Guardian Angle: Binge Britain

I'm in the Guardian again today, a Comment piece that had been pinging around in my head while I was living in England. The premise: The Brits don't have a problem with binge drinking. Well, they do, but that's just because they have a problem with binge everythinging.

So, welcome to any Guardian readers who have washed up here at my blog. I'm afraid it's a little stale, given that my day job has reaffirmed its primacy in my life. And that job is as a columnist at The Washington Post. Most of what you'll find here in Voxford are impressions of the 10 months I spent living in Oxford. I hope my affection for your scepter'd isle comes through (even if the Daily Mail did infuriate me).

I'll actually be in Oxford this weekend, where I hope to do a little bingeing of my own. Pint of Old Hooky, please, barman. Oh, make it two....

Waste Not, Want Definitely Not

No entry today--it's May Blog Holiday here in the UK--but I offer a commentary I have in the Guardian today on, well, dog crap.

He Shoots, He Scores: The Brave New Web

I am happy to report that after nine months at Oxford studying citizen journalism I have decided absolutely nothing.

No, that's not entirely true. I've learned a lot and arguably even formed a few opinions. (I sketched some of them out recently in a guest post at Kyle MacRae's Frontline Club blog.) But the main impression I have is of an industry--journalism--in a state of flux that is, depending on your particular outlook and constitution, either nauseating or exhilarating. Or a bit of both.

We're making the rules up as we go along. And how else would we do it? I'm reminded of James Naismith and the game he refined over years: basketball. Here's a great video re-creation of what that process may have been like. Naismith started out with peach baskets nailed to the wall rather than string nets around stiff metal hoops. The baskets still had the bottoms on them, until someone had the idea to cut them off. (Thus depriving some poor unskilled worker of a job: the ladder-climbing basketball basket-emptier.)

I know I'm stretching the analogy past the breaking point--traveling, you might say--but journalism today
probably hasn't cut the bottoms off its digital peach baskets. ("Digital Peach Basket": the new album by Moby.) That we're still finding our way is evident in two stories in today's Guardian. Reader' editor Siobhain Butterworth writes about altering, updating and correcting the paper's stories on the web. I don't completely understand the genesis of the column--something about a freelancer wanting to add material to an already-published piece--but I buy her central argument: You can't go around "invisibly" correcting/changing web stories, even if technology allows you to do just that.

Another issue is raised in a story about newspaper-sponsored blog sites. The Daily Telegraph allows anyone to start blogging under its umbrella (even me; I did it to test the process). Some 20,000 people have signed up and the Guardian points out that a few Telegraph readers have used the forum to promote the racist British National Party. What responsibility does the newspaper have? The Telegraph's Shane Richmond stirs up plenty of debate in his blog posting on that issue.

The irony is that the Guardian's Comment Is Free section is chockablock with vituperative backbiting of a most disagreeable nature. The Guardian points out that those sorts of comments are posted by readers in reaction to sanctioned bloggers and that the remarks are moderated (as are MyTelegraph's; and both sites allow readers to report posts they find beyond the pale). I suspect the Telegraph thinks this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

But, see, this is us experimenting to see what works. Years from now we may look back and think it was crazy to host reader blogs, or we may wonder what all the fuss was about.

Video Killed the Internet Star
I was curious what sort of video quality my Canon compact digital camera was capable of, so I shot a couple of events this weekend. And, being the compleat digital journalist, I stuck them on YouTube. Here's some of the Summertown Street Festival (the fast-mo, slow-mo is an "arty" effect I added in iMovie):



And here's a bit of the Oxford Town & Gown 10K:




While I wouldn't want to use the camera to shoot an Indiana Jones movie, the quality's not too bad. And note that as of 9:30 this morning about a dozen people had watched each. True, that's not very many, but it's amazing that anyone watched them at all, given that I just slipped them into the great vat of YouTube content. There's probably a Long Tail point to be made here.

Stop Your Sobbing
Don't forget: "Flat Earth News's" Nick Davies, speaking in Cambridge tonight. I'll be there too.

Tesco A-Go-Go

There is an interesting series of articles in the Guardian today about the Tesco supermarket chain and its legal battles with that newspaper. The Guardian simultaneously apologizes for mistakes it made in a February story about Tesco and criticizes the company for being sneaky.

Here's what happened: In February the Guardian's Ian Griffiths wrote that Tesco had avoided paying close to 1 billion pounds of corporation tax. Five weeks later Tesco sued for libel, arguing that the Guardian had shown "an utter disregard for the truth or falsity" of the claims. Griffiths and the Guardian then worked to figure out if they'd gotten anything wrong and decided they had: Tesco had really avoided paying 100 million pounds in something called Stamp Duty Land Tax. So, the paper was wrong about the specific tax and off by a factor of 10. It clarifies and apologizes in the paper today.

The Guardian also explains what went wrong. And, though bloodied, the paper remains unbowed. It offers what might be called the "It's so complicated no one could understand it" defense. This is not necessarily a good defense. If the accounting machinations involved are truly so complex should the Guardian be trying to untangle them? Should it be going to press without a firm grasp of the pesky details?

The paper would probably argue it did think it knew the truth. In any case, Tesco wasn't much help, a story explaining the reporting methodology reports. The company only answered a few of the reporter's questions while he was working on the article. Tesco's position seemed to be: "Nothing to see here, move along." That's the sort of attitude that enrages journalists. And makes them suspicious. Today's Guardian stories claim that Tesco was doing all it could to reduce paying tax that Parliament wanted such companies to pay, tax due to Her Majesty's government. The paper was wrong on some of the details but correct in its bigger point.

The best overview of the issues involved is a well-argued editorial in the Guardian. It admits that what Tesco did was legal but proposes that it probably violates the spirit of the law. In any event, what matters, the leader writer says, is that such issues be transparent.

The Guardian made a mistake. It offers a kind of whingeing explanation/apology. And yet I applaud its refusal to back down. A newspaper's reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, but that shouldn't stop it from stretching.

Friday Grab Bag: Spare the Rod Edition

The tabloid press in Britain love nothing more than a good penis-severing tale--and, really, who doesn't?

Early stories this week on the Sun web site about Londoner Alan Reed said his penis had been removed by unknown assailants while Reed vacationed in the Dominican Republic. The Daily Mail on the other hand--claiming the first interview with Reed's fiancee--maintained that his penis had "only" been slashed. Facts are often hard to come by in the frenzied first hours of a major news event and no one wanted to be caught napping on this major manhood-related story.

The dust has now settled, though, and we can assess the damage. "Man's penis was 'attacked'" reads the headline in the Sun. "A British holidaymaker is recovering in hospital after strangers apparently attacked his penis, leaving him in agonising pain from two large gashes," reads the lede. Police chief Robert Contreras said: “We are investigating this as an assault but it’s a very strange one and something that’s not at all commonplace in our country.” (Good thing. That would be awful for tourism: Come to the Dominican Republic and leave your penis with us.)

Not so fast, says the Daily Mail in its story, headlined "British Bobbitt: 'I will soon be back in full working order.'" Apparently Reed may have fallen on or swum over "razor-sharp coral" and injured himself unknowingly.

What's clear is that Reed was drunk out his mind at the island resort and has no memory of what happened before waking up in his hotel room soaked in blood. "I've told the police what I can, but to be honest it's not a lot," said Reed. "The whole thing is just one big blank." Luckily, his groin isn't.

Reed may want to avoid vacationing in Italy, not because of knife-wielding assailants or razor-sharp coral but because of a ruling by that country's highest court. Men may no longer touch their genitals in public, a superstitious act that is meant to ward off bad luck. According to the Guardian: "The judges said such actions risked generating 'awkwardness, disgust and disapproval in the average man,' unexpectedly perhaps failing to mention the average woman."

Cocaine has been washing up in Cornwall. Bales of the drug may have been dumped from a boat chased by U.S. or U.K. drug enforcement agents and may have ridden the current all the way from the Caribbean. Some are marked with the word "Colombia" and have a street value of 1 million pounds. The cocaine makes an interesting change from the oil and trash that normally washes up in Cornwall.

Meet Cindy, a cavalier King Charles spaniel who, according to the BBC, can balance objects on all four paws while lying down. "Put the effort in, get your dog some intelligence, get it to understand [and] you will have yourself a better, more fun dog." said owner Ron Bucknell, 75. Having watched the video, I'm not convinced.

From stupid dog tricks to stupid police tricks: Two police officers in Wales were forced to resign after superiors learned they had been using their patrol car to drive to beach resorts. They were members of a group nicknamed the "Seaside Five" who competed to see who could drive furthest from the station. They were caught after their car broke down far from where they should have been. Their mobile phones were examined and found to contain beach photographs, including "a picture of the group riding a log flume." I just love that image. Can't you see all five of them stuffed in a log flume, their hands up in the air, their helmets on?

Wherever women's breasts may threaten public safety we will find the Daily Mail. British television hostess Susannah Constantine had a near-wardrobe malfunction while in New Zealand and the Mail was there to document it: "The 44-year-old's lacy bra appeared to be making a bid for freedom while her cleavage spilled over in all the wrong places," hissed the paper.

But wait, what's this? The Mail is fighting a two-front war. No longer content just to scrutinize women's bosoms it has identified a new threat: "Are backs the new cleavage?" asks the paper. Is no one safe? Vigilance, vigilance....

Gargoyle of the Week: When Pigs Fly


Well, boars actually. Knowing my affection for gargoyles, my daughter Gwyneth snapped this porcine example while in Barcelona with her Spanish class.

Explained Gwyneth: "It was taken in the Cathedral of Saint Eulalia where there is a courtyard where 13 white geese are kept because Eulalia was apparently 13 when she became a martyr during the Roman occupation under Diocletian. Not to be confused with the other Saint Eulalia from another part of Spain. One of them was killed by being rolled down a street stuck in a barrel with knives sticking into it, but sources vary on which one it was."

A barrel with knives sticking into it? Those Romans were nothing if not inventive.

Thanks for reading. Keep sending your cards and letters and have a great weekend.

Media Monday: I Divorce Thee

Proof is what separates good journalism from crappy journalism and so let me retroactively apologize for my blog post of a few weeks ago where I criticized British newspapers for printing questionable stories based on self-serving research (last item). I didn't include any specific examples.

I knew, though, that one would come along eventually and sure enough a nice illustration appears in the Guardian today. The story, by legal editor Clare Dyer, is headlined "Mid-life crises pushing couples to divorce, survey of lawyers finds." The article begins: "Growing numbers of people are divorcing because of 'mid-life crisis,' a survey of 100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales reveals today."

The quote marks around "mid-life crisis" are just one clue to how wispy this story is. "Mid-life crisis"? That's not a scientific term, not even as precise as "adultery," which at least is a definable act. And in fact infidelity was the most common cause of marriage breakdown--"for the survey's fifth year running"--with "mid-life crisis" on the rise and coming in second. Family strains were third most common.

Funnily enough, there were no quote marks around "family strains." Would a mid-life crisis cause a family strain? Could a family strain lead to infidelity? The story is a mess all around, the data useless for anything more than a frosty, intraspousal breakfast table discussion. Extramarital affairs as a reason for divorce were listed in 29 percent of cases, down from 32 percent a year ago. Surely those three percentage points are within the margin of error. And is that 29 percent of all U.K. divorces or just 29 percent of those reported by "100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales"? Why even bother to release something so squishy?

The reason becomes apparent in the third paragraph: The "survey" comes from chartered accountants Grant Thornton and the first quote, in the fifth graph, is from the head of the firm's London matrimonial practice. To me the survey looks like an ad for Grant Thornton wrapped up in the guise of news. And the Guardian leapt on it like Michael Jackson on a Cub Scout.

They're not the only ones. I'm sure by day's end the story will be everywhere over here. That was the case with previous iterations. Last year's news was that private investigators were being hired more often in divorce cases. In 2005 the BBC headlined its story: "Affairs 'main reason for divorce.'" Browsing the coverage of this dubious survey from the last few years we can assemble an Infidelity Metric. Here are the percentages of marital breakdown caused by affairs:
2007: 29%
2006: 32%
2005: 29%
2004: 27%
2003: 29%

To me the headline isn't that there's been an increase in mid-life crises--whatever they are--but that, amazingly, every other year exactly 29 percent of divorces are due to affairs. According to 100 leading English and Welsh divorce lawyers, anyway.

I called Grant Thornton to ask if this annual survey wasn't just a big ad for its services. Of course not, said spokesperson Dee Crooks. "If we were a law firm, you could argue it was 'Come to me, come to me,'" she said. "But [clients] have got to go through a lawyer. We have relationships with lawyers, which is why we survey lawyers. We’re really down at the end of the line. We’re accountants. "

Okay, so a little story like this isn't the end of the world. God knows I've put lipstick on a pig before. But the practice is so common over here that you might think editors would simply bin these press releases when they come in, even those impressively marked "Embargoed until 00.01 hours, 25 February," as this one was. I think stories like this would fall under the "churnalism" heading Nick Davies is on about.

Why Newspapers Are Dying
British presswatcher Adrian Monck had an interesting post a few days ago about why newspapers are withering. It has nothing to do with journalism, he said: "The problems journalists are confronting are to do with the changing social habits of people who once purchased newspapers and were thus appealing to advertisers."

I can't tell whether he thinks the product needs changing--he sort of suggests it doesn't--but surely he doesn't believe we can change peoples' social habits instead?

Water, Cool Clear Water

When I was a boy my father used to sing me cowboy songs. These songs often involved cowboys coming to bad ends: bleeding to death after a shootout or dying of thirst out in the desert. You know: cheery little ditties perfect for pondering as you drift off to sleep. I decided early on that if ever I were to become a cowboy I would carry an extra canteen and a styptic pencil.

The best song was "Cool Water." Like many good cowboy songs, it's sung to a horse. Mirages tempt a cowboy and his trusty beast, Dan, as they trudge through the range: "Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water, cool clear water." The listener can't help thinking the pair are going to give up, their bleached bones discovered years later when the interstate is put through or the Sizzler steak house thrown up.

I thought of Old Dan and the cowboy when I saw this story about how restaurants in Britain are being urged to serve tap water, rather than charge for bottled water. (Or, as I'm convinced happened to me the other day, charge for tap water they put into a bottle.)

In a country that puts the "surly" in "service," the restaurateur's disdain for free tap water is what bugs me the most. Ask for nothing and you will receive nothing. Ask for water and you will receive a bottle of water (one pound fifty at the last restaurant I ate in: $3). Ask for tap water and you will be given a withering look of disgust, as if you just wet yourself. In a country almost comically obsessed with "being green" it's strange how people would rather drink water out of little bottles with a big carbon footprint than quaff the liquid that comes out of the pipes.

Well, perhaps this campaign will make a difference. Old Dan and I will do our part and stick to tap water. Either that or cut the top off a cactus and suck the juice out.

Come Don't Fly With Me
Dueling announcements from various governments about making flying "safer" make me consider using a rowboat to next cross the Atlantic. Yesterday the Guardian had a story headlined "Bush Orders Clampdown on Flights to U.S." (Putting "Bush" in the headline is guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of Guardian readers.) The European Union is upset at American demands that armed U.S. air marshalls be allowed on flights originating in Europe and that passengers provide detailed information even if they're just overflying the country.

Today's front page news in The Post that European countries may require fingerprinting for U.S. travelers almost sounds like a tit for tat but it's more tat for tit, given that the U.S. already requires fingerprinting and photographing. Treating everyone as a suspect will continue to do wonders for America's standing in the world. Why don't we just tell people we don't really want them to visit?

More Cowboys
Now I have cowboy songs on my brain. "El Paso" by Marty Robbins is a good one. The song about an ill-fated romance with lovely Mexican beauty Felina has that great lyric: "Something is dreadfully wrong for I feel a deep burning pain in my side." (Or, as Marty Robbins sang it, "my siiiiIIIIIiiiiiiiide.") Yes, unnamed protagonist, that means you've been shot.

Then there's one of the saddest songs my father used to sing, "Streets of Laredo." A cowboy--"wrapped in white linen, as cold as the clay"--lays dying in the street. It's a cautionary tale, as the dying hand admits to his misdeeds, tells the passerby to notify his next of kin and even makes his own detailed funeral arrangements.

Cowboys really knew how to live back then and they sure knew how to die.

Super Duper

I find it somewhat ironic that I had to move to England to see the most thrilling Super Bowl in recent memory. Of course, I could have stayed in the U.S. and seen it too, and without having to stay up till 3 a.m.

But then I would have missed seeing how the Brits cover an American sport. Actually, there wasn't much difference. The play by play was by Dick Stockton and color was by former wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. They may have held back on some of the minutiae--they were providing what the NFL called the "international feed"--but they assumed more than basic knowledge on the part of the viewers.

In the booth were "U.S. Sports Journalist" Mike Carlson and former Raider and Raven Rod Woodson, along with a BBC guy with a haircut. They did explain things occasionally, especially what must be the hardest thing for newcomers to grasp: the down system. The trio had a lot of air to fill, since there aren't any commercials on the BBC. We missed the ads (please tell me: Which were the best?).

The on-screen graphics during play were a little spotty. They had the first-down line marked in yellow but didn't always mark the line of scrimmage. And they kept a big arrow-shaped graphic that read "1st and 10" or "2nd and 7" up throughout each play, not just until the ball was snapped. Distracting. (To see how the NFL is hoping to colonize Britain, go to www.nfluk.com.)

But, all in all, an enjoyable, if exhausting, experience. I don't recommend eating nachos as 2 a.m.

My daughter noticed that there were no shots of cheerleaders, though. You would have thought University of Phoenix Stadium was a no-cheerleader zone. I wondered if the NFL was cooling the rah-rah for the international feed, not wanting to offend international tastes. "Yeah," she said, "that might not go over well on Al Jazeera."

I thought Tom Petty was great, by the way. America leads the world in Tom Petty Production and that's something to be proud of.

Brooker No Dissent
Charlie Brooker has a great column in the Guardian every Monday, a hilarious collection of spleen and bile. Today's is about his idea for a celebrity death service. Not entirely original, as some of his commenters point out, but Brooker describes his idea so beautifully that you may want to sign up. (His column a few weeks ago about tangling with the norovirus nearly made me spew milk out my nose. And I wasn't even drinking milk.)

On a more thoughtful note, one of the Guardian's U.S. correspondents, Gary Younge, has an interesting column about the political aristocracy that seems to have America in a stranglehold. And in a sneak peak from his new book, Nick Davies explores "Flat Earth News": stories in the media that either aren't true or are based on PR material. A study he commissioned from Cardiff University found that 80 percent of the UK stories they studied were "wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry." He calls this "churnalism."

I've noticed this in the British press. It seems much more willing to do stories--often short ones of no consequence, seemingly just to fill space--on dubious studies commissioned by some corporation or public interest group. They're often quite silly: Things like "survey respondents would most like to go on holiday with Tony Blair," said a study sponsored by a...travel agent.

The Darwin Awards: Can You Canoe?

I usually save my BritNews RoundUp for Fridays, but the case of John Darwin, the amnesiac canoeist/insurance fraudster, has taken too many twists and turns for me to wait. I love this story for what it says about human nature, the English psyche and the British press.

You'll recall that earlier this month Darwin walked into a police station and announced "I think I am a missing person." He had disappeared five years ago while paddling a boat in the North Sea. (A kayak, not a canoe, as the Guardian's Tim Dowling points out in a delightful story today.) His wife, Anne, and their two sons grieved for him, then she cashed in his life insurance. A month and a half ago she sold her property in the north of England and moved to Panama.

The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror have had the best--by which I mean the most obsessive-- coverage of the case, which appears to have been hatched by Darwin at a time when he was distraught about financial troubles. Both papers have been utilizing a reporter named David Leigh, who works in Miami for a news agency called Splash. The case turned when a curious "single mum" (as the tabs here called her) typed "John," "Anne" and "Panama" into Google and found a photo of the Darwins posing in Panama just last year. The police say they've been suspicious for a while.

John Darwin has been arrested and faces two charges, including giving false information for a passport. (He obtained one under the name of "John Jones." How's that for imagination?) And Anne Darwin was detained even before getting off the plane that took her from Atlanta to Manchester yesterday. Police boarded it and a flight attendant made an announcement requesting Darwin to please come forward.

The Mirror has a great video today of Anne Darwin's final flight. Here's Anne pacing at the airport. Here's Anne looking out the window of the plane. Here's Anne being led away by police. It's a combination of the banal (the flat announcement of the Delta pilot after landing in the U.K.) and the bizarre (the heavily-armed police escort).

The Mail has been especially proprietary about the story, headlining its article today: "It's All Over: The Moment the Mail Handed Mrs. Darwin Over to Armed Police." Thank you, Daily Mail, for keeping us safe from mousy, gray-haired, insurance-scamming former doctor's receptionists.

The Mail also ended its story with this tag: "Mrs Darwin did not seek, or receive, any payment for her interviews with the Daily Mail." The fact they printed that shows just how common the practice is in Britain. If the Darwins are smart, though (and, given the evidence, there's no reason to think they are), they'll figure out a way to parlay this into some money later on.

But what of the sons? Did they know? No, they said, in a statement that I love for its northern Englandness: "How could our mam continue to let us believe our dad had died when he was very much alive?" ("Our mam"--it could only have been even better if they'd said "our da.")

Even though Darwin's story was pretty preposterous from the start, didn't you for an instant wonder about it? Didn't you put yourself in his position and contemplate what it would have been like if you'd been away for five years, vanished without a trace? I know I did. In fact, I often do. My dropping-out-of-society fantasy always involves being on a tropical island of the sort Steve McQueen washed up on in that weird interlude in "Papillon," where he lives with a hot topless chick who serves him fresh mango every morning.

John Darwin's sojourn wasn't quite so scenic. He supposedly was gone for a year (the last shred of mystery to be revealed?) then moved back into his house in Hartlepool, a seaside town most famous for being the site of a bizarre monkey-hanging incident during the Napoleonic wars. He lived with his wife, scurrying into a hidden room to avoid discovery, occasionally walking on the beach disguised by a woollen hat and a fake limp. Jason Bourne this guy ain't. He allegedly had a dalliance with an American woman he met on the Internet (another knife in Anne's heart, no doubt), but the woman was from... Kansas. I don't imagine there was much topless mango-serving involved there.

Well, it's all been fun while it lasted. Too often we're bombarded by stories that don't have closure: Where's Osama bin Laden? When will the troops pull out of Iraq? Why can't our children read/jobless work/planet cool down/celebrities detoxify? But in a little under two weeks Canoe Man, Canoe Wife, the Canoe Kids and all the other Canoe characters have unspooled their tales with perfect timing. Armchair detectives such as you and I have sifted the evidence and come to our own conclusions, feeling smug and satisfied when our darkest suspicions were confirmed.

I can't wait for the movie, though perhaps on opera would be even better.

One final observation: I can't look at photos of John Darwin without being reminded of Philip Roth.

Friday Grab Bag: Xmas Wrapping Edition

I like to think that I invented the practice of newspapers giving away free wrapping paper. Back when I was editor of The Washington Post's Weekend section I was casting around for what to do as a cover story on the Friday closest to Christmas, a story no one would read anyway, so busy would they be preparing for the holiday. I decided to have an artist create a wrapping paper design which we would print in the central double-truck position. The following year, we made it a contest, inviting children to send us their designs and printing our favorite.

I thought of that this week while reading the Guardian. They asked five high-profile artists to design wrapping paper, which they've been printing all week. The first was by Mark Wallinger, who just won Britain's Turner Prize. Wallinger is one of those artists who bugs people who prefer their artists to be, like, artistic. He's best known for his work "Sleeper," which is a two-hour video of him wandering around an empty Berlin gallery dressed in a bear suit. The piece he won the Turner for was "State Britain," a painstakingly accurate re-creation of a protest camp set up outside the Houses of Parliament by a peace campaigner against the Iraq war. Wallinger and his assistants redrew every poster, banner, flier, sign, sourced every teddy bear and wooden cross. Again, the sort of thing that drives people who like their artists to have original ideas and be able to draw crazy.

But what was his wrapping paper like? It was the words "Jesus Christ" set in a sans serif typeface of about 12 points and printed hundreds of time on the sheet of white paper, alternating in red and green (detail above). At least it looks like wrapping and it coyly toys with the reason for the season. I think it's my favorite of his works and I own one of the limited-edition prints. Well, limited to 400,000.

Heavy-hitter Louise Bourgeois contributed a swirly red-and-white pattern that will at least look good around a box. Handwritten in the white bits of her design are such words as "hours," "minutes," "years" and her own signature.



Also this week was a design by R.B. Kitaj. His design was a crudely sketched face, a bit Chagall-like in its choice of colors to my untrained eye.



Then there's today's design:


It's by a collage artist named Barbara Kruger and it consists of a B&W photo of a blindfolded face imprinted with the red words "Blind idealism is reactionary." Makes me want to enjoy my Christmas pudding!

The mistake the Guardian's editors made in this project was accepting whatever the artists gave them. I'm sure they're all good artists. They obviously want to provoke thoughts. ("'Blind idealism'? Does that mean my belief in Santa Claus or my support of George Bush?") But use the medium you were given, folks. This wasn't a poster contest. Only Wallinger and Bourgeois created anything that plays with the wrapping paper form. The other two just dashed something off. (I didn't buy the Guardian yesterday so I didn't see Gary Hume's design. I had to buy the Daily Mail for its "canoe man" coverage.)

It was always hard picking the winning kid's design at Weekend, but there was always a clear winner, one that had a design that was attractive to look at in its entirety but also worked when wrapped around a bottle of perfume or a paperback book. We got our designs for free. The payment for the kids was the honor of being published. I hope the Guardian didn't pay too much for their designs.

BritNews RoundUp
I wonder what kind of wrapping paper the Daily Mail would print? Scantily-clad elves, no doubt. This week their cutting-edge journalism included a story on what sort of underwear men want their women to wear. (I'm thinking "clean," but what do I know?)

I couldn't find a good Daily Mail breast story this week, but the News of the World gamely filled in, asking the question that has occupied U.S. intelligence agencies ever since they finished their Iran nuclear weapons report: Are Victoria Beckham's boobs shrinking?

Speaking of weapons of mass destruction: A social club in Devon has reprimanded a 77-year-old member for farting too much in their midst. Said the flatulent Maurice Fox: "I sit by the door anyway and try to get out when I can. But sometimes it takes me by surprise and just pops out." I hear you, Maurice. Unfortunately, I also smell you.

Here are some words you never want to see in the same news story: "penis," "firefighters" and "mini hand grinder." Yes, it's this week's episode of Britain's favorite game show: Sex With Inanimate Objects. Don't worry, there's a happy ending.

Stone Carving of the Week


This gob-smacked fellow, and 11 others, gazes out from around the Sheldonian Theatre. The heads are huge, almost three feet high.

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading. This is a bit of a stealth operation so links, and comments, are always appreciated.

Renault & Racism: Just Say 'No'

Here's the headline on an ad for French automaker Renault on Page 10 of today's Guardian: "FOR TEN DAYS, WE CAN'T USE THE 'N' WORD."

There are plenty of words that begin with the letter "n" but there's only one "n-word." I don't have to spell it out, right? It's an ugly racial epithet the utterance of which will not endear you to anyone with an ounce of sensitivity. Of course, Renault would never use that word. So what n-word do they mean? Here's the complete text of the ad:

No. There, we said it
But that's the last time you'll hear it for a few days.
Between the 9th and the 18th of November,
we've instructed all our dealers not to use the 'n' word.
With unprecedented deals across the range, we're just going
to keep saying yes.
Visit renault.co.uk for details of your local Renault showroom
and for a precious few days, see if you can get us to utter
that naughty little word.

Ha ha! Renault and its advertising agency, Publicis, are just having a little fun. They want you to think they're referring to that n-word. They want you to experience a wicked (a naughty) little frisson. We were thinking they meant the n-word that white-sheeted Klansmen used to shout before stringing someone up from a tree in the Deep South, the n-word that skinheads scream before kicking some poor guy's teeth in (or worse). But the joke's on us. They actually meant the word "no."

I had several questions:
Is it wise to suggest that except for 10 days in November Renault dealers have a hard time not saying that word?
Will they go back to saying it on Nov. 19th?
And what is this ad doing in the Guardian, the most self-consciously liberal and annoyingly PC newspaper in the land?

I have been told by some English friends that Britain is not as racist as the United States, not as segregated or race-obsessed. It's true that racism is America's great shame, the issue that has split the country since it was founded. Even today we don't necessarily deal with race and discrimination in the healthiest of ways. But I don't think a U.S. ad agency would bandy about race-related expressions in an effort to shift a few hatchbacks.

And the U.K. isn't exactly a color-blind society. Recently a Conservative candidate named Nigel Hastilow resigned after suggesting that Enoch Powell, Britain's great race-baiting rhetoritician, was correct on the subject of immigration.

I suppose racism is something we each confront in our own ways, but this ad just strikes me as the b-word: bad.

I have calls in to both Publicis, Renault's agency, and the Guardian. If they call back, I'll update with their points of view.

Left Holding the Bag
According to the Guardian, London may tax or ban plastic shopping bags, concerned about their environmental impact. It's already hard to get the bags in Oxford: If you ask for one at the shops, instead of using a reusable, carbon-neutral, handmade-by-Bangladeshi-lesbians burlap sack, people look at you as if you've just poured crude oil on a baby seal.

The unintended consequence of these noble efforts is the hardship a bag ban would put on dog owners such as myself. Our dog has a two-bag-a-day habit, if you know what I mean. Plastic shopping bags are the perfect poop-disposal mechanism. Please don't tell me I'm going to have start using reusable burlap bags for that.

Jesus Is Just All Right With Me...
The Oxford Mail today reports that local veterans were upset that more than half of the city's 48 councillors didn't show up for Sunday's Remembrance Day ceremonies--the British equivalent of Memorial Day. Bad form, surely, but one detail in the article clanged with me. In the story, a Col. Chris Keeble is referred to as a "devout Christian." The same language is used in an editorial elsewhere in the paper: "We could not agree more with the thoughts of Col. Chris Keeble--a devout Christian--who negotiated the surrender of Argentinian troops at the Battle of Goose Green in the Falklands War in 1982."

I'm not sure what that fact signifies or why it's worthy of mention. What makes a person cross the line from "a Christian" to "a devout Christian"? And how far do you have to go before you arrive at "a fanatical Christian"?

And while I'm piling on the Oxford Mail, I was disappointed by a detail missing from a story about a pair of local musicians auditioning for a TV talent show. Wende Blowfield said she and Brian Staton auditioned for "Britain's Got Talent" as a way of showing "her three disabled children...that anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it."

A worthy sentiment, but what did Anton Chekhov say? A loaded gun seen in Act One has to go off in Act Three? Nowhere do we learn what the Blowfield children's disabilities are. I don't want to be morbid but if you're gonna mention it, explain it.