From: RASTAMANVIBRATION@RESTNESTA.CO.JAM   
      
   Dear Edward,   
      
                           How nice to hear from you. I've always enjoyed your   
   letters, even when you've been on a 'you're changing in the wrong direction,   
   kiddo' tip. I do wish you'd tackled me last August about some of my ideas. I   
   would have been delighted and was, and always am, ready to discuss. I know   
   what it is that people don't like about my blog writing: it borders on   
   boorishness; or rather, when people don't agree with what I say, they start   
   to think of other reasons to discredit it. Boorishness will do; or, at a   
   pinch, racist.   
    As you note, you don't think I'm a racist. What a pleasant feeling it is to   
   have one of the Belsky boys as my character witness in front of Senator   
   McBridegam. I once invited her to tell me what makes me tick. She proceeded,   
   in the nicest possible way, to call me phoney. Oh Holden I though, just hold   
   on there a cotton pickin' minnit. I have invented my personality,   
   apparently; and am obsessed with the 'totemic working class habits of the   
   first part of the 20th century.' If that means I prefer Gus Elen to the   
   Fashion Band Du Jour, then yes. If that means I prefer Euphonic Rag by Scott   
   Joplin or Coontown Capers- A Negrosyncracy by Paul Dresser and Theo F More   
   to Fuck The Police by Niggas With Attitude and Boom Bye Bye in a Batty Boy   
   Head by Buju Banton, then yes.   
    I'm old fashioned in my tastes. Always have been.   
    Now can you imagine some Campus ideologue reviewing the above sentence? By   
   the thirteenth word a meteor storm of objections and political language will   
   bristling up his brain stem. And that's the problem, old cock, I realise   
   that the liberal arts have been commendeered to a lesser or greater extent   
   (depending where you look) by this moral inversion stuff. It's like a show   
   on broadway that won't end. It's Andrew Loyd Webber.  Anybody really   
   interested in the contemplation of the world ( the noblest thing, according   
   to Flaubert) will not make the kind of Bridegamista view their one and only   
   window on life.   
    Why?   
     Because as I've found myself saying in conversation recently, the world's   
   too fucking mad and bad, Horatio, to ever go marching around like a cross   
   between Stokely Carmichael and Joan Baez and saying you've got a list of ten   
   things that will get us on the Road to Utopia (with Bing and Bob replaced by   
   female actors as per the new rules and quotas, even if they're not funny).   
   Now you see that statement would be met with a volume argument that begins:   
   ' well what's your solution then? Don't you think that at the end of the day   
   socialism's given you everything and the only place you can be and what   
   about and, and...' (turns sound down)   
    That's the problem with Utopians: the self-righteousness when the new laws   
   are made; the long winded justifications when new laws have to be made to   
   sort out the mess made by the old laws. Look at Blair's face when he got   
   that Human Rights bill through in '98; look at his face now-- when he's not   
   tanning himself off Ibiza--as he has to make a raft of new laws to clean up   
   the mess caused by the '98 bill. None of the cunts will ever back down and   
   admit it. And like as not, when I'm dead and gorn, he'll be cantering around   
   the lecture halls of America still, with the Jewish piano singing a fine old   
   song in his wake.   
    Now; let us consider that: I mean the Jewish piano. My father, who has   
   Jewish lineage on one side, has no bones about calling a till a Jewish   
   piano, but those obdurate commissars at the Guardian would not be pleased:   
   the new protocals don't allow for complex irony and humour.   
    And the world's complex, and pretending to be poor and live modestly will   
   not change that.   
    When I was a Lefty - and I never mouthed PC platitudes then, believe me - I   
   had - and still have - a strong loathing of the Conservative Party, but I   
   also had this little voice in my head ('ah,' says a Guardianista with a   
   smily sneer, 'a voice, you say, in your head? Ah, I see.') asking me   
   questions about things. For a while I was where most truly intelligent   
   lefties are: i'd rather be wrong and feel virtuous or noble.' It's like an   
   inversion of where truly intellgent christians end up.   
    I hate mass capitalism and consumerism and all that caper; I hate the whole   
   corporate ID thing and factory farming and god knows what. But the   
   alternative the Left offers is more alarming to me. So that's why I'm   
   calling my blog Tertium Quid.   
    Now, let us come on to your observations about my observation of race   
   relations.   
    First let's deal with your odd assertions about me disliking Lenny Henry (I   
   do not believe I have ever commented on the man) and Trevor Phillips. You   
   say I object to Phillip's 'urbanity', which I suspect (I was going to type   
   'rather think' there until I thought that Senator Bridegam would dismiss   
   what I wrote as pastiche Jessica Mitford's old man) is your way of imputing   
   that I think he is what a certain type of southern man would call an uppity   
   nigger. I don't. First of all the word is not in my ideolect, it being an   
   American expression. Secondly your reaction is a little bit typical and   
   illutrates my main gripe against the Left: their role as policemen in these   
   matters hampers an unlimited debate; it obfuscates in other words. And,   
   since Joe Public today has been raised good and strong by the good Doctor   
   Pavlov, a few choice pejoratives by the Left, and you can close the carnival   
   down straight off. It's what Ms Bridegam and her fellow lefties did on   
   abg-o. It's what the Left the world over want to do.   
    So it is with Mr Phillips. I suspected a long time ago that he was the kind   
   of student union, follow any cause, bang any drum, go into a revolving door   
   behind you and come out in front type of politician that is now industry   
   standard in the UK. Obviously he was single issue in his agenda, and he came   
   out of that great stable of left-wingery, the television. Anyway, I only   
   suepcted he was like that, but since I've read a couple of newspaper   
   profiles of the man, my suspicions have been confirmed.   
    Your mistake is that you think I have something against him cos he is   
   black, ennit. Not so. What I have against him is that he talks an awful lot   
   of shit about black people and the black experience. I know black people who   
   think he talks a lot of shit about black people.   
    He is also a Tony Crony - that doesn't mean much more than passing   
   contempt, because Project Blair is now in its twilight: fortunes wasted,   
   pensions plundered, wars, rumours of wars, criminal behaviour out of   
   control, a New Labour aristocracy to replace the tory one, disease-ridden   
   filthy hospitals that specialise in lost paperwork and people who can't   
   speak English properly (my father who has some kind of growth on his kidneys   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)