Saturday, January 20, 2007

Guardian Puff For Brockes Guff

According to her Guardian colleagues, Emma Brockes has legs to die for. Judge for yourselves, dear readers. The cover of the utterly useless Guardian magazine has Emma Brockes, who famously concocted an interview with Noam Chomsky, in Cabaret-like fashion. We learn from yet another wasted article in the mag that "Emma Brockes first saw Mary Poppins at eight and watched it twice a week for three years. She outgrew it in 1985, but she still loves Cabaret and Fiddler On The Roof". Fascinating stuff, I'm sure we'll all agree. Next week we can all look forward to how she takes her coffee and whether she puts cream or jam first on her scones. Oh, and if we're lucky how she got to keep her job after making up an interview.

At the end of all of this guff from the Guardian mag, however, we learn that this is all a puff for Brockes's book, "What Would Barbra Do: How Musicals Change Your Life." Did Emma bother to ask Barbra the question? Or did she make the answer up and pretend that's what Babs said? (Possible Q & A follows. Q: "Barbra, how have musicals changed your life?" A: "I don't know what you're talikng about. I thought we were here to discuss my recent election as Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan".) Who knows. Who cares! Let's just delight in those apparently wonderful legs.

6 comments:

badmatthew said...

If it's a case of 'who cares', why bother?

AN said...

Toff, you are developing an unhralthy obsession with Brockes.

Iif every jounranlist who made things up was sacked, then the professin would be decimated!

As someone who cannot and doesn't read the guardian, I had never even heard of her before she went eye ball to eye ball with Chomsky

splinteredsunrise said...

To be fair, she does do showbiz pretty well. Why she was let loose on Chomsky when she obviously didn't understand the guy is a question the higher-ups at the Graun would need to answer. Specially since her only apparent prep was chatting with Vulliamy and/or Wheen.

Tawfiq Chahboune said...

I'll leave her alone when she calls off her attack dogs (or they call themselves off), Kamm and Aaronovitch, who regularly bang on about her innocence.

AN said...

Calling Aaronvitch and Kamm "attack dogs" rather flatters them i think.

You wouldn't want a lazy, smug, complacent attack dog

splinteredsunrise said...

You know, I doubt that Emma will ever live this down - certainly not if Francis Kammovitch insist on puffing her worst work as her best. If this issue is worth pursuing, the real targets should be the Grauniad brass who put her up to the hoax and then let her take the fall.

I'm much more concerned with the Graun running endless articles by Ian Traynor on the Balkans which show zero regard for factuality.