Mick Hartley

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Going Round in Circles

Linda Grant in the Guardian:

The conviction by the left that the right is stupid is one of the defining and least attractive characteristics of contemporary politics. Assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is too dim to get your point is not itself a particularly brainy way to win others over to the essential correctness of your views. But it is true that to small-town Republicans the world is not a complicated place, because they have seen so little of it.

I asked a sophisticated and well-travelled Republican why he voted the way he did. He described growing up "dirt poor" in a small town in Northern California where joining the military was your sole ticket out; where the people in his family who depended on welfare stayed where they were and the ones who worked their fingers to the bone managed to make a better life for themselves. For him, joining the army led directly to an education. In fact, it led all the way to Princeton. But how, I asked him, baffled, could someone as intelligent as he is believe that George W Bush was anything but a cretin?

The conviction by the left that no one of any intelligence could think George W Bush was anything but a cretin is one of the defining and least attractive characteristics of contemporary politics…

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9 responses to “Going Round in Circles”

  1. Hanoi Paris Hilton Avatar
    Hanoi Paris Hilton

    I think Linda Grant is being ironic here, folks. Lighten up.

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  2. Alcuin Avatar
    Alcuin

    I am not sure Ms Grant does irony, not is the Graun particularly noted for it. I think that in the circles she moves in, there is such a group contempt for Bush that it just slips out in public sometimes as the most natural thing in the world. The Graun does, however, do hubris, smugness, sanctimony and condescension, and it does it in shedloads.

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  3. Hanoi Paris Hilton Avatar
    Hanoi Paris Hilton

    Sorry, Alcuin… You’re out of lunch here. Ms. Grant is poker-face trolling the Grauniad’s righteous congregation, with that “Bush is a cretin” ringer.
    Here are a couple of extracts from Linda Grant’s blogger profile #226 http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/01/the-normblog–2.html, put up by Norman Geras, which ran on 18 Jan 08:
    “Q. Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you’ve ever changed your mind? > A. I used to think the Bolshevik revolution was a good idea gone wrong. Now I think it was a bad idea whose poison was inherent in it.”
    “Q. If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > A. Kafka, for the jokes, Saul Bellow to go to bed with afterwards and Joni Mitchell to record the evening in song.”
    I don’t know about Joni, but Franz and Saul are for sure no slouches when it comes to irony.

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  4. Hanoi Paris Hilton Avatar
    Hanoi Paris Hilton

    I meant to add these two, as well:
    “Q. What personal fault do you most dislike? > A. People with no sense of humour frighten me.”
    “Q. In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > A. I’m a novelist, I lie for a living.”

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  5. Hanoi Paris Hilton Avatar
    Hanoi Paris Hilton

    Oh yeah, also… Prof. Geras –in whose circles Ms Grant most certainly moves–does irony quite well and quite regularly. Not so much the sanctimony, hubris, et. al., except when he posts downloads from the Graun.

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  6. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    “You’re out of lunch here”??
    Anyway, yes, I suppose it’s possible she was being ironic, but reading the whole thing in context, I really don’t buy it. She’s reporting her comment as part of a conversation she had with this intelligent Republican, trying to find out why he voted for Bush. He explains, in context – ie as though he’s been asked how come he voted for a cretin.

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  7. Hanoi Paris Hilton Avatar
    Hanoi Paris Hilton

    Sadly, Mick, you may be right and Ms. Grant is not so deliriously clever as I had been assuming (my daughter is a big fan of hers). Especially if she’s actually the poster (so the sender’s name indicates, but you know how that goes) of the following (in response to the dirt-poor, thence Princeton dude):
    “…and as I said to him, those people are fine, it’s just the fact that they’re your government that is the problem.”

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  8. DaninVan Avatar
    DaninVan

    From this side of the pond, and not unfamiliar with the societal profiles described, she’s pretty clearheaded in her analysis. I now live in a small Canadian town where we have both a large and growing urban retiree pop. mixing with the local small town, resource industry, working class (loggers, fishermen, construction workers) …I use the term “mixing” loosely.
    Not a lot of cross pollination going on.

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  9. Noga Avatar
    Noga

    I’m with Mick’s reading here. I have read Grant’s articles and comments, and came to the conclusion that irony is not her suit. When indignant, she does sarcasm but not of a high-brow, maliciously-enjoyable type; her attempted slings feel more like she was pelting someone with wet mops. When reading her, I often feel that she does what no genuinely good writer ought to do, that is, cater to the expectations of her prospective readers. This is how a tension develops within her writing, of the kind Mick illustrated.

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