Taylor Swift and The Guardian: It's clickbait but reminds us of the left's nastiness

I appreciate that today's newspapers need clickbait to get enough visitors to satisfy their advertisers. And I also understand that The Guardian would never admit to this, which means I'm going to take their editorial laying into Taylor Swift at face value:

Mr Trump realised it was more effective to target a core group than attempt blanket appeal in his campaign – but Swift worked it out first. For years, she has directed her extraordinary self-promotional skills towards cultivating a dedicated and emotional army of followers, handpicking particularly loyal fans for private listening parties and, on her latest tour, allowing members of the public to buy tickets only once they have proved their allegiance through their purchasing history. Her new album, Reputation, is not available on Spotify – anyone wishing to hear it must buy it.

The reason Ms Swift has attracted the ire of the UK's leading journal of self-righteous left-wing tripe is that she has been insufficiently strident in her criticism of Donald Trump.

Her silence seems to be more wilful: a product of her inward gaze, perhaps, or her pettiness and refusal to concede to critics. Swift seems not simply a product of the age of Trump, but a musical envoy for the president’s values.

So let's look at Ms Swift's failings (as insinuated by The Guardian): having alt-right fans, too few friends who aren't "thin, white and wealthy", being good at marketing, and not releasing her new album free to air from day one. Oh, she also challenged structural racism (the lefty idea that the oppressed can't be racist) as incomprehensible.

Until I'd read this pretty egregious editorial I'd not knowingly listened to anything by Taylor Swift - unsurprisingly I'm not target market and she is (as The Guardian notice) rather good at marketing. So, prompted by the Guardian's ire, I spent an hour listening to Ms Swift's catalogue on Spotify (except for the latest release, of course, as that's not there yet). I can see the appeal - even the bit The Guardian snarks at, saying:

Swift’s songs echo Mr Trump’s obsession with petty score-settling in their repeated references to her celebrity feuds, or report in painstaking detail on her failed romantic relationships (often, there is crossover). The message is quintessentially Trumpian: everyone is out to get me – but I win anyway.

Seems to me that, celebrity references aside, Ms Taylor's music sits right with the interests of her core audience of younger women - tales of unrequited love, snarky stuff about other girls, you really love me don't you. All this is done in a slightly country, upbeat and catchy manner - nothing too hard to listen too, simple tunes and storied lyrics. And I guess it's the stuff Ms Swift likes to sing and that her marketing team knows the audience wants to hear.

And this is great, Taylor Swift seems to be a woman on top of her business. The bit that isn't so great here is that The Guardian cannot comprehend a celebrated singer not wanting to 'do politics', despite the undoubted fact that Ms Swift's fans probably don't pay a great deal of attention to that politics. What's even odder is that The Guardian takes the view that Ms Swift's silence is, in some way, an endorsement of Donald trump - presumably on the 'if you're against him, you're for him' principle. This is really rather unpleasant - going as it does from reporting on Ms Swift saying nothing to inferring that she's only a breath away from joining far right marches. It all suggests that the newly-unpleasant left simply cannot countenance an artist that refuses to join their mob and prefers to just get on with being a rich and successful performer. And god forbid that any writer, singer or actor is conservative.

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In which The Guardian reminds us why we like Top Gear

Cars - what's not to like?

It was good of The Guardian to remind us why we like Top Gear:

Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years.

I don't know where to start with all the goodness in this quotation for it gets right to the heart of Top Gear's appeal which is to wave those two fingers made famous by English archers at Agincourt in the direction of all the spiritless, pinched, judgemental, snobbish bores like Nell Frizzell, its writer. What Top Gear provides is a brief escape from the endless dribble about climate change, from the institutionalised attack on the motor car, and from the dreary moral high ground inhabited by people who write for The Guardian and appear on Channel 4 News.

Cars are great. They sit at the heart of our civilization. Nearly 90% of journeys made are made in cars. The manufacture, sale, maintenance and support of cars is a massive slug of our economy. The modern car is a remarkable feat of engineering, filled with innovation in engine management, fuel efficiency, communications and comfort. And millions - I really mean millions, far more than ever even glance at The Guardian - enjoy the stuff that goes with cars and motor sport.

So Nell Frizzell doesn't like cars (I probably don't believe her on this one but we'll take her at her word). That is, without question, her loss. For the rest of us, we'll carry on enjoying programmes that celebrate cars and car culture, that do so with wit and charm, and that provide the tiniest piece of opposition to the endless boilerplate of green nonsense that infects our media.

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The Academies Bill or In which I agree with a paragraph in The Guardian

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Every now and then my colleague Huw draws my attention to writings within that evil rag, The Guardian. I am now strong enough to stomach short exposes to this kind of stuff so was quite delighted to read this today from Julian Glover:

This bill introduces no new brand of school; no extra cash; no anything, really, except the extension of what we already have, which was anyway the aim of the last government when Tony Blair promised "every school an independent school". That was before it became inconvenient for Labour to take the side of consumers over providers.

And there you have it – people like Fiona Millar are paid to argue the case for the producers of education services. For the people who produced a system where it’s a source of celebration when nearly half of Bradford’s kids get five good GCSEs.

So yes let’s have that school system run for the consumers of the service – children and their parents – rather than run for the continuation of producer interest. We surely can’t carry on with the sorry state we’ve got now.

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