Splinters

Two very different reactions to the weekend review papers this week. On Saturday's Guardian, a moving look by Caryl Phillips at the history of the song "Strange Fruit",  immortalised by Bille Holliday, and written by Abel Meeropol, heroic figures both. As well as being a good overview, it's also rather nice to hear Phillips' appropriate humility in her earlier use of the title. Elsewhere in the paper, an interesting if contentious piece on Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart too.

But then in today's Observer, dear oh drear....this remarkably pompous and tedious piece of advertising   for a new book by Andrew Anthony. This article, slightly reworded, has been written by many other authors, most recently Nick Cohen, and before him Christopher Hitchens, again and again, and again (the former managed to stretch it in to book form too.)  Attempting to encapsualte The World, it is nothing more than self, self, self. Self-agrandisement and self-righteousness, thinly shrouded with self-doubt, with self-importance shining dimly through. 

The same straw men are set up, the same "I write more in sorrow than anger" tone oozing more sanctimoniousness than even the worst examples of the imaginary"liberals" they seek to "expose".....  The same slivers of genuine insight and truth amidst vastly larger swathes of staggering ignorance.

These are middle-class liberals who have grown right-wing with age. It happens, often. They are entitled to their changes of opinion, really, good luck to them. They should realise however that that's all it is, they have changed, not the world. And above all, they should realise it makes for shockingly dull reading.