The New Statesman, in a article by Sarah Ditum, has waded into the controversy over comments in a lecture by Booker Prizewinner Hilary Mantel about the Duchess of Cambridge http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-capital/2013/02/hilary-mantels-precise-unkind-words-have-been-twisted-venomous-attack-kate.
This is an interesting media food-chain. Hilary Mantel is using the Duchess of Cambridge to get attention, the Daily Mail is using Hilary Mantel, Sarah Ditum is using the Daily Mail. Big fleas have little fleas which in turn have tiny fleas all gorging themselves on the blood to be sucked from the institution of royalty.
Hilary Mantel is of course a Booker prizewinner, and therefore must be listened to respectfully. But she is also a "best-selling author" (that hateful damning phrase that dogged JB Priestley and destroyed his serious reputation) and must choose whether to become a "celebrity" or retire back into a secluded life. There is a problem to being Hilary Mantel.
New Statesman writer Helen Lewis joins in the discussion about Hilary Mantel via a series of posts on her Twitter microblog. Note that in this example she conceeds that Hilary Mantel was being rude (which of course allows others licence to be rude about Hilary Mantel). However it is her assertion that the monarchy is "an institution that treats women badly" that is incredible.
The British monarchy has, for the past 100 years, delivered a female head of state for 60% of that time. Perhaps Helen Lewis could remind us how many female heads of state there have been in France over the last century. Or in Germany. Or perhaps she could use her Twitter site to list the American female heads of state since the foundation of that republic. Or maybe use one of her New Statesman columns to talk about all the Russian and Chinese and Brazilian and Japanese female heads of state that have been overlooked by the media in the last hundred years. Out of all the major nations of the world I can only think of Indira Ghandi in India - and she was not actually head of state and in any case emerged from arguably a quasi-imperial Nehruesque informal monarchy.
It is possible that Helen Lewis means that women are "treated badly" in the Royal Family in a direct tangible sense, but this does not square with the left's incessant carping about how over-privileged royalty is in the United Kingdom. They can't have it both ways. Otherwise they (the left) will be accused of muddled thinking.
https://twitter.com/helenlewis
This is an interesting media food-chain. Hilary Mantel is using the Duchess of Cambridge to get attention, the Daily Mail is using Hilary Mantel, Sarah Ditum is using the Daily Mail. Big fleas have little fleas which in turn have tiny fleas all gorging themselves on the blood to be sucked from the institution of royalty.
Hilary Mantel is of course a Booker prizewinner, and therefore must be listened to respectfully. But she is also a "best-selling author" (that hateful damning phrase that dogged JB Priestley and destroyed his serious reputation) and must choose whether to become a "celebrity" or retire back into a secluded life. There is a problem to being Hilary Mantel.
New Statesman writer Helen Lewis joins in the discussion about Hilary Mantel via a series of posts on her Twitter microblog. Note that in this example she conceeds that Hilary Mantel was being rude (which of course allows others licence to be rude about Hilary Mantel). However it is her assertion that the monarchy is "an institution that treats women badly" that is incredible.
The British monarchy has, for the past 100 years, delivered a female head of state for 60% of that time. Perhaps Helen Lewis could remind us how many female heads of state there have been in France over the last century. Or in Germany. Or perhaps she could use her Twitter site to list the American female heads of state since the foundation of that republic. Or maybe use one of her New Statesman columns to talk about all the Russian and Chinese and Brazilian and Japanese female heads of state that have been overlooked by the media in the last hundred years. Out of all the major nations of the world I can only think of Indira Ghandi in India - and she was not actually head of state and in any case emerged from arguably a quasi-imperial Nehruesque informal monarchy.
It is possible that Helen Lewis means that women are "treated badly" in the Royal Family in a direct tangible sense, but this does not square with the left's incessant carping about how over-privileged royalty is in the United Kingdom. They can't have it both ways. Otherwise they (the left) will be accused of muddled thinking.
https://twitter.com/helenlewis
