PING! Patrick Kingsley

Subject:	PING! Patrick Kingsley
Date:	Tue, 5 Jan 2010 00:19:44 -0800 (PST)

Well, when I first started composing this on the
bus home this morning I thought you were one
of the staff at Cambridge. It's the way your little
column in yesterday's theguardian was under
that same umbrella.

As such I had a lot of cynicism--until I looked a
little closer. Comparisons of naivete now will
simply not work. You're a student. You're at
Cambridge. Even recent discussions on accents
in contemporary vernacular English failed to say
Cambridge has its own distinct accent.

And no, I don't mean the neurotically twee
denasalised parody of an RP dialect heavy with
emphasis on status, sarcastic-irony as an aural
semiosic of supposedly incisive insight, and, of
course, being very terribly terribly nice all at the
same time.

Just go sit in any FairTrade cafe somewhere near
a college to hear the privileged whingeing creeps
brown-nosing tutors who really are trying to induce
some sense of normailty and marvel at the crass
blinkered, condescending, adolescent fantasies
masquerading as optimism and motivation.

Well, I can certainly tell you that uni is not the
same Poly was. Poly's in the '80s weren't a patch
on Poly's in the '70s - I have this first hand from
any number of alumni from back then. And Uni's
in the '90s weren't a patch on what being a stude
in the '80s (and I mean really in the '80s) was all
about. Certainly I noticed a distinct change from
my experience in the '90s compared to those in
the early 21st Century--as a generally benevolent
onlooker with a fondeness for louder more vibrant
music and pool played with a sense of flamboyant
optimism rather than dreary strategies of position
and percentages.

But really, we should what?

We should treat newspapers like we do uni's?

As charitable institutions?

This really is when we see that the debating soc
isn't about answers or facts or views, it's about
rhetoric, cadence, and who can get the biggest
claps.

The colleges of Oxbridge may have charitable
status. The Polytechnics never did. And nor do
the universities that they became.

Still, you should do well, you seem to have a
comparable ability to the editor of our local
rag - who, he'll have you know, is good (despite
the best anyone else will say is, well, er, yeah,
he's alright; except those who are making a bit
who tend to consider him a nice person). - to
separate fact from fantasy.

Personally I tend to consider that a free press
is essential in anything which fancies itself a
democracy. But same as when the public or
celebrities are left sat around a house with very
little of any real meaning to do they'll end up
acting just the same as homeless vagrants on
bail in hostels--playing little games, scoring
little points, fighting little fights, generally just
wasting their time slobbing around not thinking
anything of worth, bullying and threatening,
teasing and mocking, getting obsessed, so will
journalists cheapen their own freedom behind
the screens of a body which fancies them as
responsible as medical professionals! And in
the game for the same altruistic reasons!

Kid. Cambridge is Cambridge. Oxford is Oxford.
Perhaps some of the others are charities too.
But most are businesses. One might hope that
a so-called "journalist of the year" would have
looked into that and made some effort to get
their head around (ie, understand the implications
and ramifications of) it.

Then again, when I thought you were a faculty
member teaching what once was a craft, I was
getting cynical about how you're implying you'd
got a job in the state sector in a deprived area
(well, we're guardian readers aren't we, so it's
what we want to hear) when, all the time you'd
an enviable post at an independent selective
grant maintained place in the stockbroker belt.

Actually, one of our comprehensive school
Chemistry teachers was a scouser, and a
Doctor, and, more to the point, had worked as
a polymer chemist for Marks and Sparks. We
really were quite lucky to get him on board at
that level. He gave us a sense of what the old
Royal Insitution demonstrations would have
been like in the days before television.

You've been to Cambridge and learnt to talk
shit without even noticing, fluently too, which
I gather happens when any language is all you
talk. So what do you actually have to offer the
average scouse oik then? Oh, of course, that
ticket in there in the first place for the few who
can afford to stick it out there. Because you
know the ropes.

Still I wouldn't totally pass up a career in journalism.

If you can look the distraught mother of a
prostituted teen in the eye, take down her
off-the-cuff, heat-of-the-moment hysteria, and
still sleep easy knowing your own female staff
will happily sleep with marks you point them at
(personally I fail to see much difference, but
then I'm not NCTJ trained!) in the name of
getting a scoop, then you're better off as a
hack on one of the more pretentious Fleet
St dailies than you ever will be dealing with
a classroom.

Adults tend to end up conditioned to believe
what they expect. Kids have no expectations
in that way, certainly those who do have fewer.

So, whilst it depends on precisely what kind
of shit you're feeding whom, I suspect you'll
find they see straight through you in a way
that the grown-ups you've met by being such
a talented wee writer simply haven't the time
to.

Good luck bullshitting the scouse oiks Paddy.

You'll fucking need it if you're going to last a
year.

Treat newspapers like charitable institutions!

Well, yes, maybe the Catholic Herald and the
Baptist Times, because they are. As is The
Morning Star IIRC.

Now, your starter for ten: Who said "don't
ever give interviews to the press; it's like
kissing someone you know is about to rape
you"?

In all fairness though, most rapists don't
ask for money too. So in that sense I'm sure
you could argue they're more charitable than
many husbands. After all, you've just got your
column in theguardian. So you certainly should
be clever enough!

G DAEB
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