From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
   "Martha Bridegam"  wrote in message   
   news:8Iz%g.21744$6S3.13006@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...   
   > ROBBIE wrote:   
   >> "Joe Fineman"  wrote in message   
   >> news:ubqo2bjs6.fsf@verizon.net...   
   >>> The BBC claims, of course, to be both independent and non-political.  I   
   >>> was told once that its "line", if any, was to represent the left-wing   
   >>> of the government in power.  If it represents the left wing of the   
   >>> present Government, I have not noticed the fact.   
   >>>                                   -- G.O., _Tribune_, 7 December 1945   
   >>   
   >> If Orwell came on here now and commented on the BBC, you and Martha would   
   >> twit him as a Daily Mail reader and dontcha forget it.   
   >>   
   >> ROBBIE   
   >   
   > I've been flipping through Vol. XII, 1940-41 as a test, since some people   
   > consider late '40 and '41 to have been Orwell's most conventionally   
   > patriotic period -- and, no, I don't think so.   
      
   What's patriotism - even the sneering caricature idea of it that Wanky   
   Lefters carry around in their heads - got to do with it? Orwell, like you,   
   wanted to have his cake and eat it. In his case be a conservative in every   
   area of his life and a socialist at the ballot box. What would have said   
   once he saw what socialism came to mean culturally? The caravan that every   
   crack-brained fruit-juice drinker began to travel in? Let's face it, he   
   could face unpleasant facts and there as many unpleasant facts to be faced   
   in socialism as there is in capitalism. I know you've made rather an art out   
   of dodging them but believe me, Martha, they're there. The 1945 govt was the   
   best England had last century, so he got what he wanted. The nuances of the   
   socialist cultural revolution wouldn't have had him handing in his lefty   
   card either - he would have died around the time of Connolly, long before he   
   could have made the appraisal that all of us who are interested in these   
   matters have the luxury of doing now. I suppose it's just possible he would   
   have seen that the cultural revolution side by side with rampant capitalism   
   would bring out the worst results of both systems, but who knows? He would   
   have enjoyed the rise of the working class in the 60s (quite rightly so -   
   sorry I have to spell it out because you have a cartoon idea of me) but they   
   mostly got their chance through the grammar system (which they then   
   abolished and replaced with enforced mediocrity), resulting in plummeting   
   social mobility. As I say, by the time the 60s fruit had dropped he would   
   have been long dead. Which is why he's so loved to this day by cosmopolitan   
   lefties: he didn't hang around long enough to say anything awkward about our   
   mores.   
      
      
      
   Sure, he   
   > showed some prejudices that many people held then   
      
   Could you enlarge on this?   
      
      
   , and of course the   
   > famous impatience with all ideological dogmatists   
      
   You mean the intellectuals with the totalitarian minds...   
      
      
    -- but when you really   
   > look, he turns out to have been saying repeatedly during those first war   
   > years that he believed Britain could only win against fascism by defeating   
   > its own upper classes and becoming a socialist country.   
      
   Well he was wrong about that, wasn't he? He was wrong about a lot of   
   things - Dr Faustus for example :O)   
      
   And I'll tell you something else: fascism is now more on the rise in Britain   
   after ten years of democratic socialist government than it has been since   
   the 30s. Riddle me that.   
      
      
    He   
   > wrote things for publication along those lines that sound outlandishly   
   > radical by any standards, including mine.   
   >   
      
   I'm writing a radio play about it actually. A dramatization of how George   
   Realized.   
      
      
   > E.g. this, from a September 1940 review of a book called *War by   
   > Revolution* by one Francis Williams:   
   >   
   > "Mr. Williams's is one of the first of a growing army of voices, the   
   > voices of ordinary people who realise that this war cannot be fought under   
   > the old slogans  of 'King and Country,' because our chance of success lies   
   > in our recognising it for what it is, a civil war..."   
      
   Yeah, because the day before he wrote that he was sitting in Cyril   
   Connolly's flat watching London burn while fat boy said it was karmic   
   justice.   
      
      
   >   
   > Strange to think of him saying that -- I can't imagine he really meant to   
   > act on it -- but there it is in Vol. XII at the start of item 682, on page   
   > 248 of the hardcover first edition. Not a particularly Daily Mail thing to   
   > say, I don't think.   
      
   Orwell, as I do, would have seen the contradictions, poison, and hypocrisies   
   of the Daily Mail; but he would have also noted that in some small ways it   
   still contains certain elements of common sense and decency that he would   
   have recognised and appreciated in an age of moral equivalencies,   
   fruit-juice drinking and doublethink. In England these elements of common   
   sense and decency generally, if voiced, get you called a 'Daily Mail   
   reader', or 'little Englander', or even 'fascist' in this post-cultural   
   revolution situation. You are a classic example of the type of person who   
   does it. I say that it's best for children to have a mum and a dad and you   
   start yelling discrimination!   
      
   PS: I got 'doublethink' into a headline on the newspaper I work for this   
   week. I was pleased.   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)