Society

Monday

Slavoj Žižek

Roma is being celebrated for all the wrong reasons, writes Slavoj Žižek

My first viewing of Roma left me with a bitter taste: yes, the majority of critics are right in celebrating it as an instant classic, but I couldn’t get rid of the idea that this predominant perception is sustained by a terrifying, almost obscene, misreading, and that the movie is celebrated for all the wrong reasons. Roma is read as a tribute to Cleo, a maid from the Colonia Roma neighbourhood of Mexico City working in the middle-class household of Sofia, her husband Antonio, their four young children, Sofia’s mother Teresa, and another maid, Adela. It take place in 1970, the time of large student protests and social unrest. As already

Sunday

Andrew Levens

There’s nothing extreme about being a populist

I’m slightly sick of the word ‘populist’ being used to suggest some sort of extremist (‘The Last Heave’, 5 January). The political establishment has proven itself broken not only in this country (see the failure to agree on a viable Brexit policy, let alone run a train service), but also widely across the EU, where the establishment has turned its back on listening to the people. Reform needs to come, and soon. One result of social media and regular polling is that people are used to expressing an opinion, and expect to be heard. The idea that you elect someone for five years, during which time they can decide what

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How heavily will Theresa May’s Brexit deal be defeated?

Theresa May’s Brexit deal will finally be voted on this week. However, the signs so far are not good. Despite the government decision to delay the vote until after Christmas in the hope MPs would calm down, few in the Commons believe it has any hope of passing when it’s put to a vote on Tuesday night. Instead, the focus has moved to what will happen once it is defeated. The Sunday papers are filled with talk of such Brexit plots. Dominic Grieve stands accused of working with the Speaker to change the Commons rules so that backbenchers decide the Commons business and thereby can map out Brexit (see Nikki Da

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: ‘O Walkman! O Walkman!’

The most recent challenge, suggested by Paul A. Freeman, asked for an elegy on a piece of obsolete technology. There’s nothing like a blast of nostalgia to usher in the new year. Sinclair C5s, faxes, floppy discs, typewriters; all were eloquently hymned. I admired Hamish Wilson’s elegy on a radiogram and John O’Byrne’s Whitman-esque homage to the Walkman: O Walkman! O Walkman! our cassette days are       done, My ears have enjoyed every tune, the tapes I       played are worn, The phone has come, the apps are here, the       playlists all inspiring, But Apple killed this mobile thing for designs    

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Three titans

The Dutch grandmaster Genna Sosonko specialises in biographies of the greats of the Soviet era. His earlier forays covered the careers of David Bronstein and Viktor Korchnoi; the latter is my choice of book of the year for 2018. Now Sosonko, a Soviet émigré himself, has turned his focus on Vassily Smyslov, world champion from 1957 to 1958, who also made history as the oldest world championship contender of all time in 1984 when he reached the Candidates final in his mid-sixties.   Smyslov won the supreme title in 1957 and came close to retaining it in the revenge match a year later. The final turning point came in this week’s puzzle, where

Raymond Keene

no. 536

Black to play. This position is from Botvinnik-Smyslov, World Championship, Moscow (Game 18) 1958. How could Smyslov have forced instant resignation? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 15 January or via email to victoria@-spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Nxg3+ Last week’s winner Risdon Nicholls, Woodford Green, Essex

Peter Jones

New year, old truths

At this time of year the media urge us all to turn over a new leaf and believe that we can become and do whatever we want. Those tempted by this idiotic advice would be better advised to turn over a 2,500-year-old one with a stiff dose of Aesop’s fables. A shadowy 6th-century bc figure, Aesop turned animals into literary figures by giving them simple black-and-white human characteristics — the timid mouse, the deceitful fox, the stupid donkey, and so on — and putting them in situations illustrating aspects of the human condition. Theon called them ‘fictitious stories picturing a truth’ — usually truths about human folly. One lesson they

Taki

High life | 10 January 2019

Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read that one Ted Widmer is a ‘distinguished lecturer’ at a New York university and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The Ted I knew was anything but ethical and dressed rather strangely. Never mind. Whether or not he was a schoolmate, Widmer has written a treatise on the year 1919 and called it ‘1919: the Year of the Crack-up’. It’s very good. Basically, he says that what took place in 1919 shaped the world for the rest of the century. One hundred years later,

Toby Young Toby Young

Save the male

For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for mental health professionals working with men and boys. That may not sound like a momentous event, but the APA is a powerful body in the US. It has 117,500 members, including the vast majority of practising psychologists, and an annual budget of $115 million. Its guidance documents carry the imprimatur of scientific authority and are hugely influential when it comes to policies and behaviour in public institutions. This edict will be referred to by university administrators when policing sexual interactions on campus, by the courts when deciding who to award custody to in divorce

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 10 January 2019

We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would guess, of around 500. A quarter of the company — two of the men — had been officially diagnosed as suffering from one form or another of dementia. We whose brains still neatly fitted the inside of our skulls were instead prey to all the usual anxieties, delusions, depressions and addictions typical of those wealthy, late middle-aged English people who exist in the strange limbo of expatriation. We sat there facing each other across the dinner table on the last day of the year, knackered, it’s true, each drifting aimlessly

Melissa Kite

Real life | 10 January 2019

Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge: ‘If you are calling to cancel your BT service, please press one…’ It would have been more accurate to say: ‘If you never use your landline and have only now, while doing your New Year financial panicking, noticed you pay twice as much for your broadband and phone package as you thought and have had a mild stroke from the shock, press one.’ I pressed one and the voice said I was in the queue for an adviser. The line then went dead-sounding, possibly to make me give up. But

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 10 January 2019

For those of us who play rubber bridge at TGR’s, the New Year began with the very sad news that Maurice Esterson had died. He was 89, but it was still completely unexpected. He was part of the club’s furniture — perhaps its most comfortable and precious item — and had been playing with his usual vigour just days earlier.   On the whole, we rubber bridge players are a grumpy lot, with fragile egos. Maurice was a rarity: a fine player (he represented England three times) with an even, kind temperament, always full of good humour, and universally liked and respected.   When I last saw him, we were

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 10 January 2019

Q. What is the current etiquette regarding chasing an opinion from a publisher to whom, by agreement and via a shared acquaintance, I submitted a manuscript six weeks ago? Other than acknowledgement of receipt and an expression of enthusiasm at the prospect of reading it, I have heard nothing further from her. I am aware that the days when a rejection would take the form of an encouraging lunch and, at worst, a rejection slip have long gone. But what is the digital equivalent of a rejection slip for today’s writer? Must I assume that if, after three months, I hear nothing, the answer is no? How will I know

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Bob, booths and buttons

In January, you could go to Bob Bob Ricard in Soho. I do not know why it is called Bob Bob Ricard; and I do not really care. I am currently reviewing cars for another magazine and cars’ names make restaurants’ names sound reasonable. Perhaps Bob Bob Ricard is always slightly drunk and needs to mumble its name — ‘Bob?’ — for fear of forgetting it, like the people in the VIP field at Glastonbury. I do know that it is a restaurant for affluent halfwits, of which there is an infinite supply in Soho. I wonder if it might have been Jimmy Savile’s favourite restaurant. It occupies the ground

Dot Wordsworth

Illeism

Someone has been putting about reports that Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, refers to himself in the third person as ‘the Sajid’ or ‘the Saj’. This habit has a long history. Xenophon entered his own Anabasis 2,400 years ago with the words: ‘There was in that host a certain man, an Athenian, Xenophon.’ Caesar played the same game, as Shakespeare must have noticed at grammar school, later making him die with his own name on his lips: ‘Then fall, Caesar.’ In The Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil (who, like Henry James, but in rather a different way, is the Master) does it: ‘Tom was here before the river and

Helen Pluckrose

The trial of Peter Boghossian

When James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and I spent a year writing nonsense academic papers on topics such as ‘dog-park rape culture’ and ‘fat bodybuilding’ and submitting them to journals known for producing a similar standard of ‘scholarship,’ one question came up repeatedly: ‘What are they going to do to Peter?’ James and I were relatively safe because neither of us work in a university. We anticipated smear pieces and online abuse which is unpleasant, but ultimately survivable. Peter though, was much more vulnerable. Portland State University (PSU), where he works, is notorious for its Social Justice culture, its student protests and its Antifa presence. The surrounding city frequently features political

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the left’s Sarah Palin

When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly — all that standing to attention, Hail to the Chief stuff — but their slobbery swooning over every Great Progressive Hope that comes along is just creepy. There was the White House correspondent who offered to fellate Bill Clinton and the New York Times writer who blogged her shower dream about Barack Obama and claimed ‘many

The Spectator

to 2388: Sea rocket

The quotation was ‘IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END’ (12/15) from East Coker (an anagram of the title), second poem of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Remaining unclued lights are words whose first half is the same as their second half: 5, 16, 42, 43, 10 and 13. ELIOT (diagonally from the twelfth row) was to be shaded.   First prize Mike Conway, Grantham, Lincs Runners-up Edward Staveley, London SW15; S.C. Daneff, London SW18

Lavatch

2390: Tea shop

Unclued lights, all confirmed in Chambers or Collins, are three sets of four words of a kind, each set relating differently to a theme word which must be shaded in the completed grid.   Across 11    Religious devotee keeping a church in shade (6) 12    Sloth in tangles in New Zealand trees (6) 13    Country moving forward area for us in Jamaica (5, doubly hyphened) 17    Muppet grabbed by squirrel-monkey (4) 18    Physicist’s ally, one protecting university (5) 19    Ending operation led by twit (7) 23    Message from paperweight? (8) 24    Recent clothing still a youngster’s outfit (7) 25    A bit downcast, I jeer about fools (6) 30    Record one

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Wrinkled, white, and wrong — this is the face of the Democratic party

Ignore the colourful and fresh-faced Democrats filling up your social media feed. The new face of their party is the same as the old one. It is a white, wrinkled face that no amount of plastic surgery can reconfigure. It is Chuck & Nancy; Schumer and Pelosi, the dinosaurs who don’t die. They aren’t likable, to use a word Democrats really don’t like. Trump’s first Oval Office speech was flat, in the end — he didn’t drop a news bomb. He didn’t call a national emergency. He reiterated his position with lots of facts and figures about illegal immigrant crime. He sniffed a bit (this seems to be a regular feature of