The Max Gogarty Story
When I first saw this piece my immediate thought was that it was a spoof. Something about the ‘living at the top of a hill in North London’ didn’t quite ring true. Then, like many others I thought it must be viral marketing for tv show ’skins’. But no, it turns out this was a genuine piece of Journalism. What a spectacular own-goal by the Guardian’s travel editor. This has surely damaged the reputation of the paper. I can’t believe that they thought the obvious nepotism would go unnoticed.
What has been interesting is the way it’s highlighted the fanaticism of the CIF crowd making one wonder what really motivates those people. A real shit-storm has ensued. Though many of the comments were pretty funny (I wish I’d been following the feed during the day), I actually find myself feeling sorry for the teenage author of the original blogpost; is he himself really deserving of that level of vitriol? I mean, there’s already a very unkind fake facebook profile for him. Maybe we should all just take a deep breath.
Nepotism is a fact of life. I worked in a mail room with a father and son for a bit and I doubt whether Guardian readers would be too bothered by that. When the nepotism arouses the jealousy of a load of frustrated writers they quickly turn to inverted snobbery for comfort. Well, we’ve all been there I suppose.
That said whoever commissioned and published the piece should be ashamed. It really was a piece of crap. A very sorry episode indeed.
Funny, the morning before Max’s piece went live I was writing about the Guardian and complaining of its awful way of looking at everything from a North London point of view. Everything they write, regarding outside of this area is sneering and patronising.
I think I was not the only one to feel this way. There’s a quote, that I have since added to my blog, that suggests people are tired of this whole Muswell-Hill-centric attitude to everything. The Guardian’s whole word is its luvvy media friends.
Max got abuse but not nearly as much as the travel editor. It’s a reflection of how stale and small minded the Guardian has become that it thought the whole debacle was a good idea.
Time for a shake up there - less yoof orientated crap (no skins, no big brother), time for them to discover life outside of North London and time for them to ditch the New Labour smugness and get interested in real issues again.
Time for grit, anger and a wider perspective and time to lose this awful awful small minded crap.