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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Saturday, September 28, 2002
A Major Revelation
Today's top news from Britain -- former Conservative cabinet minister Edwina Currie reveals she had a four-year adulterous affair with former Prime Minister John Major -- has left me feeling highly amused and somewhat vindicated. I'll tell you why in a second. First, a primer for those unfamiliar with British politics. Currie was health minister under Mrs. Thatcher, and made herself notorious for decrying the eating habits of inhabitants of the North of England (where I grew up). She was finally forced to resign over the strange and unsubstantiated claim that eating British eggs put you at greater risk for salmonella. Major was Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997. The day he was tapped to replace Thatcher and the day he won a surprise election victory were two of the darkest in my political upbringing (all I could write in my diary in response to the former was "I feel sick"; after the latter, I couldn't write anything at all). The day he was defeated by a landslide was easily the sweetest.
Flash back to 1993, when I was at Oxford and writing an anonymous political satire column for the student newspaper. At the time, Major was suing two left-wing magazines (the New Statesman and a small publication called Scallywag) for daring to mention the rumor that he'd had an affair with his Downing Street caterer, a woman called Clare Latimer -- even though both articles also refuted the allegation. He could get away with this because of the perverse nature of Britain's libel law, which puts the burden of proof on the defendant. Simply because they mentioned it, these small and relatively poor magazines would have to prove the affair had happened.
So one night, on deadline and out of ideas for my column, I sank four or five pints of cider in the college bar and sat down with the newspapers. It struck me that no one was questioning whether it was morally right for Major to be conducting this half-a-million-pound lawsuit against two publications that, by the way, happened to disagree with him politically. Instead, the press -- most of which had Conservative sympathies at the time -- was printing damage-control articles that could have come from Conservative Central Office. The one headline that stuck in my craw, about the PM's wife, read: 'Wonderful Norma is Love of my Life: Major." I was furious, I was cider-soaked and I was on deadline. If there are three more conducive factors to writing provocative political commentary, I have not yet discovered them. "The libel law is a funny beast, isn't it?" I opined. "Simply by writing 'JOHN MAJOR HAD AN AFFAIR WITH CLARE LATIMER' in big letters, I could now be issued with a bloody big Downing Street writ."
Which is very nearly what happened. About a week or so later, word leaked out that the Prime Minister's law firm (the amusingly-titled Biddle & Co.) were weighing whether to take the Oxford Student -- our tiny, free, sophomoric newspaper! -- to libel court over my column. For roughly 24 hours, the news was a national sensation. My editors called Biddle and Co. and to their shame, and my lasting outrage, agreed to print a front-page apology in the next issue. Then the proctors, Oxford University's internal police, called and asked my editors to reveal the name of the offending author. To their credit, and my lasting relief, they never did. My friends and family knew, though. I remember my mother calling (she denies all knowledge of this) and asking whether it would be a good idea to consider an alternative career, like accountancy.
Now Clare Latimer is back in the news. Having learned about Currie's affair, Latimer accuses Major of using the rumor about her a decoy for any journalists probing too deeply into the Prime Minister's past. "I was used to take the heat off John Major and send the media down a false trail," she told the Telegraph. "when I went to him in despair about what was happening he simply told me to 'earn as much money as possible' from the story. I thought that was a strange thing to say when my whole life was in ruins." Strange indeed. Latimer, New Statesman, Scallywag, and (for one day) me and my tiny student newspaper -- we were all pawns in Major's bid to prevent the country from finding out about his affair with Currie.
He couldn't just admit it, as the then Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown had done when evidence emerged of his extra-marital affair. No, Major went off in the absolute opposite direction, crafting an infamous Conservative policy called "back to basics" that emphasized "traditional family values" and Victorian sexual morality. This led to the high-profile resignations of a series of cabinet minsters who'd had affairs and was, as it turned out, the height of hypocrisy. No wonder Major made me sick. No wonder Scallywag is considering reopening the libel case to get its payout back. Ah, but at a distance of nearly a decade, I can't complain too much. After all, it was the notoriety of that cider-fueled column that cemented my interest in journalism and led me to where I am today. Had it not been for Major's affairs, I might have ended up an accountant. Or worse still, a politician.
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