An Open Letter to Roisín Ingle
Dear Ms Ingle,
I meant to do this a while back, ever since I picked up the Irish Times magazine a few weeks back and saw you complaining in its pages. It was a few weeks back, in which you were wondering why people who don't like your column bothered reading it. I'm not going to bother relating why I haven't got round to responding until now, 'cos it's not really very interesting.*
My special insight comes, not just from the fact that I was once one of those people, but from the fact that I'm not one of them any longer. I feel this gives me a unique perspective.
To expand: every Saturday I bought the Irish Times, and your column was one of the first things I read. I hated it. I hated it in a thorough way, a gleeful fiery hatred that came close to burning a hole through the Irish Times Magazine. Even when it was still made of that shiny paper. In fact, hatred is a gentle word for what I'm reaching for here. I used to shout at people who admitted to reading your column, and when they (quite reasonably) pointed out that I read it too, I produced the entirely baffling logic that at least I read it for the right reason. I read it because I hated it. I read it because it made me angry.
The glib thing to say here would be that it's like having an ugly and painful scab on your knee, and not being able to stop picking at it. That's not entirely true, though. Thing is... a lot of people out there just want to be happy, and see everything else as counterproductive. Me, I think that kind of happiness - that "well if I don't like it I'll ignore it" happiness, the kind that insulates itself from the world, that takes pride in remaining closed off from the truth and existing in an artificially constructed shell where only what we like is allowed to penetrate**... it's pretty overrated, I reckon. Not just because blah blah responsiblity to the wider world blah blah open your mind blah blah challenge yourself - obviously all that's true, on a remote level, but not many of us have the energy and I certainly don't.
No, there's a simpler, more visceral reason: the joy of being unhappy. Most of us discover the Joy Of Misery in adolescence, and cast it off once we get over it. This isn't because angst is a bad thing, it's because most of the stuff we get angsty about is terribly uninteresting once your body's no longer pumped full of raging, contradictory hormones.
But getting angry - there's very little more empowering, more gloriously all-encompassing, more comforting and more powerful, than anger. I could go into this in more detail, if I felt it was absolutely necessary, but I might as well just suggest you listen to Idiot Wind, watch a Bill Hicks DVD, rent out The French Connection, and read more or less anything by Kurt Vonnegut. We get angry because we choose to. Because it's wonderful. Because we can.
You might ask why the moral outrage at a weekly Irish Times column, of course. It's not that it wasn't very good - if I got angry about not-very-good column in newspapers, I'd spend my day wandering around looking like I'd just been fellated by a miniature crocodile with hydrochloric acid where its saliva should be - it was that it didn't have any reason for existing at all. David Mitchell in the Observer, he does the same sort of thing, but at least his observations are deceptively acute. Even Julie Burchill was preferable - I mean, she may have been cripplingly obnoxious and missed the point on just about everything she ever said, but at least she tried to say something. I don't think I'm being unfair when I say that 85% of your columns tend to be about what you couldn't be bothered doing last week. Why I Can't Be Bothered Attending My Guitar Classes doesn't even qualify as an article in my book, not even in a magazine that once had a two-page spread about someone complaining that too many people had white earphones on their MP3 players even if they didn't have proper iPods.
In short, it's a waste of your platform. In the article I read lately, you said that you knew how "jammy" you were to get to write about yourself. Jammy? You aren't jammy, you're privileged. You can share your view of the world with thousands upon thousands of people, and yet you choose to fritter it away with pieces about Not Putting Up Shelves. It's not that you don't have the insight, or the writing ability. I've read your other pieces in the Irish Times. They're good. You have empathy and understanding. OK, so your brief is presumably to be light 'n' frothy, but you can at least try to say something. In general, you achieved a level of pointlessness to which others could only aspire***.
There's the source of the anger. We live in a society that's so unthinkingly embracing consumerism that social justice and economics have become viewed as the same thing, and you're writing about Not Getting Your Hair Cut? Journalism's so self-referential that a supposed review of an art exhibition is invariably a piece on how difficult it is to review an art exhibition when you're babysitting your friend's kids, and this is what you choose to write about? We're actively facilitating a humanitarian atrocity in Baghdad that compares with Hiroshima in body-count terms, and people justify it on the grounds that "well the Americans buy a lot of our butter"... and this is what we get? Is this a really bad joke, or what? I mean, don't you see? And if you do see, then why the hell don't you care?
Your column didn't just ignore those things. It celebrated those things.
Yesterday, I was walking through Ranelagh, and saw a perfectly ordinary chocolate muffin in a shop window, with a sign beneath it saying "Cupcakes - as seen in Sex and the City." As seen in Sex and the City? A bloody cupcake? You might as well put the same notice on toothbrushes, or bread rolls, or the pavement. Right there, I thought, is a symptom of where we're at. We can sell things to people, not because they're good in their own right, but through association with non-existent people who eat them in a non-existent world. And the fact that the validation comes from Sex and the City makes things even worse, since it's misogynistic bilge that spends its entire running time shoving handbags in your face and then has the moral gall to tell you that there's more to life than handbags****.
A lot of people will probably read the sign and go "oh". And maybe, god help us, buy the sodding thing. I vowed never to set foot in that shop for the rest of my life, or failing that, three weeks after they've taken the sign down. I have a wholly baseless belief that you wouldn't see anything wrong with that sign, or at least nothing remarkable about it... and that was why, for at least a year, I told people that your column symbolised more or less everything that was wrong with contemporary culture. After a while, though, I began to find the anger tiring. I took the only step humanly possible, and stopped buying The Irish Times altogether. Since then, the world has become a better place. And yet I miss the days when I could summon up a righteous fury every weekend.
Anyway, you're going to go on writing about being pregnant. Well... good. Yes, lots of people will be pregnant this year, so it might seem to be yet another one of those personal diaries that pass as "columns" these days. But - well, I know bugger-all about what it's like to be pregnant. I'm not biologically disposed to the condition, so it's not like it's familiar material to me. A diary of pregnancy? All those anxieties, the throwing up in the morning, the falling in and out of love with your own body, the joy and misery and fear***** - I'm all for that, really I am. Raw, unvarnished musings on the human condition are fine by me. I don't think I could ever apply the words "raw and unvarnished" to your column, but it doesn't mean you can't do it.
So fine, do it. But for god's sake, be honest and interesting and try and say things which no-one else would say. That isn't my request, that's your bloody duty.
* You might take note of that editorial decision, by the way.
** I would expand further on this by saying that I've just described the mindset and physical nature of a Dalek, but this is targetted at a civilian so I'll hold back on the Doctor Who references this week.
*** Except for the wine column, obviously. I've got no objection to wine columns in principle, but I want the content to be more to-the-point and news-like. Essentially, "Wine's nice, and it gets you pissed without you even noticing. The following shops have stuff on sale for €5.99."
**** The handbag bit is copyright Mark Kermode, and remains the single most apposite thing he ever said.
***** I generally believe the negative emotions in the world outnumber the positive ones by roughly two to one. Probably because there's more different types. Positive emotions are generally limited to "happy", "drunk", and "half-asleep but conscious enough to masturbate".
I meant to do this a while back, ever since I picked up the Irish Times magazine a few weeks back and saw you complaining in its pages. It was a few weeks back, in which you were wondering why people who don't like your column bothered reading it. I'm not going to bother relating why I haven't got round to responding until now, 'cos it's not really very interesting.*
My special insight comes, not just from the fact that I was once one of those people, but from the fact that I'm not one of them any longer. I feel this gives me a unique perspective.
To expand: every Saturday I bought the Irish Times, and your column was one of the first things I read. I hated it. I hated it in a thorough way, a gleeful fiery hatred that came close to burning a hole through the Irish Times Magazine. Even when it was still made of that shiny paper. In fact, hatred is a gentle word for what I'm reaching for here. I used to shout at people who admitted to reading your column, and when they (quite reasonably) pointed out that I read it too, I produced the entirely baffling logic that at least I read it for the right reason. I read it because I hated it. I read it because it made me angry.
The glib thing to say here would be that it's like having an ugly and painful scab on your knee, and not being able to stop picking at it. That's not entirely true, though. Thing is... a lot of people out there just want to be happy, and see everything else as counterproductive. Me, I think that kind of happiness - that "well if I don't like it I'll ignore it" happiness, the kind that insulates itself from the world, that takes pride in remaining closed off from the truth and existing in an artificially constructed shell where only what we like is allowed to penetrate**... it's pretty overrated, I reckon. Not just because blah blah responsiblity to the wider world blah blah open your mind blah blah challenge yourself - obviously all that's true, on a remote level, but not many of us have the energy and I certainly don't.
No, there's a simpler, more visceral reason: the joy of being unhappy. Most of us discover the Joy Of Misery in adolescence, and cast it off once we get over it. This isn't because angst is a bad thing, it's because most of the stuff we get angsty about is terribly uninteresting once your body's no longer pumped full of raging, contradictory hormones.
But getting angry - there's very little more empowering, more gloriously all-encompassing, more comforting and more powerful, than anger. I could go into this in more detail, if I felt it was absolutely necessary, but I might as well just suggest you listen to Idiot Wind, watch a Bill Hicks DVD, rent out The French Connection, and read more or less anything by Kurt Vonnegut. We get angry because we choose to. Because it's wonderful. Because we can.
You might ask why the moral outrage at a weekly Irish Times column, of course. It's not that it wasn't very good - if I got angry about not-very-good column in newspapers, I'd spend my day wandering around looking like I'd just been fellated by a miniature crocodile with hydrochloric acid where its saliva should be - it was that it didn't have any reason for existing at all. David Mitchell in the Observer, he does the same sort of thing, but at least his observations are deceptively acute. Even Julie Burchill was preferable - I mean, she may have been cripplingly obnoxious and missed the point on just about everything she ever said, but at least she tried to say something. I don't think I'm being unfair when I say that 85% of your columns tend to be about what you couldn't be bothered doing last week. Why I Can't Be Bothered Attending My Guitar Classes doesn't even qualify as an article in my book, not even in a magazine that once had a two-page spread about someone complaining that too many people had white earphones on their MP3 players even if they didn't have proper iPods.
In short, it's a waste of your platform. In the article I read lately, you said that you knew how "jammy" you were to get to write about yourself. Jammy? You aren't jammy, you're privileged. You can share your view of the world with thousands upon thousands of people, and yet you choose to fritter it away with pieces about Not Putting Up Shelves. It's not that you don't have the insight, or the writing ability. I've read your other pieces in the Irish Times. They're good. You have empathy and understanding. OK, so your brief is presumably to be light 'n' frothy, but you can at least try to say something. In general, you achieved a level of pointlessness to which others could only aspire***.
There's the source of the anger. We live in a society that's so unthinkingly embracing consumerism that social justice and economics have become viewed as the same thing, and you're writing about Not Getting Your Hair Cut? Journalism's so self-referential that a supposed review of an art exhibition is invariably a piece on how difficult it is to review an art exhibition when you're babysitting your friend's kids, and this is what you choose to write about? We're actively facilitating a humanitarian atrocity in Baghdad that compares with Hiroshima in body-count terms, and people justify it on the grounds that "well the Americans buy a lot of our butter"... and this is what we get? Is this a really bad joke, or what? I mean, don't you see? And if you do see, then why the hell don't you care?
Your column didn't just ignore those things. It celebrated those things.
Yesterday, I was walking through Ranelagh, and saw a perfectly ordinary chocolate muffin in a shop window, with a sign beneath it saying "Cupcakes - as seen in Sex and the City." As seen in Sex and the City? A bloody cupcake? You might as well put the same notice on toothbrushes, or bread rolls, or the pavement. Right there, I thought, is a symptom of where we're at. We can sell things to people, not because they're good in their own right, but through association with non-existent people who eat them in a non-existent world. And the fact that the validation comes from Sex and the City makes things even worse, since it's misogynistic bilge that spends its entire running time shoving handbags in your face and then has the moral gall to tell you that there's more to life than handbags****.
A lot of people will probably read the sign and go "oh". And maybe, god help us, buy the sodding thing. I vowed never to set foot in that shop for the rest of my life, or failing that, three weeks after they've taken the sign down. I have a wholly baseless belief that you wouldn't see anything wrong with that sign, or at least nothing remarkable about it... and that was why, for at least a year, I told people that your column symbolised more or less everything that was wrong with contemporary culture. After a while, though, I began to find the anger tiring. I took the only step humanly possible, and stopped buying The Irish Times altogether. Since then, the world has become a better place. And yet I miss the days when I could summon up a righteous fury every weekend.
Anyway, you're going to go on writing about being pregnant. Well... good. Yes, lots of people will be pregnant this year, so it might seem to be yet another one of those personal diaries that pass as "columns" these days. But - well, I know bugger-all about what it's like to be pregnant. I'm not biologically disposed to the condition, so it's not like it's familiar material to me. A diary of pregnancy? All those anxieties, the throwing up in the morning, the falling in and out of love with your own body, the joy and misery and fear***** - I'm all for that, really I am. Raw, unvarnished musings on the human condition are fine by me. I don't think I could ever apply the words "raw and unvarnished" to your column, but it doesn't mean you can't do it.
So fine, do it. But for god's sake, be honest and interesting and try and say things which no-one else would say. That isn't my request, that's your bloody duty.
* You might take note of that editorial decision, by the way.
** I would expand further on this by saying that I've just described the mindset and physical nature of a Dalek, but this is targetted at a civilian so I'll hold back on the Doctor Who references this week.
*** Except for the wine column, obviously. I've got no objection to wine columns in principle, but I want the content to be more to-the-point and news-like. Essentially, "Wine's nice, and it gets you pissed without you even noticing. The following shops have stuff on sale for €5.99."
**** The handbag bit is copyright Mark Kermode, and remains the single most apposite thing he ever said.
***** I generally believe the negative emotions in the world outnumber the positive ones by roughly two to one. Probably because there's more different types. Positive emotions are generally limited to "happy", "drunk", and "half-asleep but conscious enough to masturbate".
posted by Nyder O'Leary at
18:35
4 Comments:
Oof - worse than Julie Bitchell, imagine that. Professional wind-up merchant who is regularly racist towards Irish folks outperformed by smiley lass who just wants everything to be nice...
Nyder..now that Beeb 2 are showing all of THE WIRE in its glorious detail, can we soak up a realreview re-view?
Desmond... yes. Yes we can. Good call. This week at some juncture.
You write a smarmy "open letter" to a journalist on the Internet and you don't have the balls to sign it. So "open" that you hide behind a blog. Is this the brave new world of journalistic "duty" you preach about? Who are you anyway? Did you ever consider that your anger has less to do with Roisin Ingle and more to do with your own anonymous, unfulfilled writing ambitions? Look within yourself for the answer, rather than directing it at a successful columnist in The Irish Times Magazine. That's what Roisin Ingle would say - and she'd be right.
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