Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Dunce in a lifetime

Two more good examples of wordsmithery (albeit neither of them a patch on Roland’s moment of dizzy brilliance from yesterday).

In the Guardian's obituary of the diplomat Nicholas Henderson, his group of schoolfriends is said to have shared “the horror of the dim”, a phrase that veers perilously close to snobbery but you do rather see where they were coming from. And for the benefit of the aforementioned dim, Rod Liddle in the Times succinctly explains why those ghastly protesters in Luton should not have been banned: “Proper western liberal democracy is about accommodating all forms of fabulous stupidity”. Nice.

And on a less exalted level, I discuss the in-concert crapness of one of my favourite bands, and encourage others to do the same, here.

PS: But far more significantly, lock up your slightly disreputable-looking boychildren, the Spinster's back!

4 comments:

Rog said...

I saw Otis Reading on the Stax Volt Tour of Europe in the days when people sat in their seats smoking and clapping politely.
I also saw Deep Purple in Chatham Town Hall from row 3 and my ears were Deep Crimson with permanent damage. Nightmare.
Now I'm just a net-loafing twazmuppet.

GreatSheElephant said...

I like a good bit of intellectual snobbery meself.

Tim F said...

The idea of someone wondering whether it might be too OTT to shout "Jolly good!" at an Otis show is delightful, Rog. Bet they were all smoking pipes as well.

So do I, GSE. But let's keep it between ourselves, or the dims might get upset.

Billy said...

I don't mind snobbery as long as it is alternating with reverse snobbery.