police dog. That WAS me.

I weigh twelve stone and my ***** gets smaller when I exercise. Tragically, I secrete Rohypnol and I do not use the internet.

Adieu

FinneyontheWing

P.S. If you are *really* proposing can I suggest you do it quickly. I'm sort of waiting for Max to come back. I'm sure that you're lovely (and female - my type), but Max is just so well travelled, so talented and apparently his Dad's got great contacts in the media world so...

and finally

I propose that Guardian staff are sent on a course, ASAP, containing the following modules: 1) How the Internet Works - for Dummies

2) Nepotism and You

3) Insulting your Readers - A Guide

4) Laying Down Smoke - Lessons from the Battleship Potemkin

5) 'I'm sorry.' Why are those two little words so difficult to say?

6) Whither the Guardian - Social Justice or Islington Flimflam?

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Spiffing good post, Soddy!

De rien, dear boy.

I recommend the Guardian's comment pages most heartily. The reaction of the posters to some of the inane articles is far superior to the articles themselves. Take today. Today, Tom and Jemima from a group called The Fabian Society (left-wing 'think tank' for posh people) decry the term 'chav', which is used to describe troglodytic morons without jobs who smash stuff up and make everyone's life a misery. According to Tom and Jemima the word 'chav' should be banned because it is middle-class snobbery abusing the working classes.

The literary beasting they receive is a joy to behold and I commend it to you all:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/15/equality.language

I also recommend the responses to any Polly Toynbee article. You don't need to read the article because once you've read one you've read them all.

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maxdad

Comment No. 943306

February 15 12:07

As Andy Pietrasik's blog hasn't mentioned the fact Max won't be writing any more blogs, I thought I'd bring all those heroic internet warriors the good news. Max's trip (which he paid for himself I'm afraid - sorry) has got off to the worst possible start and he's feeling pretty grim so that's double good news for the brave warriors. You may like or dislike the blog but the cruelty is shocking if quintessentially British. Obviously everyone in his family is very hurt for Max so that's a bonus. I won't be reading any more smug clever dick comments but feel free to kick me around the field a bit now - just please leave Max alone. He hasn't actually done anything wrong and you have your wish - he won't be writing any further blogs.

As if anyone cared other than the paper was publishing such a ****e piece of blog. Of course when you recall how the paper prides itself on being honest and trustworthy and is always having a pop at anyone who falls from these high standards .........

Launch a campaign against nepotism and corruption then do it yourself - oh brilliant.

Incidentally to find out this guy has been on freebie holidays at least half a dozen times - including Thailand - does rather affect your view about this novice traveller who is ****ting himself with the fear of it all.

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The completely ****ing depraved profanity filter isn't worth as a hat-full of reactionary, cocksucking, corporate-appeasing arseholes, isn't it?

Wonder how all this will turn out? Probably encourage more pr***nity. **** **** **** **** **** **** ****, bottom, bottom George Bush and damn!

Where were we? Oh yes. The pile on against the talentless, nepotistic kid at the Gardjhan bloggeroma thingy. Betcha he's still a millionaire by 25.

And here's something totally disturbing for censors to think about: f***; d***; s***; c***; c***; p**; b******; a**************************

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