I'm sorry to see that 'historian' Dr David Starkey is in the Twitter stocks for his metaphorisation of black skin for criminality. His problem is that he has never to my knowledge written a history of a black homicidal maniac. If only Elizabeth I or her dad Henry VIII - his favourite book and TV topics - had been black he might now be metaphorising white skin for criminality: strange how chance, circumstance and schooling play a part in our avowed certainties and comforts.
Instead, like many other 'historians' before him, he has taken to identify with his lucrative subjects and even to adopt a prose style which could be mistaken for Tudorbethan pastiche. Some intellectual crossdressers go the whole hog and end up on pub stage as Madame Trollette to the joy of many. Others, merely write books and cultivate a persona that requires no wig or nail technician.
Dr Starkey has only to open his mouth and I see the Spanish Armada yonder.
26 comments:
Madame I am sure you give him too much credit. You make me want to read him, and I have never had that perverse urge until now...
It's a wicked lure of mine intended to lead you astray.
He was hinting at a truth but expressed it very badly. What he was probably talking about was gangsta culture - which is certainly not the same as black culture. Tamla Motown put out hundreds of the greatest love songs ever!! But gangsta rap glorifies crime, violence against women, the murder of gays, and thinks all education is a white conspiracy.
He reminds me of my old history professor, world expert in Engalnd 1485-1603 and knows fucall all about anything else!
If Starkey had confined himself to gangsta you might have a point. But he chose to use the riots as an excuse to vent his prejudices against 'blacks' and the white lower orders, even suggesting that the other had turned into the one, whatever is meant by that. He also endorsed Enoch Powell's various race nonsenses. I suggest you read up.
David Starkey is a dreadful turd. Please do not blog about him again. He's a Tudor fascist.
I bet he really wants a good rear ending from an Angolan or Somalian bit of rough.
I'm not so sure about that Ciaran. Whatever he's gagging for it must involve doilies.
If that's the level of his analysis, it makes me wonder about the value of anything else he has to say. (We is all black now.)
I tried to read one of his Tudor histories and quickly realised I was in the presence of a power fetishist who talks a lot.
Typical spiteful putdown from @Madame@.
I suppose your gnomic utterances are a substitute for the hard work of developing an argument.
Is there such a word as 'metaphorisation' or is Madame trying to be funny? Everything you write these days seems to be a coded pisstake. Just be direct and simple and you might get that column you clearly crave.
Madame craves no column and certainly is no existing newspaper. The very idea!
As for metaphorisation - yes.
I think David Starkey is entitled to say he doesn't like violent zombies
If only that was all he said I might have to agree with him. Alas he unleashed his unpleasant and opportunistic suburban racism. I can't think why he was invited on Newsnight. Is celebrity alone qualification?
As an American observing all this from afar I see Britain is slipping back to the 50s. Very sad.
Why are so many historians right-wing? Are they all 'power fetishists'?
Historians aren't all right wing. We've suffered dreadfully from left-wing historians too. But they do have to look down on events from above - that includes getting above political correctness and the obligation to be nice to everyone regardless of truth. History will say 'Rioting broke out in the overcrowded cities of the affluent West, with outbreaks of arson and widespread looting of shops.'
Vicious gang culture is destroying the poor areas of our city. But you'd rather lynch an old man
Don't forget the three young Asian men no longer with us - or perhaps you'd like to. Tabloid script!
A very peculiar posting given that it does not address the England riots but instead takes aim at those attempting to identify causative social problems, rightly or wrongly. David Cameron thinks the prtoblem is gang culture. Starkey blames a melding of chav and Jamaican cultures, producing an alien mongrelism that offends his sense of what it is to be English. This is not a racist position: it is an attempt to understand why so many youth have no sense of social responsibility whatsoever, black or white.
Here here - stop this attack on people trying to debate the issue. He doesn't know, she doesn't know what real life is, he's racist, she's racist - the whole of our national life is bedevilled by this aggressive shutting down of criticism. So what if Starkey got his phrasing wrong. Kill him for that? He's correct in that we have come to defend crime and illiteracy as 'cool' and anyone who dares confront that position is at best a fogey, at worst a gas-chamber builder. Give the guy a break - moronism is NOT admirable or cool
Madame, I notice that this post also appears on Anorak. Are they lifting your work or are you lifting your own work? I am most concerned.
Thank you for noticing, poppet. Anorak is at liberty to lift my work though I notice that on this occasion, the editor has added Starkey's words and his own comment which some might think is my own.
For Christ sake-it's the fault of Madison Avenue flogging us those silly shoes made by 4 year old Vietnamese kids and convincing the lower orders to risk a jail sentence to have a pair. How embarrassing being caught looting Miss Selfridge !. If they had hit Bond Street I might have joined in the action myself.
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