Thursday, October 21, 2010

BitchBuzz: Are We Getting Nicer?

Well now, don't go getting your hopes up: it's just my latest column --

Is the World Becoming Nicer? (Probably not)

People around the world watched and cheered as the Chilean miners were freed, one by one, from their underground prison. I was surprised to find my friends, normally hard-hearted cynics, dabbing away tears as they watched this "miracle," this "triumph of the human spirit." No, let's not get distracted by the fact that the miners had their pay docked for not working, because it's possible that this emotional tide is the sign of a cultural sea change.

After all, as BitchBuzz's own Rebecca Thompson reported, our favourite grumbling misanthrope pin-up, Charlie Brooker has given notice on his bitch-fest Screen Burn, the better to embrace marital bliss and pumping our babies in the suburbs (Sob! No!). And spanky gossipist extraordinaire, Perez Hilton has sworn to turn over a newer, kinder leaf as well, asking for absolution upon the altar of Ellen, the Archbishop of Nice. As I write this, Facebook and Twitter are a sea of purple in honor of GLAAD's Spirit Day "to show support for the teens who took their lives because of anti-LGBT bullying."

Are we getting nicer?

Read more: http://news.bitchbuzz.com/is-the-world-becoming-nicer-probably-not.html#ixzz131OcIapg

I'm doing my best to fight off a cold that tried to start yesterday. Not sure if I've been successful, but I keep drinking liquids and soup (semi-liquid?). Just when I was beginning to feel as if I were getting caught up -- there's not time to be sick!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

slap a ribbon on it, and we'll all be fine. what am i going to do, i don't think i even own anything purple.
-bertie

C. Margery Kempe said...

No purple?! Sacrilege! Just join hands and sing "Kumbaya!"

Todd Mason said...

I think a lot of folks are feeling trapped these days, and probably always have.

Just as most people in most circumstances aren't usually monstrous. Or else, we wouldn't speak of mostrosity...

Todd Mason said...

Good luck with the bug! Isn't almost caught up a tantalizing state?

C. Margery Kempe said...

Tantalizing -- and ultimately illusory because there are always new things to grade. The bug (knock wood) seems to have been shooed away, I think. Phew!

Todd Mason said...

Having now looked at Konnie Huq, if she's nearly as pleasant as she is pretty, I suspect that anyone in his situcation might be tempted to consider coitus over writing a grouse column. He's a lucky man, in comparitive looks at very least, and perhaps finds a dour view of the world suddenly difficult.

C. Margery Kempe said...

It's not fair! He should have stayed gloomy and um, unattached -- pout pout.

Todd Mason said...

I suspect that argument will not persuade. Perhaps one that he should have lots of sex with his beautiful fiancee and still try to write a nasty column, and he does say he's going to write another (not-tv) column, will carry the day...but I suspect that even the most earnest pout won't sell this one.

C. Margery Kempe said...

There's no hope. I must assign my affections to another hopeless figure.

Todd Mason said...

Meanwhile, is it remotely possible to give even a rhetorical rat's ass about Perez Hilton? My apathy, tinged with mild distaste, for his namesake is not counterindicated by someone whose whole career, rather like a Kardashian, is based on proximity to and/or chatter about the likes of the actual Hilton.

Yow.

C. Margery Kempe said...

I hate to use the old "back in the day" kind of argument, but P'Hilton is a punk: The Sweet Smell of Success. Now there were some sharks. Louella Parsons and Hedda Harper -- he's not fit to re-ink their poison pens.

Todd Mason said...

And only in the pipsqueak way, mind you. He ain't worth the dots we're spending on them. There was a "Todd Mason" in the '60s who was a low-rent gossip columnist, and my folks must've liked the sound of that.

C. Margery Kempe said...

I remember my mom saying that she thought "Kathryn" a pretty name, but I don't recall if any particular person inspired it (I'd like to think Katharine Hepburn!). My older brother has a middle initial J. and no middle name because my mom thought there were too many Johns and Jacks in my father's family.

There's was a Cornish jewelry maker named Kate Laity, but she must have got married (or unmarried I suppose) because she goes by Kate Pearse now. Laity is a not uncommon Cornish name; ours is altered from the original Finnish.