October 31, 2003

Julie Burchill: Mind the gap

A big thank you to Glenn for pointing out this gem of a column in the Guardian, regarding the hypocrisy of the hip. You absolutely must read the whole thing; that is an order. It's impossible to excerpt this without violating all sorts of "fair use" restrictions, but I'll try:

But unenlightened, repressed people have an excuse for being hypocrites - that they are unenlightened and repressed, and so presumably don't know any better. No, it's the hipocrites who fascinate and repel me; the enlightened, unrepressed, liberal thinkers whose deepest governing belief would appear to be "Do what I say, not what I do", and who seem to believe that the rest of us are too thick to notice the yawning credibility gap opening up between their feet as they pontificate. ...

You expect Ms Dynamite and Justin Timberlake to mouth off against American war in Iraq/US cultural imperialism just before signing massive deals with Pepsi and McDonald's. You expect Catherine Zeta-Jones to say stuff like, "I find divorces repulsive. I grew up in a small, strictly Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood - people stick together" - having left said Eden at 15 in order to fulfil a destiny that included going to Hollywood and marrying a divorced ex-sex addict. Was his divorce repulsive? Or just everyone else's?

If that's not enough to make you read this column, how about this ... the next target is Sean Penn.

Aha. Made you look.

Thanks, Glenn. Now if you'd just mention me, just once, dammit ... Good night, everyone.

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