A dilemma has presented itself to the good folk of the Tavern.
For some months, thanks to a bevy of obsessively competitive grandmothers and aunts, there has been fierce family rivalry over the online Wordle puzzle, with daily updates on the number of guesses as well as avid comparison of statistics at family gatherings.
We’ve been aware that it comes to us courtesy of the New York Times, an organ which hasn’t exactly endeared itself to the British through its insinuation that we - at least those of us whose ancestors have been in these islands a good few centuries - are a bunch of grubby imperialists eking out a miserable existence on boiled mutton and gruel in a cold and boggy hinterland.
While one would obviously prefer to be liked, the ill-informed prejudice of a few sniping activists isn’t particularly important in the grander scheme of things. However, the repeated falsehoods, distortions and anti-British propaganda are starting to grate. Latest in a series of Brit-bashing columns is the new opinion piece, which is being trailed with a startling bit of hyperbole:
'When Prince Harry met and married the American actress Meghan Markle, we saw, in real time, just how high a price the crown was willing to extract from an outsider, up to and including her life.’
I thought that sort of thing went out with Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, but clearly the NYT knows better (although if she is one of the undead, it might explain a lot...*) While such over-dramatic metaphors are straight out of the attention-seeker’s handbook and thus beneath contempt, it’s still part of a spectacularly vicious attack on the Royal Family and, by extension, the people of Britain, who are yet again portrayed as overt racists.
So the dilemma: do we continue to pop in to the New York Times for a Wordle while ignoring the rest of its content or do we desist on principle? I await Mother-in-Law’s final decree on the matter but, in the meantime, I’m taking inspiration from the first Earl of Birkenhead who, when challenged on his daily morning visit to the lavatory at the Athenaeum Club (of which he was not a member), responded with a surprised, "Oh, is it a club as well?"
*Kipling, as he so often does, has just the right poem:
“A fool there was, and he made his prayer
(even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair -
(even as you or I!)”
The Vampire
I suspect vicious hyperbole is what outfits such as the New York Times are actually selling because they know their audience. A form of entertainment for middle class people who think they are being informed rather than entertained.
ReplyDeleteRather like comedians pandering to the bias of their audience and only slightly toned down.
We aren’t really set up to handle media in the digital age; the line between news and entertainment seems to get more blurred every year.
ReplyDelete