Sunday, April 04, 2004
Another spac attack. I guess I should feel honoured that my writing so often attracts the attention of what Shane calls "right-wing spazzos". Guess I should feel particularly honoured that the latest one comes from venerable blogger, Bulletin columnist and enemy of Media Watch, Tim Blair. You may recall some time ago how Tim got a reporter from the Chicago Tribune fired for plagiarism after he made up a quote about the Redfern riots. At the time, I thought "Way to keep the bastards honest, Tim!"
But then today I was writing an article about blogs for work and actually looked up his blog, and it's disappointingly reactionary. It irritates me that the 'criticisms' of Timbo's commentariat could have been addressed by the original article I'd submitted to The Age. Basically, I wanted my article to discuss the clash between irony, politics and commercialism that slogan t-shirts represent; and I had a second section that discussed the phenomenon of designer t-shirt labels, which I flagged in the introductory paragraph. But thanks to my editor's haste to capitalise on the Westco Incident, all this (including my comment that the Supré MD "knows that irony sells, especially to the teen girl-power crowd") was lost.
It puzzles me why I care if right-wing spazzos get my ideas, and it also puzzles me that I have such a burning need to defend cultural studies from people who think it's simultaneously arcane and superficial. And it pisses me off that all these criticisms always return to money: "I can't believe newspapers pay good money for this crap"; "I can't believe this crap is publicly funded"; "I can't believe people can make a living from spinning crap." I guess the answer is that crap is in the eye of the beholder. And right now I'm beholding Tim Blair.
Hey, I should do an occasional series about spac attacks, whaddaya reckon?
But then today I was writing an article about blogs for work and actually looked up his blog, and it's disappointingly reactionary. It irritates me that the 'criticisms' of Timbo's commentariat could have been addressed by the original article I'd submitted to The Age. Basically, I wanted my article to discuss the clash between irony, politics and commercialism that slogan t-shirts represent; and I had a second section that discussed the phenomenon of designer t-shirt labels, which I flagged in the introductory paragraph. But thanks to my editor's haste to capitalise on the Westco Incident, all this (including my comment that the Supré MD "knows that irony sells, especially to the teen girl-power crowd") was lost.
It puzzles me why I care if right-wing spazzos get my ideas, and it also puzzles me that I have such a burning need to defend cultural studies from people who think it's simultaneously arcane and superficial. And it pisses me off that all these criticisms always return to money: "I can't believe newspapers pay good money for this crap"; "I can't believe this crap is publicly funded"; "I can't believe people can make a living from spinning crap." I guess the answer is that crap is in the eye of the beholder. And right now I'm beholding Tim Blair.
Hey, I should do an occasional series about spac attacks, whaddaya reckon?
