The Graun thinks shallow & slightly racist “humour” is cool
by BlackCatte
Well the Graun continues on its own bizarre bid to bury its credibility and sink its reputation as a serious outlet. Their article When Tsipras meets Putin: an opportunity for fruit diplomacy? is not really noteworthy beyond it’s rather odd title. It’s just another in the seemingly endless production line of Guardian pieces that do their best to cram Russophobic sentiment or outright warmongering into situations and subjects that don’t require or support them.”Any major new Russian investment in Greece would raise concern in Brussels,” it says at one point, as if such a reaction was inevitable, Russia having been converted into a full-fledged “enemy” by those who believe they control the narrative.
It’s not the article that grabs our attention. It’s their choice of “featured comment.” The one selected by the editors as a little flagship for the kind of opinion they believe should not just be free – but celebrated with full Graun approval in its own little box at the top of the page.
And this is what they chose:
Excellent, don’t you think? Pithy. Thoughtful. Intellectually challenging. The kind of blandly smiling, slightly dim-witted racial bigotry we can all be proud to share.
It’s like watching a long-respected mentor get drunk, grab your boob and start singing racist rugby songs isn’t it.
Please try and understand this Guardian – and stop.
Just stop.
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In the end, though, opposing Grauniad propaganda is fruitless, I feel, if some of us are still so naive as to think that it’s all gone wrong owing to mismanagement of some sort or a comedically inept editorial policy. The obvious truth is that the Grauniad is merely one of many relay-stations of War Propaganda being trumpeted around the planet from key locations at Langley and in D.C. Why do so many progressives still find that notion far-fetched? Oceania is already 14 years into the Eternal War with Eurasia, after all.
“In dictatorships…. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it’s propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West. We’ve learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines and, unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive.”
—-Zdener Urbanek, dissident Czech novelist
Very good point. The “oops they done it wrong again” meme is just a way of avoiding examination of painful questions. The big picture is so complex and confusing and scary, it’s comforting to hide from it a little even while pretending you are facing it all fiercely.
In liberal circles, this is not ‘cool racism light’, but ‘satire’, which like parody falls under generous artistic license and various legal protections. Get with the program!
Speaking of the Guardian, I’ve read a couple of pieces where they address the annual commemoration of the genocide of Armenians by the Ottomans, and I get the impression that they are being very careful to tip-toe around the issue. On a Guardian backgrounder, they point out that it happened before ‘genocide’ had been invented as a term and legally. Well thank god for that! Still, they are not quite as bad as the ‘fully independent broadcaster’ the BBC who curiously happnes to follow the exact same line as the Foreign Office, but still fairly bad.
Please name and shame the admin who nuked your site.
The Guardian’s just embarrassing itself — yet again.
This is pathetic, it really is. But we shouldn’t expect less. This is the real standard of the guardian newspaper.
I used to read the guardian on a daily basis. Some of the commenters were very thoughtful. The debate lively. I did not agree with many viewpoints but respected them as long as these did not descend into insults and bigotry. I watched this decline start in 2008/2009 when they started appearing in Hollywood flicks.
Now I do not bother going there and do not know how it looks. I am surprised you guys even worry to quote the guardian or even analyse their articles.
Please give up and move on. If you keep on hanging around said mentor, you might end up raped (as in some frivolous lawsuit as is the case with these corporations)… not only grabbed. The ship sailed a long time ago!
with their policing of CIF the real message being conveyed by the guardian is that we don’t get to have a right to express what is at odds with what they determine to be acceptable.
You’d think the name ‘Vladimire Poutine’ would have alerted them to the nature of the troll, but perhaps they no longer care.
The awful thing is that I still do. Bad enough to see this in any British newspaper – but the Guardian?? It’s hardly better than the kind of racist caricatures the US uses for ‘entertainment’ – as in this charming little extract, where an American audience falls about laughing at the idea of Russian people starving – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MtROAz27o0#t=71
How could the Guardian sink this low?
I fully endorse your feelings about the decline in the Guardian and its change to an essentially racist paper.
In the new Guardian it’s okay, in fact it’s essential that you support Nazis in Ukraine.
That you display open bigotry to Russia and Russians.
I can’t stand the paper anymore. And it used to be a paper I trusted. Not anymore.
The Guardian thought it would bring intelligent news to benighted Americans in 2012 and similarly befuddled Australians in 2013. Instead its overseas expansion brought a dimming of the lights to The Guardian.
Actually I think The Guardian’s problems began years ago when it decided to abandon its original core audience and run after a younger, supposedly “hip” readership, and started to accept corporate advertising as well. It has been losing money for years and its original financial model (based around government public sector job advertisements) no longer sustains it.