Reflections on the Revolting of England…

Half the Daily Mail’s website is devoted to lamenting the degradation of our culture. The other half is devoted to softcore pornography. That is not, I fear, a great exaggeration. It’s almost comical how blatant their filth-purveying is. Yesterday, for example, they printed photos of a woman’s naked breasts and bottom, both of which were being fondled by a half-naked man. Why? Well, the bloke is on X-Factor. Hey, kids! You know you fear your parents catching you with nudie pics? Just engineer a tenuous means of presenting them as news and you’ll be fine!

What is creepier is their practice of sexualising barely pubescent teenagers. Tabloid Watch writes of a leering report – replete, of course, with photographs – on the “womanly curves” of a 14-year-old girl. “Flesh was on show,” it panted, as she wore a costume that “scooped to just above her derriere”. The report was edited but due to the outrage of readers and not professional ethics. As I’ve written, they have previously featured a 15-year-old in “mean-looking bondage heels”, who, they wrote, stared into the camera “lavisciously” before “slip[ping] into a pair of leather hot pants”. On a different occasion they reported on a girl who had modelled in a bikini at the age of twelve and inspired “a deluge of twisted emails from ‘strange men’”. They preceded to print the photos. It is clear that the editors have an amoral desire to appeal to any demographic they can reach. This apparently includes the dirty raincoat brigade.

Another socially conservative publication is the Daily Express. Their owner, Richard Desmond, likes to pose as an upright sort of gentleman. When the Irish Daily Star published photos of Kate Middleton topless he threatened to withdraw his financial support from it. Desmond is, however, also the owner of the Star, which is crammed with upskirt photographs and nipple slips. Infamously, his Northern & Shell company is also the parent to Red Hot TV and Television X. This week, the latter is broadcasting Fetishly Insane, Filthy Favourites and Fantasies of Rubber.

I think of this because I’ve been reading Alan White’s “open letter to Melanie Phillips”. He notes her observation that the U.K. “accepts — even expects — that the very young will be sexually active” and points out that she omits an important fact.

You fail to mention a relatively modern institution which appears to have done its utmost to promote the prematurely-sexualised culture which you describe. It is the website of the newspaper for which you write.

Even the most incisive of journalists rarely bite the hand that feeds them. Thus, conservative writers who work for these papers avoid reference to their sordid output and associations; preferring to rail against the bogeyman of liberalism.

Well, criticising liberals, on this and other issues, can be richly justified. It must be observed, however, that those responsible for many cases of moral and aesthetic corruption are not “liberals” or, indeed, people of any ideological inclination but “greedy, amoral bastards”. To fail to acknowledge this is not merely to undermine one’s own integrity but to render one’s oppositional efforts futile. I’m not going to lump myself in with staunch conservatives but on some issues we are of the same mind: the sexualisation of extraordinary portions of society, including children, is unpleasant and destructive. It annoys rather than amuses me that they are so hamstrung on the issue. How effective are moralists going to be if they are under the control of a bunch of pornographers? It’s like Greenpeace accepting donations from Shell. Or Neighbourhood Watch accepting it from Cosa Nostra.

 

The Delicate Art of Irritating Dogmatists…

Becoming emotional in response to Brendan O’Neill’s commentary is like punishing a irksome sado-masochist by giving them six of the best. Still, one can’t deny that the unpleasantness of his prose is something to behold. If you were a victim of Jimmy Savile, he claims, you should “keep it to yourself”. This, he says, is better than “pour[ing] every memory…into a hack’s expectant dictaphone”. Has it occurred to him that the victims could also tell the police, a psychologist or just a loved one? Probably. But it would have put a crimp in his argument.

The Savile scandal, he moans, will “further dent social solidarity” by “promoti[ng] the idea that paedophiles lurk everywhere”. Shouldn’t victims be welcomed in coming forward as it gives us accurate data from which to draw conclusions? O’Neill, apparently, has no such concerns for the truth. He goes on to criticise the notion that “our entire existences, our whole adult lives, can be shaped by the actions of one weirdo”. This is, he says, a “deeply and disturbingly fatalistic view of human life”. It is disturbing. But is it true? O’Neill doesn’t care. He doesn’t like it and this, it seems, is enough for him to say that it’s mistaken.

Let’s be clear about what O’Neill is doing in his article. He’s presuming to advise victims of abuse on whether to reveal their secrets or repress them. He’s lecturing these people as to which course of action might be better for their health. In doing this, he’s consulted no research. He has interviewed no experts. He has interviewed no victims. He has made no arguments, in fact, that can’ be seen through by someone with access to a list of informal fallacies. Does he care if his arguments are substantive or does he just sit back and laugh like a /b/tard who posts rape fantasies on a feminist blog and giggles ‘til the tears run down his spot-speckled cheeks?

What about the people who published the article? I don’t care if they agreed with O’Neill or not but did it strike them that an essay with the gall to tell rape victims how to react to their suffering should at least conform to high standards of intellectual rigour? Did they think that somebody might take the advice, and did they wonder if it would be healthy for them? Perhaps they thought this unlikely – and, yes, it is unlikely – but if that’s the case why did they publish it? I have a good idea. It’s so they could gather round their stats page and watch the hit counter rise, drooling like toddlers watching cakes rise in the oven.

What, however, if he is attention seeking, is the point of giving him attention? It’s because he’ll get attention whatever we do. Soon, in fact, there will be more Brendan O’Neills; more smug, sneering sophists who write essays tailored to upset the values of their readers. It earns their employers links and comments from people who, if they hadn’t been driven to anger, would have ignored them. As the papers strive to make their online work profitable it’s these links they will rely on and they’ll publish anything to get them.

The problem is that some people should be offended. Their values obstruct the search for the truth and the actions that it sometimes demands we take. The lesson, however, is not that there is something wrong with having values but that there is something wrong with values that obstruct truthseeking. If your partner starts to oversleep and miss appointments you should wake them up in time to meet them, not assume that sleep itself is wrongful and start playing the saxophone at midnight. If someone has a range of ideas that are important to them and some are dangerously mistaken you should confront those rather than just pissing them off per se. One should not make arguments in order to offend but tell the truth in spite of people finding it offensive.

One can empathise with people who are mistaken or even unpleasant when it’s the result of genuine convictions. What I find repugnant in commentators is their insincerity. I can’t promise that I’ll be correct, though I will try to be. I can’t promise that I’ll be enjoyable to read. All I can promise – and my fingers are too busy typing to be crossed behind my back – is that I won’t bullshit. And if I should break this pledge may I be sent to Hades, to have back issues of Living Marxism read to me. Forever.

 

The Cats Who Get Their Tongues…

The USADA “Reasoned Decision” is the most damning report I’ve ever read. And I’ve read my PE reports. Its glimpses into the corrupt world of the US Postal team are fascinating. We observe its members having blood transfusions in adjoining rooms and joking about whose body was absorbing blood the fastest. We’re told that Armstrong had to leave the home where his extracted blood was being stored to be treated so Floyd Landis moved in to “babysit the blood”.

We’re informed of multiple occasions where the plot could have been rumbled. At one point Armstrong is said to have discovered that he had to take part in a weigh-in that was open to the public. A bruise caused a syringe apparently marked his arm. Fortunately for the team their masseuse had a box of make-up and after being smeared with cosmetics Armstrong faced his trusting fans. There’s a movie in this, people. Seven movies, even.

Anyway, David Walsh was the journalist who questioned Armstrong when few others would. He’s not bitter but he is, perhaps, a little irritated. His insights into the uncritical mindset of those journalists who failed to pursue investigations are intriguing. He says his colleagues became “fans with typewriters”, so enamoured of the inspiring story of the comeback kid that they stopped being objective and became enthusiasts. Others were frightened of the legal heavies who protected Armstrong, and, indeed, so cynical that they avoiding risking access to the most bankable figure in the sport. Some journalists, Walsh claims, refused to let him travel with them lest the Texan tough raise his hackles and stop granting them face time.

The case of Jimmy Savile is comparable. Why did no one level substantive charges while he was alive? Journalists are said to have been daunted by the formidable character of the man. Others claim that libel laws are too restrictive to have allowed them to charge him with crimes, and, as The Mirror’s Brian Reade states, “accepted there was no will on high”; that he was “too Establishment”. This is a scandal that calls for sustained investigation.

Here’s the thing, though: if journalists can be seduced and intimidated by a cyclist and a DJ to such an extent that they’ll ignore wrongdoing that was never hidden with great sophistication how can we trust that they won’t do the same for plutocrats and powermongers with far more considerable status and resources? Well, we can’t. A Kissinger or a Murdoch would reduce Armstrong and Savile to snivelling servitude, never mind a hack. That such comparative shrimps can reduce them to awed silence might, perhaps, help one to grasp why some of us are less than happy when journalists look elsewhere when, say, the Bilderberg convene.

 

The Tedium of Transgression…

The Guardian have interviewed a woman named Cat Marnell. She’s famous for taking a lot of drugs and writing about her experiences while high. Both she and the interviewer seem to think there’s something radical about this…

…the reason Marnell resonates, and could do so for years, is that she’s more than a poor little rich girl with a hard drug habit; she is clever and, crucially, she refuses to conform to the sanctioned narratives of either desperate victim or contrite, recovering addict.

“The reality is so many people are using drugs,” she says. “I know hardly anybody who isn’t. But people aren’t used to people writing about drugs.”

What “sanctioned narratives”? Does the Guardian’s interviewer think Hunter S. Thompson was some marginal scribe? The idea that it’s counterintuitive for Marnell to be smart is just ridiculous. I’m not going to research it but I’d bet a lot of money on the claims that being a rich young woman and a cocaine user are associated with above average intelligence; never mind wangling your own column and broadsheet interviews.

Unlike Thompson Marnell has nothing much to say. (And don’t think I’m being some kind of 60s snob in saying that. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is mostly a bore; it’s in …the Campaign Trail where Thompson came into his own.) She describes hard drug use and grim sex in a frenetic style that is, I’ll grant, an accurate reflection of the ramblings of a user. That’s just not a good thing. This is punctuated by moments of introspection that might be significant to the author but objectively aren’t.

…you know what—it’s not bad to be different. To be so weird and to love getting speedy and to be chaotic and to love taking notes and copying poems and sleep with pictures of Sid Vicious above your bed. I collected drug baggies and I couldn’t help it; I still love them and all the patterns. I bought them on Ebay…it was and is OK: it’s just a different life. It’s just different.

“It’s not bad to be different.” Future humans will look back on our generation’s use of this vapid claim to imbue schlock and sleaze with value and scratch their heads.

If this woman sounds a bit familiar it’s ‘cos she is. In the past few years, as commentators have been noticing, a lot of the pop culture hailed as revolutionary is, in fact, veiled imitation. Marnell barely tries to hide the fact…

The First Movie Star I Ever Had A Crush On

Marilyn, duh, and Edie who doesn’t count at all really

Uh huh.

Last Book I Read

“The Warhol Diaries”. I read all of Andy’s books over and over.

Uh huh.

I have no desire to rag on this individual. It’s not her fault that people have decided to listen to her. The reasons for her success are not hard to divine: morbid curiosity, vicarious thrillseeking and, of course, the awe that guys and gals are liable to feel towards women with perfect cheekbones. It’s extraordinary how the mainstream commentators tippy-toe around this fact – that, as with her idol Sedgwick, had her nose been crooked and her waist broader no one would have cared.

What depressing, indeed, is the media’s awe for her. There is, as the New York Times’ interviewer honestly stated, a touch of jealousy to their reportage: of the fact that her life has been so eventful but also, I think, because people are fascinated by her and hacks raised on gonzo journalism and confessional literature wish they were objects of intrigue.

What’s also dispiriting is the fact highlighted by the Guardian’s reference to imagined “sanctioned narratives”. There’s a presumption, in liberal circles, that they’re dissidents kicking against the hegemony of social conservatism. Yet that’s bollocks. The world’s best-selling novel is a hymn to sado-masochism. Its top films can be awash with violence and sex. Its pop stars are people who take photos with lap dancers; gyrate atop Christ figures and state that they’ll vote for Obama because of Michelle’s “fat ass”. The taboos, in this limited sense, haven’t just broken but been shattered.

Well-off people have obtained a license for libertinism yet remain of the opinion that they’re radicals. The unwholesome consequence is a narcissistic delight in transgression not due to its actual worth but because of its defiance of social codes that aren’t powerful enough to even struggle to contain it. A literate user with a fixation on people who died in their twenties is thus fascinating as someone, somewhere might be alarmed. Marnell can live as she sees fit, though I hope she comes to realise that everyone who’s followed paths of self-destruction have found sod all at the end. Her observers, on the other hand, should bloody well grow up.

 

Broadsheet Bitching…

Given all of the slaughter and starvation in the world it was, perhaps, strange that what angered me most yesterday was a paragraph appended to a Telegraph column but, well, it’s true. It arrived from the pen of Damian Thompson, Editor of Telegraph Blogs, and is published here in full…

As I wrote last week, I’ve become obsessed with King Lear. So I’ve been reading articles about the play and made a hilarious discovery: the most clod-footed columnist in Fleet Street. He’s called Amol Rajan and he writes (of course) for the Independent. He’s just seen Jonathan Pryce at the Almeida. He begins: “This column is not usually a province of literary criticism; but on the grounds that every social problem is in some sense negotiated by the play, I hope you’ll forgive me for the following reflections…” I’ll spare you the “reflections”; let’s just say that you’d need some pretty hefty grade inflation to secure Rajan a pass at GCSE English. But if there were a Nobel prize for preening, he’d be a shoo-in. Comedy gold.

Here’s Rajan’s piece. No, he isn’t going to replace Michael Billington. If one must employ a phrase like “I was struck” it’s best to make sure it’s a single time. One might also question why opinion journalists get paid for musing about subjects they have no specialised knowledge of and I wouldn’t object. There’s nothing especially disagreeable about Rajan’s musings, though. It seems to be an expression of sincere enthusiasm for a work that’s influenced him. Whether or not such pieces are exemplars of style and insight I’ll take them above the moans and howls elsewhere among the papers.

Foulmouthed abuse used to be popular amongst the blogs. I’m not proud to say that I indulged in this myself but, shit, at least swearbloggers knew that they were lowly creatures and engaged in a less than exalted pastime. What infests contemporary journalism, and is especially rampant in the commune of commentary that Damian Thompson maintains, is a tiresome cattiness; a delight in tearing people down, not on the basis of real demerits, but merely to elevate the carper and their friends; to assert their intellectual superiority not by the means of argument but the weight of their scorn.

The world, to some commentators, often seems to be not a place in which billions thrive or suffer depending upon the choices leaders make but some kind of vast, delightful playground for rhetoricians. (Twitter is crammed with little leftists and runtish righties bickering as if they’re Gore and Buckley on ABC.) Thus, for Thompson, the hugely significant belief that climate science is mistaken isn’t cause to detail and debate the view and explore its implications but merely a chance to giggle at George Monbiot. The trivialisation of matters of consequence is actually problematic but it’s the inherent meanness that turns my stomach. If your entertainment and your ego are dependent on sneering at other people, in a world with such intrigue to be explored; such beauty to enjoy and such evil to stand against, well, that’s your business but you should open a salon instead of posing as a sage.

Oh, and if we’re talking about standards of English what does “clod-footed” mean?

 

The Shoelace Taste…

Nazis hate Jews and Muslims. Fanatical Muslims hate Jews and Muslim soldiers. Frankly, anyone who was confident about the affiliation of the Toulouse gunman was revealing their own prejudices. Those who just assumed it was the latter, despite the ambiguity of the attack and the spate of fascist massacres in recent times, displayed an unreasonable fixation on Muslims. But what of the people who assumed it was the former? All through yesterday I was banging my head on the screen as I read commentator after commentator all but blame the slaughter on Nicholas Sarkozy. There was Fiachra Gibbons in the Guardian…

Over the past few years of recession and regression, it has become a trite truism of European politics that you can’t go wrong going to the right…

Until today, they might have tried to argue that there was no harm in it, that it’s healthy even, a rebalancing of the scales after two decades of biting our tongues and creeping political correctness.

There was Baroness Hussein-Ece on Twitter…

And this from Lindsey German…

Such leftists and liberal commentators, as when they gratuitously exploited the attacks of the depraved Brievik, will make use of anything that might discredit nationalist sentiments and doubts towards the growth of cultural pluralism. The unpalatable haste with which so many launched their presumptuous blame game points towards a certain desperation. I think that attack has become the impulsive form of defence, yet as formidable as it can often seem if it’s misjudged it’s apt to leave one appearing vulnerable. And if weakness if exposed attacks have rather less force. Perhaps when people like Mr Gibbons have removed their feet from their mouths – and we’ve all had them there – a certain humility can temper the aggression.

 

Matters Of Inquest…

So, we have a date – another date – for the inquest into Gareth Williams’ death. It was originally set for last February; then for March; then for “before Christmas” and now, apparently, it’s going to be in April. God knows if it’ll happen but at least there’s been some substantive reportage this time…

It remains one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of the British secret services.

Does it? Yes, I suppose it does. I do wonder, though, why if journalists are aware of its significance they’ve failed to report on its progress.

The spy’s badly-decomposed body was found at 6.30pm on August 23 at his flat in Pimlico, barely a mile from the headquarters of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Services, across the River Thames.

The property was used by MI6 as a safe house. In what was apparently a secret services in-joke, the building was owned by a British Virgin Islands-registered company called New Rodina, meaning ‘new motherland’ in Russian.

Prompting some journalists – from guess which paper – to propose that the fiendish KGB were involved.

Mr Williams had not showed up at work for several days. But it was only when his sister Ceri, a physiotherapist, rang police from her home in Chester to say she had not heard from him in over 10 days, that a constable went to the top-floor flat in Alderney Street.

Here he made a gruesome discovery.

The flat was “spotless”. But in the bath was a red North Face holdall from which red liquid was seeping. It had been padlocked.

Inside the officer found a body so contorted that he initially assumed the “legs and arms had been cut off”. There were no signs of a struggle.

And that’s where we come in. The police insisted that despite the man’s job and the manner of his death it was “not linked to his work [but] his private life”. This prompted journalists to link the death to an imaginary “gay lover”; a hypothetical interest in BDSM and downright fantastical “kinky sex liasions”. Most shamefully, a Telegraph writer, Victoria Ward, asserted that his “apparent interest in bondage and auto-asphyxiation” – an “apparent interest” that’s never been more than possible – could have been linked to “a childhood trauma”. She even rolled out a sexual therapist to propose that he could have been denied the “accept[ance] and nurture” that he’d sought. The victim’s family had their loved one stolen from them, then, and now, on top of that, had to endure the papers leering about his supposed deviance and one shameless hack proposing that it was their fault for allowing him to be traumatised, and for not nurturing him. That was three days before Christmas. A friend reported that they didn’t celebrate the festival: “they weren’t going to anyway but the latest revelations…just made it even worse for them”.

I’ve wondered at times if I should stop writing about the case. After all, I didn’t know the man, and I’m hardly equipped to say what happened to him. But it is relevant to society at large and it has to be explained. Not only as the killing seems to – and is said to – bear the features of a “tidy” hit job by smart, ruthless professionals but because the actions of the police and the media are so demonstrative of the artifice and callousness of British public life.

 

Positive Prejudices…

Karen Armstrong is, as she so often is, railing against people who hold “prejudices” against a religion – Islam. It’s a tour de force of false equivalences and selective history. (An especial shame in this case as its ostensible subject – the Hajj pilgramage – is an intriguing one.) Still, it did inspire two thoughts on the nature of “prejudice”. The first is that a “prejudice” can, in fact, be accurate – this is a somewhat pedantic thought as it’s never an excuse for not researching further to confirm or disprove one’s suspicions. Still, “prejudice” shouldn’t be elided with bigotry. The second thought, and further confirmation of the latter point, is that a prejudicial view needn’t be a hostile one. You can be prejudiced in favour of people or ideas; romanticizing them beyond what their qualities deserve. These prejudices can be harmful as well – lifting figures and concepts to roles they’re not equipped to take, and eliding and indulging faults they may contain. Prejudices in favour of Eastern spiritualism, for example, are a significant factor behind the alt. medicine industry. Prejudices in favour of beautiful people elevate them to positions even if their looks are not a relevant characteristic. And the prejudices of a certain popular historian inspire her to start a column by asserting that inter-religious conflict began with the Crusades and end it by suggesting that a museum exhibit sponsored by the Saudi royal family should kill off the notion of religious intolerance.

 

Silly Sausage…

The Observer’s Barbara Ellen is smug about her vegetarianism. Why? Well, a recent study has shown that consumption of processed meats could increase the risk of pancreatic cancer…

Analysis of more than 6,000 pancreatic cancer cases published in the British Journal of Cancer says that eating just 50g of processed meat a day (one sausage or a couple of slices of bacon) raises the likelihood of pancreatic cancer by a fifth. 100g a day (the equivalent of a medium burger) raises it by 38%, 150g by 57%.

Sounds frightening. But, then again, if we stroll over to the research that Ellen is considering we’re told…

About 8,090 people were diagnosed with the disease in the UK in 2008 – three per cent of all cancer cases — and around 7,780 people died from it.

The risk of getting pancreatic cancer seems pretty small so while you may increase it with your sausages, salami and bacon strips you’re unlikely to place yourself in mortal danger. A review by Cancer Research UK suggested that 2.7% of cancer cases “may” have been linked to the meats in the patients’ diets – below the proportion of cases that “may” have been linked to UV radiation (3%), alcohol (4%), deficiencies of fruit n’ veg (4.7) and obesity (5.5). In other words, if an Observer reader is lifting a breakfast sausage to their mouth as they peruse the commentary section they have little cause to hurl the thing across the room like a big, greasy dart. If the pleasure that you take from something is more consequential than the benefits of abstaining from it then, well – do what’s right for you.

Yet, while a little thought would have revealed to Ellen that these findings aren’t all that dramatic, she seems to think they’re equivalent to the discovery that fags are rotten for your lungs. She says she’d never go back to her carnivorous ways…

…because, frankly, I’m not stupid enough. As in, I can read.

Meat eaters – all meat eaters – are, to her, a bunch of dumbasses…

With this in mind, isn’t it time to ask, exactly how thick, how hard to educate, are meat eaters and why aren’t they held accountable in the same way everyone else is?

Their foolishness baffles her…

It’s not as if they haven’t been warned countless times about the dangers – how wilfully ill-informed can people be?

For all I’ve criticised this article, I’ll admit it’s offered us a glimpse of how wilfully ill-informed people can be. It’s the wilful ignorance of the columnist: a breed of people who enshrine their prejudices as established facts and moral absolutes with a blithe assurance that’s fascinating. It’s characteristic of most people who hold forth on social and philosophical affairs, of course – yes, yes, including me at times – but it’s rather galling when people are paid for it.

I never “went” vegetarian, incidentally. In a brief, Singer-swayed phase I thought I’d lean that way but other arguments countered his and while I’ve drawn no firm conclusions on the matter, a feeling that animal consciousness is too crude to be of great moral significance ensures that if I’m presented with a free-range steak I’ll eat it. Akim Reinhardt once argued that meat-eating would be regarded as a moral crime on a par with slavery. Well, I share his loathing for the treatment of the animals involved and I might come round to the idea that killing them is wrong but it is not evil and tragic in the sense that the great wastages of human life have been. Those slaves could have enjoyed happy, fulfilling and productive lives. The cows and chickens would have moped around and scratched the floor a bit.

 

Busy Weekend, Nick?

Nick Cohen has a bone to pick with Stieg Larsson – the author of some books that people seem to like but that I haven’t got around to reading. He’d enjoyed his work at first but then he made a strange and unpleasant discovery. Or, at least, his friend did…

My friend and colleague Johan Lundberg, the editor of the Swedish journal Axess, has done what I should have done and read Larsson’s obscure book on honour killings. He waited for the release of the film to give us his findings.

Larsson did indeed break off from writing the Millennium trilogy to intervene in the debate about the “honour killings” of two Kurdish women in Sweden. Far from worrying about the suffering of women, Larsson and his co-author said those who campaigned for the rights of women in immigrant communities wanted “to portray all male immigrants as representatives of a single homogeneous attitude towards women”. They had sexist as well as racist motives. They only talked about honour crime because they wanted to divert attention from how white men raised in the “patriarchal structures of Swedish society” abused and murdered women as a matter of course.

If all Larsson wanted to say was that the rights of women should be upheld, regardless of colour or creed, then no one could argue with him. He came close to asserting the opposite. Believe that western legal systems, for all their faults, were preferable to forced marriages, religious courts where the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man and the stoning to death of adulterous women and you were a “rightwing extremist”, carrying on the fascist tradition. In a final descent into paranoid dementia, he accused those who disagreed with him of preparing to unleash “special operations forces, which are ready to begin the ethnic cleansing”.

Here’s a translation of the piece by Johan Lundberg. It includes every one of the quotes that Cohen offers. I have no wish to defend Larsson – I haven’t read his book and it may be as unpleasant as Lundberg claims. (And, lest someone wishes to presume that I’m dodging Cohen’s allegation of Western indifference to “honour” crimes, here are some of my writings on the subject.) What annoys me, though, is Cohen’s rank laziness. He hasn’t read the book – he’s just relied on six short quotes; none of them in context; none so much as a sentence long – and must know that his audience won’t be able to. That offends me as a reader. (He’s also been paid handsomely to reproduce Lundberg’s work and throw in a couple of insults at liberals. That offends me a person who’s unemployed.)