“Britishness is like a scab”, says British opinion leader
by Jura Watchmaker, 7 April 2008
Given her predilection for self-parody, I would say that Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting possesses a healthy sense of humour. Maybe the sorrowful one has been trawling the often amusing blog “Stuff White People Like” for ideas.
“Britishness is like a scab and we can’t stop scratching,” says the noted “thinker and writer”. While this statement has a ring of truth about it, I’m not sure if I would interpret it in the way the author intended. In fact I’m really not sure what to make of this particular example of left-liberal angst.
It doesn’t help that in the second paragraph Bunting castigates Rageh Omaar for “…shame on him – giving an airing to Britain’s vibrant tradition of racism” in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme to be broadcast this evening. Now Omaar may be a meedja tart with an arse the size of which could block out the Sun, but the award-winning black journalist is hardly an Uncle Tom.
I eagerly await the verdict of esteemed Bunting scholar Professor Norman Geras.
Monday 7 April 2008 at 16:30
A scab is “a crust of hardened blood and serum over a wound”. It is annoying and unsightly and when we have it, it’s not scratching that we want to do but peeling, which we sometimes cannot resist, though it can be painful, cause bleeding and end up with another, smaller scab.
I just don’t get the metaphor she is employing.
Monday 7 April 2008 at 22:50
I think Ms Bunting is just a Guardian computor that spews out liberalista drivel, like that site program that writes random post-modernist essays for critical studies students.