Toby Or Not Toby

Look at that blog entry title, eh? Bloody hell, I admit that's a dreadful title. I'm really not making any effort these days. It's a pithily, poorly-written, pun-tastic blog entry title. It's a bit like what Toby Young himself would write these days. After Toby's weirdly homoerotic call-to-arms for Rod Liddle's (now failed) appointment for editor of The Independent, I wasn't sure how much more complacent his writing could become. After all, that article on Liddle seemed to rest on two salient points. Firstly, Liddle can spout on about anything he wants, because his supposed journalistic opinion can fall under the pretension of being "free speech" rather than just poorly-written graffiti on a wall about "goat curry". The second salient point rests on Toby Young getting hot-under-the-collar at watching Liddle plastering himself all over his girlfriend in a BBC Green Room and those antics showing him up to be an 'iconoclast', rather than just an exhibitionist, unkempt Womble.

But his writing surely did take a further plunge today, when he moaned about... sorry, I'm trying not to laugh here... other journalists cyber-bullying him for an ill-timed article on fashion designer, Alexander McQueen. At the moment, it seems dangerously trendy for 'opinion column' journalists to kick the memories of someone recently bereaved, particularly if the dead person happens to be gay. The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) have recently pardoned Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir, who started this whole trend up, so expect more crocks of offensive shit in the print press anytime soon. Anyway, after a rather poorly-written article on Alexander McQueen, Toby got what was no more than a bit of ridicule, particularly from Times journalist, Caitlin Moran. This is taking into account some of the nastier pieces of journalism that Toby Young has written in the past. Sorry, Toby, I'm not buying any of this. You're known to dish it out yourself, so you should be able to take it as well.

Before you say I'm an apologist for McQueen or say I'm defending mischievous behaviour on Twitter, I felt at the time that a provocative article or opinion about McQueen was definitely something that could have been written. Sadly, Toby, you weren't the fellow who came up with it. Joan Smith, of The Independent, wrote it. I did give a sharp intake of breath when Joan questioned the plaudits that had been thrown toward McQueen, barely 24 hours after the man died. But funnily enough, after reading her article, I felt I understood Alexander McQueen better, warts and all. Isn't that what a good journalist does? You can write provocatively, so long as you've got the evidence to back it up and entertain the opposing arguments. In other words, Joan Smith didn't get a bashing on Twitter or elsewhere, because her points were articulately and intelligently made.

Before Toby Young deploys the argument that Smith wouldn't get the same treatment as he would, because Smith is part of the 'liberal' chattering classes, Toby should also remember that AA Gill got a similar roasting on Twitter for his idiotic column on shooting a baboon. Gill's article wasn't a provocatively written piece, it was just wanting to cause an outcry for controversy's sake. An outcry, I suspect, similar to the one Toby was probably secretly predicting and wanting anyway, so he could have the bare-bones material to write another poorly-constructed article to warrant his pay cheque.

Incidentally, I know I'm on thin ice with this blog entry, particularly as my previous blog article recounts an encounter with a rather mischievous and drunken Caitlin Moran in a Soho pub. I got a bit of a ribbing off her, mainly because I'd played a prank on a friend of mine. At no point did I then run off home and write a bleating, put-upon blog entry about it. But then the 'private individual' flamed for being cheeky to Stephen Fry (as referred to in Toby Young's article) didn't do that either. Neither of us 'private individuals' have moaned about it, because we deserved the ribbing. Why can't a Spectator journalist shut his trap and behave like a man about it all, when us supposed 'liberals' can do it?

Comments

[John Self]

"You're known to dish it out yourself, so you should be able to take it as well."

To be fair to Young, he does conclude in his article that he has to take it as well.

[Chris Nicholson]

With that comment, I meant in general. He's had form for having a thin skin about criticism in the past. Yes, I agree with you about him actually taking it pretty well from Ms Moran, but he knows that she'd just ridicule him even more if he said anything more thin-skinned.

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