Is this David Cameron's Watergate? Probably not. But the Murdoch brand is becoming surprisingly toxic just as it is on the verge of monopolising the mediascape in the UK. The news that the News of the World hacked into the phones of victims of terrible crimes, such as child murder, and terrorist bombings, is so unwholesome and upsetting that it is amazing the grubby little people responsible have not hung themselves in shame. But no, this is the brash, empty selfish world of London journalism, filled with massive egos suffering from personality disorders one normally finds in insane empires. Something needs to be done. Little will be.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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Rupert Murdoch has been at war with the BBC for at least thirty years and now the BBC is returning him a heavy dose of his own medicine. We don't have Sky TV and my idea of Hell is to have the Britsih media run by a bunch of wide boys (and girls) from Essex and East London.
Best wishes from Simon