Just a reminder, as I listen on @BBCr4today to Ralph Fiennes talk about his production of Four Quartets - which I think should definitely *not* be cancelled - that TS Eliot wrote these lines, and it needs to be added into the conversation around our veneration of Eliot. Image
One thing that really needs to be added is that Eliot wrote most of his greatest work between the wars, when the intellectual fashionability of anti-Semitism badly exacerbated the European neglect of concern for the growing plight of German Jews.
It wasn't just the poetry, btw: Image
Which raises an interesting question: normally with historical racism, people say, not unfairly, that you have to remember the context of the era they were living in. But in Eliot's case, that context arguably makes it *worse*.
And of course Eliot was best mates with Ezra Pound. Just to be clear we're not talking about *mild* anti-Semitism here: see below. I've kept in Pound's apology, which if you look closely, is more about his snobbishness - "suburban" - then genuine moral/intellectual regret. Image

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More from @Baddiel

19 Mar
In a *very* crowded field, the Like Police are possibly the worst thing on here.
Back in the golden days when he was on here, I liked the odd Trump tweet. Because they were hilarious, and I wanted to use them as material for comedy. But obviously, context is irrelevant, so I'll hand myself in soon and apologise publicly for my unmitigated MAGA madness.
I note also that the #FlagGate mob would be lost without the words "smirking" and "sneering". As a thought experiment, consider how it would feel if they had to say the presenters "found it a bit funny" that Kenrick's flag looked undersize.
Read 4 tweets
18 Nov 20
The reflex assumption by the left that Starmer is motivated by factional war and not, maybe, real sympathy with Jewish concern is unsurprising but still dispiriting. The anxieties of the actual people, the actual minority, at the heart of this, seem to be irrelevant.
It's fine to oppose the decision to withdraw the whip from Corbyn. But insodoing, it's still worth remembering that the victims in this ongoing hateful morass - and as yet, the failed attempts to sort it out - are not the Labour Left. It's Jews.
For anyone who might be confused about that, allow me to post this again from earlier today.
Read 4 tweets
17 Nov 20
Following Spotify's recommendations, in my experience, leads nowhere. Never found a new Neil Young/Joni Mitchell/David Bowie that way. Then, this morning, I clicked on Vic Chestnutt, thinking well, obviously not. I was wrong. Have not stopped listening to him all day.
Chesnutt. Not Chestnutt.
For example, this: a love song to death.
Read 5 tweets
29 Jun 20
I wore blackface in TV sketches 25 years ago. I have apologised. I will apologise now again: it was wrong. It was racist. I am sorry. Now. If Kerry would like to show me where I've said standing with Palestine is racist, and shown dedication to Apartheid, that would be great.
Here btw, was my most recent apology in The Daily Telegraph, at the start of May.
Unless this is what @TheMendozaWoman means. In which case her bar for full-throated unstinting far-right racist support for the Apartheid Zionist entity is kind of low.
Read 4 tweets

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