Anarchy at the Guggenheim

The Edward Carpenter anniversary provides me with an extremely tangential excuse for yet another mention of our recent visit to New York. If you own the Gay Men’s Press edition of Carpenter’s prose poem Towards Democracy, you may have wondered about the provenance of this painting on the cover:

It’s ‘Il Quarto Stato’ (The Fourth Estate) by Italian painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (not da Volpe, as it says on the book). While in New York we visited the Guggenheim and saw the exhibition 'Arcadia and Anarchy: Divisionism and Neo-Impressionism'. Apparently the Divisionists (who included da Volpedo) were mostly northern Italian painters, working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom espoused anarchist and socialist ideas. The exhibition, which runs until 9th August, offers a fascinating insight into way in which politics, ideas and art came together during that turbulent period.

The exhibition is one of the few things you can actually see right now at the Guggenheim: the usually stunning exterior of the building is covered up for renovation, while most of the panels on the famous sloping walkways inside are empty.

Remembering a socialist hero

I conceive a millenium on earth - a millenium not of riches, nor of mechanical facilities, nor of intellectual facilities, nor absolutely of immunity from disease, nor absolutely of immunity from pain; but a time when men and women from all over the earth shall ascend and enter into relation with their bodies - shall attain freedom and joy....

Of that which exists in the Soul, political freedom and institutions of equality, and so forth, are but the shadows (necessarily thrown); and Democracy in States and Constitutions but the shadow of that which first expresses itself in the glance of the eye or the appearance of the skin...

The words of Edward Carpenter - poet, socialist, gay rights champion, pacifist, environmentalist - and Victorian - who died 78 years ago today (via Virtual Stoa's Dead Socialist Watch).

See here for more information Carpenter, his works and ideas.

The lost consonants of David Miliband

Norm celebrates the appointment of the first blogging Foreign Secretary. I'm a huge admirer of young Miliband and think he has the potential to be a great Labour leader when Gordon eventually retires to Kirkcaldy.

There's only one thing I find irritating about him, and that's his habit (copied from his mentor Tony Blair) of affecting an Estuarian tinge to his otherwise copybook RP/Oxbridge accent. This manifests itself most obviously in what we might call 'the nob's glottal stop.' Some years ago, The New Statesman ran a regular feature on 'the nob's pronoun': public figures saying things like 'He told my wife and I' - which were intended to sound extremely correct but were in fact deeply ungrammatical.

The nob's glottal stop has the opposite intention: of making middle-class speakers sound like 'ordinary' folk. So we get hyper-educated politicans like Blair and Miliband talking about the repor' they've just read - all righ'? I think it irritates me because I find middle-class people pretending to be working-class affected and patronising, and perhaps because (coming from a working-class background) I spent my childhood being told not to speak like that, if I wanted to get on. If I had to try hard to speak proper, why shouldn't they?

It's interesting how different forms of 'slang' have political connotations. In left-wing circles, if you want to come over as sufficiently grassroots, you just have to talk about the Labour Par'y (middle consonant absolutely forbidden). The Tory equivalent is the saloon bar slurring of the 't' into something like a 'd' sound, as in 'Thadd'll teach Blair a lesson'.

A long time ago Private Eye ran a spoof campaign to restore the missing 'n' in Roald Dahl's name. I think we need a campaign to restore David Miliband's lost consonants.

Arcade Fire wake up Glastonbury for one ageing rock fan

I didn't watch much of the BBC's Glastonbury coverage last weekend. I don't think I'm part of the intended demographic (but then again: I'm about the same age as Paul Weller, ten years younger than the surviving members of The Who, and Shirley Bassey's only a few years younger than my Mum...)

But I did see (most of) the Arcade Fire's set. I thought they struggled to recreate the richness and breadth of their usual sound against the backdrop of mud and rain, but the finale version of 'Wake Up' (which I missed, but caught up with later thanks to Youtube) was tremendous.

Watch and be amazed:

Which 'West Wing' character are you?

No West Wing obsessive will be able to resist this quiz, which assesses your similarity to characters from the much-missed show. And I can't resist sharing my result with you:





(Via the DSTs)

Thank you Tony dot com

So that's it then, he's gone. Perhaps the ex-PM can take comfort from the fact that, despite the mostly grudging farewells here at home, he'll be sorely missed on the other side of the pond. The BBC's Matt Frei reports on US dismay at his departure - 'America simply cannot get its head around the fratricide of Brother Tony in his own country' - and links to ThankYouTony.com, a website dedicated to the great man which is petitioning for him to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

An unwillingness to call things by their true name

The Drink Soaked Trots offer a useful analysis of Ian Buruma's article in today's Guardian, in which he uses sweeping generalisations to dismiss those who voice concerns about the threat posed by Islamism.

In one of my first posts on this blog, I explored the curious tendency among some 'liberal' Christian commentators (Bunting, Armstrong, Dalrymple, Odone et al) to offer apologies for Islamic fundamentalism. I saw this habit as rooted in a combination of 'post-missionary' guilt, misguided ecumenism, solidarity in the face of perceived secularist pressure, and an unconscious fascination with and envy of the 'Other' of Islam.

Buruma's article is an example of a parallel tendency among some faux-liberal secular commentators. They'll go to any lengths to avoid direct criticism of Islam or Islamism: this usually means the old trick of changing the subject to western foreign policy or (as in Buruma's piece) the shortcomings of the neoconservatives. As with their liberal Christian counterparts, it's as though head-on criticism of Islamism would be such a huge challenge to the deep structures of their worldview, that it's got to be avoided at all costs. Buruma's column today can be seen as part of this strategy of avoidance: you can almost hear the sighs of relief as Guardian readers come to the end - 'Phew! That means we don't have to be critical of Islam and can go on condemning the west instead.'

Coincidentally, David Thompson today provides an extract from a recent lecture by Salman Rushdie in which he describes the climate of intimidation that surrounded the Danish cartoons affair. Rushdie talks about the 'curious climate that we’re living in, where people are falling over backwards not to name the phenomenon that’s taking place, which is a progressive intimidation of the world in which we live' and the way in which 'things that we value a great deal are being eroded by this kind of intimidation and cowardice, and by an unwillingness to call things by their true name.'