This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Wednesday 14 September 2016

The suit and tie bloggers have lost

A special report by Damian Thompson.

It started at the Telegraph, moved on to the Catholic Herald, the Spectator, and ever onward: the demise of the professional "suit and tie" blogger, who was actually paid for writing his or her piece for a newspaper or website. For it was discovered that the "pyjama" or "underpant" commentators, who offered their services for free, had so much more to say, even if they were never allowed out of their bedrooms.

Damian Thompson and Princess Michael of Kent

"Would you care to write a blog for us, your Majesty? Any old rubbish will do."

Originally designed as learned essays on matters of common interest, in the tradition of Bacon, Swift, Chesterton, Orwell and so many others, the professional blogs gradually declined, as people were invited to read them and comment on them. Would Francis Bacon have written a piece on whether James I ate too much custard? Would Chesterton have criticised Cardinal Vaughan's haircut? Did George Orwell have a crush on Judy Garland? No, these were heavyweight essayists.

Eddie Izzard and friends

Scarecrow, Dorothy (Judy Garland), Lion and Tin Man in the Izzard of Oz.

In the end, it was not necessary to write a full blog post in order to generate the valuable "clicks" that so delighted the advertisers. A simple one or two-word title, such as "UKIP" (mysteriously written "Ukip" by the Telegraph), or "Islam", or "David Cameron", or - in the great days of "Holy Smoke" blogs - "Vincent Nichols", would guarantee pages and pages of mouth-foaming nonsense, as shelf-stackers, donkey-obsessives, drunken journalists, sinister deacons, bad-tempered Australian grandmothers, mollusc-molesters, implausible priests, and perverts from Stockport would tumble over each other as they rushed to issue insults, to suck up to the blog's author, to dump the contents of their brains, to explain why the Catholic Church was damned and they alone were saved, or to tell tedious anecdotes about life in Adelaide. Or perhaps it was just one person using an army of sockpuppets.

Of course, an army of semi-literate "muddlerators" was required to keep them in order. Sometimes the blog author himself was muddlerated, sometimes rival bloggers would drop in to join the fun.

Pope Francis and computer

"I see they've moderated my comments about giving communion to adulterers."

Curiously, the Guardian, a newspaper that will be totally forgotten by about 2025, took an entirely different approach. To write for Comment Shall Set You Free, you had to buy into the liberal consensus, where men could become female just by putting on a dress, where an abortion was considered to be every woman's dream, where Shami Chakrabarti was actually taken seriously, where a man could marry another man - or his mother - or indeed his pet hamster, and where Keith Vaz was regarded as a saintly character of irreproachable morals. Then, any comment below the line other than "I agree with you, Fr Fraser" (or whoever the writer was) was rewarded with instant banishment and accusations of "hate crime". But nobody read the Guardian so it didn't matter.

The fate of "professional" bloggers was inevitable. The best writers went off and wrote their own spiritually nourishing blogs, in a world where deadlines did not exist, the writer was not obliged to produce any old tosh if he or she didn't feel like it, and no money changed hands. Hence there were casualties among the professional bloggers: Fr Dwight Longenecker's family starved to death when his own blog was drowned in a sea of rivals; Fr Zuhlsdorf had to sell coffee to make ends meet; and as for that huge army of brilliant Telegraph bloggers - Thompson, Delingpole, Hannan, Hough, Mary Riddell no not Mary Riddell - they disappeared without trace. Although sometimes you may see Ed West selling matches in Trafalgar Square; he still wears a suit and tie.

Daniel Hannan

"You will leave the EU..." Hannan has a new career as a stage hypnotist.

P.S. Comments are welcomed. They're usually better than anything I have to say, anyway.

12 comments:

  1. How fortunate were those commentators who had a large supply of underwear to comment in. Some of us could never put a pair of Victorian bloomers on the washing line without seeing them disappear into the potting shed with Phil Evans the Stockport Stalker. Given his frequent whinging about "lacy vestments on servers" I can only assume he used them to store his mollusc shells.

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    1. So that's his name? It was unnerving sometimes the unwanted attention he gave our blog.

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  2. No Comments, lately, on Cardinal Hyphen, Vince "The Guvnor" Nichols, or "The Vatican's Latest Wheeze".

    Does one begin to suspect that Eccles is no longer wearing a Suit and Tie ?

    We need to know.

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  3. That's an outrageous slur: I don't wear a suit and tie and hang around Trafalgar Square. In fact I'm normally found in my local park drinking Tyskie and wearing tracksuit bottoms.

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  4. "...shelf-stackers..."

    Quick question from the USA. Is that some sort of limey term for cross dressers? You folks have such colorful phrases that I thought this might be another one. sorta like "...and, bob's your uncle..."

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    Replies
    1. No, they put cans of baked beans onto the shelves in supermarkets. When they're not giving lengthy sermons on Catholic doctrine. I may have someone in mind here.

      Delete
  5. Eccles do I detect you are getting a bit ratty?

    Try more Eccles Cakes.

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  6. Feeling thoroughly spiritually nourished after reading this, Eccles. Is it your prose or the Monteverdi on the headphones?
    I want a pair of those Swiss Navy computer holders like the Pope's. I'll even iron their shirts for them.

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    Replies
    1. Well the Swiss Navy must defend the border of their lakes from, dunno, fish attacks. No wonder they have manpower for tasks like being the living furniture of the Pope. The Pope pays.

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  7. What I don't like is when the suit and tie blogger - or paid columnist in this particular instance - steals from the regular unpaid blogger. I am the least of them all but even I sometimes have a bit of an insight in certain areas...and someone just took one of them...in a big way...got paid for it, got myriad comments and lots of proverbial pats on the back. I'm thinking of commenting on it myself but I'm trying to be more charitable these days.

    When an unknown says something sensible no one pays attention because they're no one. However let someone famous say it (and I KNOW I wrote it first...as in a long time ago and continually up until at least last week) and people fall all over themselves agreeing, commenting and wanting that person to say it on TV.

    I'm thinking of moving to the jungle in Ecuador...which BTW is 85% Roman Catholic and has NO ABORTION. Keep my ideas to myself because I don't speak Spanish. Have no Internet. Then the paid columnist will have to find someone else to copy, to plagiarize from, etc. They'll have to think for themselves. That must be hard for them.

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