Coming Out of My Corner

Into the Bright Lights of the Blogosphere

Let’s ring the bell for the match, shall we ? And what better way than with something you aren’t supposed to see and aren’t supposed to like. 

That’s Steve Bell’s cartoon this week, suppressed by the UK Guardian after much public handwringing in Friday’s edition. The press matters column did not reprint it so it could be held up for a vote.  

As you’ve already sussed, it’s a version of Caravaggio’s Salomé. The flood tides are open at the Guardian, and everyone is offended (all 32 of them), mainly, as far as I can tell, on behalf of Jews rather than as Jews. Mention is made by some of the recent slaughter in Nice, thus bringing French Christians into the fray. (While strangely leaving out the terrible murder of Samuel Paty, the French schoolteacher. The aggrieved parties must have been in a hurry.) And that’s exactly what it is, a fray in the public square, fray from affray, Old English for ‘feeling of alarm.’ A brawl or a fight or perhaps even a debate. Good thing, in this case, no ? 

The Guardian editor treads delicately in a perfect recitation of on the one hand journalism : “I do not believe Bell to be antisemitic or that he intended his Starmer to embody any noxious myth about Jews (‘My targets are taken on as individuals,’ he said). His stout defence of Corbyn (who was suspended after saying opponents had ‘dramatically overstated’ Labour’s problem with antisemitism) may offend, but it comes within the bounds of opinion. However, using a Jewish biblical figure who conspired against a saint was highly provocative and open to just the kind of interpretations made.”

(One might want to point out to the Guardian that at the time it occurred, John was hardly a saint - he was a rebel, and Herod, hardly a « biblical figure, » (does this mean he can’t be criticised ?) but a governor of Judea - a political operative.) 

One could laugh all day at the squeamish editor. Highly provocative is something the Guardian strenuously avoids. They know who their audience is. The Guard very occasionally brings outsiders in for that sort of thing, such as David Sirota’s warning yesterday that we we are in the middle of a slow rolling coup d’etat in the U.S. Cartoons are always a headache since they can’t be edited to say what the boss wants them to say; the NYTimes never ran them for years for precisely that reason. And now the cartoon is gone. But if you don’t read the Guard, go straight to them, Bell and Rowson are the best things there. Rowson’s latest this Friday verges on genius.

Someone’s delicate sensitivities are being offended. Being offended, like being amused, is not an argument or a rebuttal. 

There’s a lot of noisy resonance here, for a cartoon, way beyond a famous Caravaggio. Perhaps that’s what makes it so good, and got it taken down so quickly. If Starmer is Salomé, for whom did he dance when he demanded Corbyn’s head ? If I were Starmer, I’d sue Bell to get the answer to that. Is that what Bell believes, that Corbyn’s head was demanded by the State ? The historian Josephus makes it clear that the decollation of the baptist was a political affair, "lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise." While the Guardian has never forgiven Corbyn for dragging the party leftward, he remains popular in a way Starmer never will be. For Americans it’s somewhat like the Bernie/Biden split. The Guardian knows its comfort zone. 

Wildly provocative ? Is that a bad thing ? Is that something newspapers must always avoid ? Don’t our dear liberals, ensconced in their warm baths on the upper floors, realize that they’re treating the rest of us like children, unable to look at things and decide for ourselves ? Will the PC pill be ready soon ? Isn’t it better to fuck-up and learn something than always be circumspect ? As Blanche Gardin said recently, You used to go to a bar to have a good time and be a little crazy, and when you left, it was over. Now it’s on Twitter for all eternity. Is that a good thing ?

Put a spike through my head, would you ? I can’t seem to see straight today. Liberals are banning things again ? How delicate of them. At least here in France they tough it out. You don’t get the joke, too bad.

It’s a kind of fame, this outrage, and a hustle, too. And the Graun’s defense, before pulling the cartoon, is that to their knowledge Bell is not an anti-Semite. How do they intend to prove such an assertion and when did that become the issue rather than content of his cartoon ?   

Come on! a friend says to me. Nobody takes those professionally aggrieved people seriously. They go from issue to issue looking for a reason to be pissed off. They’re phonies. She may be right about that but here’s the problem : they effectively steer the debate away from what it was originally about, get their dose of fame, and move on. The debate is no longer about Starmer or anti-Semitism in the UK (about which the Guardian cannot write a sentence that isn’t a platitude) but about a cartoon. I would go so far as to suggest that anti-Semitism is ingrained in English society, and it’s only the modalities that change, if we are talking about the Labour party or the Tories or a small town in the North or South. And of course, the Graun has a grudge against Labour and never writes about the ermined Lords. Let’s hear about their anti-Semitism. Or an article written by someone not on staff about his or her actual experience where they live.  

For my two cents worth, I’d rather hang with two sturdy European observations, both out of fashion. One, the old French phrase, No one ever died from ridicule. And two, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘To scandalize is a right, to be scandalized, a pleasure.’ Like Zappa averred, You can’t say that on stage on anymore. Clearly I’m not in favor of name-calling - that’s for bullies - and I’d like to provoke some honest debate here rather than get off on the jejune riot of offending daddy, whomever he may be. 

We all need the horror of the world stuck in our faces from time to time. Got time ? In Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, there’s a moment when the archival footage scans a crowd of white protestors. The voice-over is Baldwin talking about his fear that, now that the country is built-up, some large part of America has no more need for blacks. And there he is, the angry man in the crowd holding the sign that says, ‘Who needs Niggers ?’ The director didn’t supress it or airbrush it out. He figured we could take it. I stopped the film and stared into that man’s face, into his head, I tried to understand what could motivate such a distinct, crude form of ignorance about someone you know quite well. We’ve had over 400 years to get acquainted.

And I thought of his cousin, just as white, just as working class, whom I encountered on the Brooklyn Bridge, marching in support of a young Haitian brutalized by Guiliani’s cops. Which led me to a larger debate about the differences between the two men, and how things get that way. I am in some way related to both men, and what does that mean for where I stand in the world ? I’m also related to Lindsay Graham on the great tree of life and probably closer than I know. But it’s the first image, the man in the Peck film, that drives me bonkers. It doesn’t mean I don’t look.  

You’re welcome to log on and tell me I’m full of it. But for heaven’s sake, do it with style, with a bit of éblouissance and all the other words they use on the theater posters in the métro here. 

This will have to serve as an unintentional welcome to the Substack Euro-Desk, HQ’ed in France. The Euro-Bureau, the Euro-Desk, Eyes on Europe, call it what you like. No logo as yet. Should I have one ? I’m a writer who makes journalism in between survival gigs, I’ve been in France for ten years, I’ve worked with some of the heavies, I translate as a pasttime, I do radio, I’m open to suggestions, and no, this column, both the paid parts and the free, will not be largely or regularly about UK or American media matters (such as the above about the Guardian or Peck’s film). It will, hopefully, be out there, in another Europe than the one you are accustomed to hearing about in the States. Because that’s the funny thing, right ? As we all know, you could be in the Himalayas reading this but you aren’t. Culture is stronger than technology and for most people in culture, the notional means the national. Goes for liberals as well as conservatives as far as I can see : most Americans are quite content with their clichés about Europe.  

And yes, at the risk of going on about the UK and the US when this blog is about Europe, I believe David Sirota (whose article has been picked to pieces by Guardian authorities above and below the line) and Bill Maher and all the other outliers, are correct. We are watching a slow moving coup in the United States. Will it succeed ? That’s open to question but you didn’t really think the bastard would just walk away from the highest profile job in the world, did you ? Paris 14 November 20 midi.