Mick Hartley

On the cancellation of author Rachel Rooney – previously here, from 2021 – and the naked elitism of the Society of Authors. From Kate Clanchy on Substack. An excerpt:

But I am perhaps most struck, in the context of all the talk of inclusion and diversity, by the prejudice so openly on show. The Society of Authors does not hesitate to exploit the credulity of someone they know to be autistic, ridiculing her behind her back. It does not seem to occur to their CEO that she is treating Rooney as less important than wealthy, connected, ‘Clara’ and ‘Shirley’, any more than it occurred to Vulliamy that she was treating Rooney differently to Jessica Ahlberg, daughter of Janet and Allan Ahlberg and another member of the literary elite. But it’s blatant elitism, crude class prejudice, and cowardice beside. A scapegoat was selected who couldn’t afford a lawyer and who didn’t have powerful friends to fight her corner and none of these fine, right-thinking people could see that was unfair. That’s the trouble with declarations of virtue: with your eyes on heaven, like Burns’ Holy Willie, you can’t see what your hands are doing.

But yes, read it all.