Hornet’s Nest

I appear to have stirred up a hornet’s nest with my recent dissection of Charlie Brooker’s dire little piece in the groan the other day. Which is interesting, given that similar scathing commentary has gone largely unremarked in the past.

Anyway, first up was PigDogFucker who thinks my writing is “mediocre” and that I have misunderstood Brooker’s “satire”. Well, old bean, if mine’s mediocre, what does that make yours? I was well aware that Brooker was attempting humour. However, for satire to work it has to be both funny and clever. Brooker fails on both counts – I’ll come back to the humour in a moment.

Incidentally, while I am prepared to acknowledge constructive feedback, PDF’s feedback will be treated with the contempt it deserves; not because he likens my writing to that of Richard Littlejohn (it’s nothing like), but because of his claim that I am insane – or, more specifically, slightly less insane than Littlejohn. I don’t much like Littlejohn and I don’t agree with many of his views, but he is not insane and my mental health is perfectly fine, too. Accusing me of being mentally unstable places PDF firmly in the Neil Harding school of idiocy. Harding thinks my mental health is askew as well because I happen to disagree with him. In this case, I am apparently, paranoid, because I disagree with the Identity Cards Act. And, talking of idiots, Harding came up with this little gem:

Well I do and I agree with Brooker that hating the Tories is probably the most natural activity anybody could partake in.

Neil doesn’t do critical thinking, nor rational argument. Certainly he doesn’t allow his limited judgement to become clouded by facts, reason or logic. Even as a paid-up member of the Labour party, I didn’t hate the Tories; I disagreed with their policies. Only someone who is incredibly stupid would confuse the two.

Going back for a moment to PDF and his comments about satire:

Both of them seem distraught at Charlie’s suggestion that:

Now, even if the Standard photographs Ken carving a swastika into a dormouse’s back, I’ll vote for him…

I become distraught when someone close to me dies. I do not become distraught because Charlie Brooker writes a juvenile piece in the Groan. Get a sense of perspective, please. Brooker wrote a dire article. Had I, at the age of around twelve, turned such an article in to my English teacher, it would have been bounced back covered in red ink. She would, quite rightly, have demanded that I back up my assertions, that I follow through my arguments and that I lay off the stupid LOL cats commentary at the very least. However, this was not a twelve year old English student’s homework (despite the obvious similarity); it was an article in a national newspaper – and the Groan should be thoroughly ashamed to print such utter, utter tripe.

Moving back to the humour. I do appreciate that humour is a personal thing. What has me clutching my sides will leave another stony faced and vice versa. After all, there are people who think “My Family” is funny. However, even if you don’t find the joke funny, good humour stands out as such. Well written humour is conducted with a deft touch, lightly seasoned understatement and juxtaposition of the serious with the absurd – in short, it requires a skill Charlie Brooker clearly lacks. So, putting Brooker’s piece to the test suggested by Hot Ginger and Dynamite, let’s see how he does, shall we?

1) Is this supposed to be funny?

Yes, and it is funny. Next.

Except that it isn’t. Not even remotely. It is, in fact, a very poor over-egged effort. If you find it funny, you are probably the type of person who thinks shouting “bum” very loudly in a quiet room is funny. Or maybe you still think whoopee cushions are the height of sophisticated humour? Charlie Brooker’s humour is suffering from arrested development – arrested when he was still in short trousers. It isn’t funny, it isn’t clever and as such fails spectacularly as satire.

2) “Fisking”.

Except it’s not, it’s just writing a variant on “I hate you” under every line that Brooker’s written.

Then you were not paying attention, because, like PDF and Neil Harding you missed the raison d’etre of the critique. It wasn’t difficult to catch – indeed, it was mentioned in the opening paragraphs. And, for the record, I do not hate Charlie Brooker; I despise his bigotry.

3) Sulking and hurling accusations.

“Bigoted against Tories”. Sweet Infant Christ save me.

I don’t sulk and nor did I on this occasion. I simply deplore bigotry. Who they are bigoted for or against is irrelevant. Brooker is a bigot – he admits as much in the article. His unthinking tribalism is what I despise. I don’t much like any of our major political parties and with good reason – their policies stink (and as a consequence I really don’t care over much who wins the mayoral elections in May). That doesn’t mean that any one of them cannot come up with a decent proposal from time to time and they all have. Unlike Brooker, I can open my mind to the possibility that people with whom I disagree politically might just have something interesting to say. Unfortunately, Neil Harding, Pigdogfucker and Hot Ginger and Dynamite managed to miss that little nuance.

I’ll save the final word for someone commenting here under the name of higson prime ordinance:

hahaha Brooker’s piece sounds excellent, i’ll have to read it. Thanks for the heads up.

Far funnier and more accuratre than your desperate, angry little rant anyway.

You sound like a right twat

And you, sir, are obviously a cretin. After all, how do you know it is funnier and more accurate if you haven’t read it yet?

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Edit: Yet again, I notice that these commenters refer to me as a right-winger or “rightie”. Yet again, I will point out to the hard of thinking that I am to the economic left of all three major UK parties. I am currently where the LibDems were in about 1999.