And now for something a bit different
When writing a full article has become too much
Stomping grounds. I've long been fascinated by the notion that one you've flown the nest you can never psychologically return to your family home. I know at least two men whose lives contest this, but it seems a common experience.
Lockdown restrictions lifted, I recently went back to where I spent my first quarter century, a corner of southwest Greater London that segues unnoticed into Surrey. Certainly the driveways are bigger than round my way, which is the kind of thing I’m increasingly noticing as I get older.
It was a bit eery wandering the streets where I'd spent so much of my youth. Other people continue to live their lives, but the people I knew have largely scattered to the winds. Friendship groups might stay in touch, but the once tight communities of schoolkids that I used to know are no more.
Remembrance days. The New York Times has run a fascinating feature on a 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which white people destroyed a prosperous black community (or Black community, as the Yankee progs style it). The American Emily Tamkin writes in the New Statesman that she doesn’t recall learning about it at school.
If, in school, I ever learned about the day when white residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma attacked the residents and businesses of the Greenwood District, known as “black Wall Street”, I do not remember. I try to recall whether I learned and forgot about it at some point during my education, or at any point in my adult life, and I draw a blank.
It is common for revisionist historians and activists to bemoan the lack of knowledge about one thing or the other. It is however rare for these people to show much awareness about people’s limited capacity for history, whether as entertainment or civic education.
Given the pressure to compensate the victims of the Tulsa massacre, including the three still alive, and their descendents, some officials will be obliged to learn more about it. But I’m unconvinced that the riot deserves to be taught above other incidents in America’s long history of racial injustice.
M’learned journos. My conscientious objection to university has given me a long and smug interest in graduate dominance of plum jobs, especially in journalism. One survey from 2015 revealed that new hacks basically all have degrees.
Radio 4’s Justin Webb offers a half-hearted attack on such over-education of journalists. While conceding that he didn’t need to study at the London School of Economics to do the job, and that it may have hampered his eventual performance, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
University these days encourages a way of thinking about the world that is homogenous. Those who go – even those who have seen hardship and adversity – are smoothed around the edges. They don’t question the establishment because they (alright, we) are the establishment.
Universities seem torn between their roles as research bodies, prep schools for employers, and the duty to produce “well-rounded individuals”, without mentioning the funding and censorship issues. But Webb is right that journalism could easily be taught as a vocation, and that it might make for a better selection of stories.
Do the Time Warp again. Like a corporate spokesperson, I was delighted to discover that TimeSplitters is being rebooted, with the old development studio brought back together for one last job (or more, sales depending). The first-person shooter series collapsed amid financial strife and corporate mishap when Free Radical Design was bought out, so its return is welcome.
Nostalgia aside, there is something compelling about small groups of people that create something great. Monty Python springs to mind, their masterwork Life of Brian having to be funded by a Beatle who just wanted to see the film. Even TimeSplitters’ spiritual forebear GoldenEye 007, an iconic Nintendo 64 game, broke ground because nobody important was watching it being made too closely.
While there are valid warnings of excessive corporate dominance within the entertainment sector, the Internet has made small distribution much easier than it used to be. Now if you want to make something cool and have the time and organisation, you usually can. Which is a nice note to end on.
Mandatory podcast notice. This week the Right Dishonourable discussed Dominic Cummings’ attack on government over its pandemic conduct, the Martin Bashir and Princess Diana scandal at the BBC, and the year since George Floyd’s murder. Listen in full here.
Normal service may or not be resumed next week.
Jimmy