The Simple World of Laurie Penny
In a nauseatingly self-congratulatory post, Laurie “THE CELEBRITY” Penny writes this:
If I ever lose perspective, or start praising George Osborne, or just turn into a massive wanker, I’m counting on the people whose opinions I’ve always valued to take me to task.Sorry all, but it is just too easy to say that Penny has never had a sense of perspective, or that she has ever been anything other than a massive wanker. Those cheap shots you should make elsewhere. As, if you are so inclined, no doubt you will.
No, it is the bit about praising George Osborne that gets to me, because it reveals so much about Penny’s mindset. She deals in absolutes, see. And here the absolute is that GEORGE OSBORNE WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING SHE CAN SEE AS GOOD. Which completely ignores one of the most fundamental facets of life – change. Penny might, in future years, move away from the clichéd left (‘growing up’ I believe is the actual term) and realise that people like Osborne can offer valid opinions and policies, even if you disagree with the broad parameters of what they stand for. Furthermore, she also denies the idea that Osborne himself could change; maybe on day, in one area, Osborne will position himself on the tedious left. Doesn’t seem likely, but it is not an impossibility either. Unfortunately, Penny’s naïve worldview is simply too narrow to encompass any such possibilities.
Of course, you could argue that her statement was meant to be tongue in cheek, but anyone who has read Penny’s blog knows that (a) it is exactly how she feels about Osborne and (b) it is typical of the way she looks at the world.
There may be some intelligent statists and socialists out there – those who understand the contingent nature of political identity and political reality. Judging by this and pretty much the rest of her output, we can rest assured that Laurie Penny is not one of them.
Labels: Idiocy, Idiot of the Day, left-wing, Osborne, Penny Red
posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 8:32 pm
10 Comments
10 Comments:
her original blog post was funnier.
Hello, the blog. It’s been a very strange few months. Things have been moving fast and, due to an auspicious combination of luck, work, class privilege and just being in the right place when things were happening, I’m now a journalist who people have heard of and stuff. I’ve had a big think about the consequences of that this week, and this is my post about it, which will probably come across as massively wanky and self-indulgent, particularly when so many really important things are happening in the world. I’m mostly writing this so I can get it all out and get it down and concentrate on those more important things. If it helps, you’ll get the basic sense of this post from just skipping to the penultimate paragraph now.
cont:
So: it's all change! Nine months ago I had just over a thousand Twitter followers; now it’s nearly thirteen thousand. Nine months ago it was a huge nerve-wracking fiasco for me to talk on a regional radio driveshow; last month I was a panellist on Any Questions. Nine months ago I was a blogger in the process of trying to improve my writing in the hopes of someday, maybe, being a ‘proper’ commentator’; I’m now a columnist for the country’s foremost leftwing magazine, earning a living as a full-time comment-and-features journo, and have written opinion pieces for the Guardian, the Evening Standard, the Independent and others. I got to talk at the Fabian Society conference. People from the BBC sometimes ring me up and ask what I think about things.
I’d be an idiot not to be thrilled by all this, of course. Even when it’s terrifying and intimidating, which is most of the time, I remember that it makes my parents proud, and that’s always something to be glad about, because frankly my mum and dad have put up with quite enough crap from me over the years. I’m not trying to carp and bitch and say poor ickle me, I’ve got it all so very vert hard: manifestly, I’ve been handed a pair of golden slippers, and it would be ugly and ungrateful to complain that they pinch.
cont:
It does raise issues, though – because despite what some people inevitably believe, my writing is not a self-promotion exercise. Far from it. I care passionately about the politics and the movements I am engaged with, and I am having to learn very fast, by trial and error, how I can best behave in order to be useful to those movements. I’m having to anticipate what I might do or say that might damage or cause divisions within the causes with which I am associated. There is, bluntly, a lot more I can do now to fuck stuff up.
cont:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not under some delusion of being ever so terribly famous – I’m not famous, there's just a bit of a fuss at the moment. I don’t get recognised in the street. I have been recognised on two separate occasions at the same bus stop in Bethnal Green, but since I estimate that about half the people who read my blogs and articles probably live within shouting distance of E9 and have a tendency to wander down the Old Ford Road at half midnight on a Thursday eating chips, that’s no huge surprise. I do, however, have a more powerful platform than I’d ever anticipated - at least not, in my nuttiest dreams, until I was in my mid thirties - and that’s daunting.
It’s daunting, because I’m in my early twenties and still learning the rules, and it feels a little like being in the front seat of a speeding car that I don’t know how to drive, trying desperately to master the controls as I go along without careening the whole machine into a bollard. The whole way I relate to my work and to my friends on the internet (and most of my friends are on the internet!) needs to change. This week I’ve finally knuckled under and accepted that.
It means accepting a certain level of responsibility. It means no longer posting profanities and details of my favourite bedroom activities in my Facebook profile whenever I feel like it. It means absolute integrity and thoughtfulness. It means that the ripple effects of things I write and say are no longer small and friendly: if I call a fellow activist a cunt, it’s not just playful snark, it’s a big deal. If I tweet momentary disillusion with a protest movement, it might actively dishearten a few hundred people involved, and that matters. The way I choose to tell a story - romantic and human-centred, like this week's New Statesman cover story on the student movement, or theoretical and dispassionate, as some would have preferred? - matters to people. It seems to matter a lot. It means that more often than not, when I write something, people actually read it, and quite often respond to it via blogs and articles of their own.
It also means receiving a great deal more criticism – some of it good and constructive, and a whole lot of it frightening, horrible, threatening and nasty. I now receive rape threats and death threats on a daily basis; I am the subject of various spiteful right-wing hate campaigns and have my very own following of Tory and libertarian trolls (hi, @OldHolborn!). I can no longer respond to each criticism individually, as I used to. I have to block some of this petty shit out, or I’d go barmy.
I guess what I’m saying, what all of this is leading up to is: please bear with me. This stuff is all new and vertiginous, but I’m not making the same mistakes twice. The biggest mistake, the one I regret the most actually, is neglecting my share of the housework with all the work and chores and running around I've been doing, with the result that it now probably seems, to my lovely and long-suffering housemates, like I suddenly think I'm too good for the washing up.
I still care about the same things, just have to accept that I can’t fuck around and fuck stuff up in the blogosphere quite as much as I’d like to anymore. I can’t take the time to respond to every individual hater with a measured and reasonable put-down. I have to behave like a fully-fledged commentator, even if in my head I’m still a weird schoolgirl who sometimes hides in the bin reading comics and has panic attacks when people speak to her without warning.
It'll inevitably all come crashing down, presumably when some editor twigs that I am in fact making it all up as I go along. Before that, hopefully it will at least settle down and things will be less frazzled and I’ll have space to take stock. Probably not for another few months, though, cause I have a book coming out and another one on the way and I’m doing more things on the tellybox. Meanwhile, I’m gradually learning how to handle all the pressure without being a total dickhead.
That’s about it, really. Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far – I appreciate that your time is limited and that there are several revolutions on at the moment. If I ever lose perspective, or start praising Iain Duncan Smith, or just turn into a massive wanker, I’m counting on the people IRL and online whose criticism and advice I’ve always valued to take me to task. You know who you are. Thank you, I love you. Solidarity.
Nice work. Far too self-aware for Laurie Penny though...
I, too, read that blog entry of Penny's. I am 41 - an old fart compared to Laurie, but I remember very clearly being a thoroughly irritating, know-it-all, lefty twat when I was her age. God, how I cringe when I think back to those times. Mind you, I was as happy as a pig in shit, as I thought I was Mr. Cool. Life, though, taught me that the old farts I used to despise and ridicule had been, shockingly enough, often right; and I had been, even more shockingly, miserably wrong.
Thank God in Heaven, though, that I hadn't blasted the far-flung corners of the universe with my dimbo ideas, points of view, and vomit-inducing, wanky bullshit. Laurie, sadly, has done so, and I genuinely pity her in the years to come, when she's on Loose Women, praying to Jesus, Buddha, Osiris, and anything else she can think of that nobody calls her on the firebrand shite she spewed out in her twenties. I will laugh myself sick when it happens, though.
Talk about it's all about moi - what a curious thing to do, spend all that time and effort justifying anonymously.
I had never heard of Laurie Penny til tonight when I listened to Any Questions on R4.
She manage to irritate me so much within about 5 minutes, with her automatic reflex reactions and the constant over-emotive comments that I feel embarassed to be the same sex.
Btw I don't hate you Laurie, I just find the things you say incredibly irritating.
I hope you learn to acknowledge the possibility that everyone has good and bad in them, even the baby eating Tories.
And no, I'm not a Tory.
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