PROSPECT: Politics Essays Argument

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Niall Martin writes:
> Such a deliberately obtuse remark from a writer whose usually
> reasonably astute suggests some form of personal animus or hidden
> agenda. . . .

Perhaps, but then if so who cares.

> Or, alternatively, Martin has just decided it's time to assume his
> old man's mantle of reactionary curmudgeon?

More likely.  Although I suspect it's not so much curmudgeonliness as
the usual childish donning of iconoclasm mode.  Chidlish not because
iconoclasm is problematic per se, but because the choice of icon is
dictated by the Sunday newspaper predelictions on which pedestal his
name rests, Ozymandias-like, rather than any edifice erected by his
(occasionally good) writing. These sort of smash and grab attacks are
an attempt to jump in front of trends before he is railroaded into
oblivion by them. File with Barnes, Self and the rest of the nation's
journalist poetasters under pretentious and irrelevant clap-trap.


Andrew Dinn
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How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five