Et tu, Trudeau?

Humph. One of Doonesbury's long-running character arcs is the decline of print journalism and the ongoing search for a viable alternative, personified by Rick Redfern. Once a crack investigative journalist, he's been 'liberated' from print media to become a freelance blogger, to his own disgust and the mockery of pretty much everybody else. It's a tale of deprofessionalisation, proletarianisation and the decline of the public sphere - and I speak as a person who blogs rather than writes professionally. We have a credibility gap for the very good reason that we lack the time and resources required for investigative journalism.

Doonesbury nails it in today's strip: you may need to click on it to enlarge.

Superman and me

You might think I have little in common with Superman. And you'd be right. I used to have a skinny-fit Superman t-shirt (worn with a degree of irony, I should add), but I rapidly stopped being skinny and unlike Comic-Book Guy, I surmised that this wasn't a good look.

Now, however, Superman and I are colleagues. He's quit his job on the Daily Planet and become a blogger, after becoming frustrated by the limitations of print media. In particular, according to this report, the authors see Clark Kent as a man alienated from his profession by the relentless cheapening of newspaper journalism. Ironically (that word again), this occurs in the pages of a comic book. Actually, it's not ironic at all: comics have been addressing the big issues, including the erosion of the public sphere, for years.

It's a sad moment: newspapers made comic strips, and now comic strips have cast off newspapers, even though we're only talking about fiction. The point about Clark Kent being a journalist was that he was fighting for Truth and Justice in his suit and day job just as much as his alter ego was in external underpants and cape. He, Lois and Jimmy were heroes of a relatable sort, fulfilling the professional demands of their vocation. But when we think of journalism now, we don't associate it with the investigative derring-do of the Guardian or the Sunday Times Insight team (RIP): we see a bunch of sleazy blokes hacking into phones in pursuit of seedy sex scandals. We imagine Daily Mail drones putting together another set of prurient, skin-crawling euphemisms which make it OK to leer over an underage girl or a celebrity doing something outrageous like not wearing mascara. Clark's an old-fashioned guy in the best sense: he sees newspapers as part of the public sphere, holding power to account - something American and British newspapers have singularly failed to do in recent years.

I hope Clark Kent's wrong. But he's not the first fictional journalist to move into the blogosphere: Doonesbury's Rick  Redfern is finding it hard going: the Huffington Post and such sites are notoriously exploitative and still don't have the credibility associated with a newspaper (click to enlarge)

Mind you, if you think it's hard for the dispossessed journalist, what about the effect on us? I certainly wouldn't want any of you to depend either on partisan news channels or even my efforts in the field for enlightenment. (Click to enlarge). 

Blogging is important: I've pursued the egregious Grant Shapps and my local excuse for an MP, Paul Uppal, because I don't have institutional responsibilities - I'm not spending anyone's money and I don't have a deadline, but it's no substitute for a press card, an editor and a budget. Despite the heroic work of Eoin Clarke et al., we don't have the mass reach, access or credibility a decent newspaper still possesses. 

Academics: Satan's little helpers

Lovely Rick Santorum thinks that education itself is Satanic because it encourages people to think for themselves and not take things for granted. This man is now leading the Republican race for the presidential nomination. Academics: expect your midnight visit on Inauguration Day. There'll be plenty of room in the camps alongside the gays, atheists, liberals and women.



The 'pride of smart people' makes academics Satan's Little Helpers - because they 'deny the existence of truth'. 'Academia, a long time ago, Fell'. The root of America's failure is 'educating the elite… the first to fall'.

Amazingly, he feels that politicians were the last to 'Fall'!

Wish I could find the Doonesbury strips in which Zipper refuses to answer questions in class on the grounds that elite liberal 'filters' - like academics - play 'gotcha' with ordinary decent Americans by insisting on 'knowing stuff'.

I'm sorry for beggaring you all with my insatiable demands

Over in the US, the Republicans are doing the same as the Tories: claiming that people like me are ruining the country, and not the bankers and media moguls at all. Doonesbury has a very apt cartoon today:

Meanwhile, congratulations to my friends The Nightingales: newly signed to a very cool record label I can't yet reveal.

Are you Rapture Ready?

A tiny bunch of the nuttiest wing of Christianity is wandering the airwaves announcing that tomorrow (21st of May) is the Rapture, when the Elect (a few thousand at most) ascend to heaven, leaving the rest of us to fight it out, with or against the Antichrist.

There was even a representative of Familyradio.com on the streets of Manchester today. I'd love to have stopped him for a chat. Imagine being absolutely certain that the world ends tomorrow: that you're either going to heaven, or being left behind with the damned after devoting your life to worshipping him. How would you feel? How would you spend your last day? I'd have thought that if you're one of the elect, there isn't much you could do in 24 hours to lose your place, and therefore spending the day leafleting wouldn't be your first choice. In fact, as all the sects believe that only a small number get Raptured, I'd bin the leaflets. They're your competition! I'd keep very quiet about it. Unless you're the smug type of course. But gloaters might get a beating, and deservedly so. Is gloating a sin?

How considerate of God to get my grandmother a place early, beating the rush, and to wait until my brother's birthday (today) is over. Personally, I'm looking forward to burgling the houses of the Godly.

Needless to say, the satirical responses are legion - even Doonesbury has spent the week teasing the gullible (start here and keep clicking 'next'). But very few people have considered the practicalities. So here's some useful advice for our devout friends:

Love your lectures?

Having done a class today in which more than a few people in the class hadn't bothered to turn up with a copy of the play or texts being studied (again), this Doonesbury strip caught my eye. Today's texts were a selection from Gerrard Winstanley's writings and Caryl Churchill's play about the Diggers, A Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.

I don't expect everyone to like every text - quite often, hating a text produces a great discussion - but the feeling that some of the class actively resent being there is very dispiriting. It's university. You don't have to a) sign up or b) turn up. I actively don't care if you'd rather not come - you're adults. But if you do come, at least read the bloody books and talk about them.

Thanks - as always - to the students who do talk. I do realise that you can't be enthusiastic about every text and I appreciate your effort. If I haven't conveyed my enthusiasm, then I've failed to some extent too.

And so to bed…

Well, home, anyway, before I get locked in the building for the second time this week.

I'm dragging home my latest book purchase: a massive volume called 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, containing 13% of Doonesbury strips going back to 1970. An acquired taste, admittedly, but one I acquired a long time ago.

It's been a bit of an excessive week for books - I put together a couple of reading lists, and couldn't stop myself buying copies of everything. Then there's the Geoffrey Hill Selected Poems (I couldn't justify spending £100 on a copy of Mercian Hymns) and his new one, Oracles/Oraclau. And the two new Anne of Green Gables books: the restored edition of Rilla of Ingleside and the lost The Blythes Are Quoted. Plus Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur, some Shakespeare criticism, a book on typefaces (I recently took to using Palatino for presentations), a lovely illustrated Pullman compendium, a history of moral panics involving comic books and, well, you get the picture.

It's a damn good job I've lost my bank card. I won't be able to buy anything for a week. Hurrah! Boo! New Posies album out too…

What is he trying to say?

Click on the picture for a larger image.

Doonesbury gets it

I know some banksters will be on here making little points in their defence, but there really isn't one: entire states are heavily indebted because they saved the banking system, which has demonstrated that it's learned absolutely nothing, and is currently engaged in making government bonds even more expensive - the bonds required to cover the cash spent reviving the banks. Click for a larger version

The finishing line…

I've just done a long and complicated lecture on the recession and its economic origins, while feeling horribly ill.

I suspect the students feel the same - very, very few attended the seminars. Perhaps, though, it's the lovely, lovely snow.

Meanwhile, I've received the new Doonesbury collection, Tee Time in Berzerkistan, which I might use for teaching PR/lobbying: Duke and Earl land the PR contract for a terrible dictatorship and rebrand it a 'global partner in the war on terror', dismissing the (fictional, obviously) dictator's ethnic cleansing as 'a housing problem'. I've also splashed out, on Kerrywoman's recommendation, on Diarmaid Ferriter's Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, which should explain a lot.

Namechecked!

Click on it for a bigger one - it's Trudeau's Doonesbury strip, to which I'm addicted.

What a relief Walden's a fictional university, eh readers?

I love Doonesbury. Click on the image for a larger version.

Brief notes

Doonesbury has another go at the terrible diversion that is Twitter. His line is that it's appallingly narcissistic.

Got some proper twee in the post today: God Help The Girl's 'Come Monday Night' 7" single. They're a Belle and Sebastian side project.

I've also discovered pitchfork.com, for all your indie needs (farewell, Word and other magazines for aging losers), and Jim Carroll's On The Record blog at the Irish Times, which Anita assures me is highly reliable for hot indie tips.

Here's some Th' Faith Healers - there's not a lot out there, probably because they split in 94.

I'm pond life

as Doonesbury sometimes points out. Click on the strip for a larger version

Info - and a pun

Decent Doonesbury take on Twitter yesterday.

Earthquake in Mexico City just now - swine flew...

A Camera Obscura CD - My Maudlin Career - just turned up in the post. Sweet.

Twunts

All week, Gary Trudeau has been considering Twitter in his Doonesbury Strip. He's not a fan, it's fair to say. (Click on the image to get a larger version).