Hatred sells?

Via Waking Hereward comes this declaration of hatred towards England by AA Gill writing in the Sunday Times:

I don’t like the English. One at a time, I don’t mind them. I’ve loved some of them. It’s their collective persona I can’t warm to: the lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd of England.

...

The thing that seems impermeably English is, in fact, anger. Collectively and individually, the English are angry about something. The pursed lip and the muttered expletives, the furious glance and the beetled brow are England’s national costume.

A simmering, unfocused lurking anger is the collective cross England bears with ill grace. I can see it in English faces, in the dumb semaphore of their bodies. It’s how they stand and fold their arms and wait in queues. It’s why they can’t dance or relax.

I hate England - AA Gill, Sunday Times, 30th October 2005

I don't really know how to react to this rubbish. It would be easy to get angry I suppose but the content of the article is so stupid and hate filled that it fails to score even a 2 on my realityometer.

The man is not at fault for writing this article if that is what he really believes. People can and should be able to write pretty much whatever they want and then take the consequences. His editor is not at fault if he believes that the newspaper is a suitable platform for this kind of declaration of hatred, though he too should be prepared to take the consequences. What I can say is that this kind of view of large groups of people is not unique in the World and certainly not unique to England. There are those that declare their hatred for the Israelis or the Palestinians or the Muslims or the Christians. You name a large group of a few million people and there will be someone who hates the lot of them.

So where does this leave the Sunday Times as a platform for this kind of opinion piece? Will they accept articles from the many capable writers that produce nonsense about the Scottish, Irish, Asians, Americans, black people, white people and any one of a number of religions? Will they give the nod to any capable writer who wants to declare their hatred of a people as a group in the pages of the Sunday Times? I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't given that they clearly find this kind of material acceptable.

But will they? Is it to be just the English who are subjected to this kind of attack in a once respected national newspaper? If it is they we must ask the question "why just the English?" If it is not then we must ask the question "what has happened to the Sunday Times?" Either way we must now ask the question "do I wish to continue paying for it?"

Posted by John at October 31, 2005 01:41 PM | TrackBack