A Little Light Banter

Though not all of it that light. I was angered and repelled by the people (were they resentful that a voice should be raised against cannabis from a quarter where such voices are not often heard?) who wrote in to say that Patrick Cockburn should blame himself for his son Henry's troubles, because of his chosen trade as a foreign correspondent. Apparently Patrick's long absences in foreign parts were the real reason for Henry's difficulties, either directly or indirectly.

May I first of all say what extraordinary, ungracious bad manners this sort of thing is? Patrick (and Henry) have written a rather gruelling account of a very distressing episode, largely in the hope that others may learn from it. Those who imagine that this will shower them with Hollywood-style riches are mistaken. Books rarely make large sums of money for their authors.

Those who attack Patrick as a parent know nothing of him, and have no real evidence on which to base this. As it happens, much of his time as a foreign correspondent has brought him closer to his family than many get, as reporters based in (for example) Moscow (as I can myself attest) generally work from home for much of the time.

There's also a suggestion that there's something frivolous about what Patrick does. On the contrary, he makes a serious contribution to our free society, providing beautifully-written, deeply-informed accounts (his books about the Iraq war and its aftermath are essential reading, his profound understanding of the Afghan war has been many times displayed in his newspaper and on the BBC) of what is really taking place in locations where our soldiers are fighting and dying and where our government has decided to be intimately involved on our behalf. I would agree that there are some self-glamourising, bandolier-draped war junkies in the Western media, but Patrick (who, by the way, suffered severely from Polio as a child and walks with a stick, and whose superb memoir of this experience 'A Broken Boy' should be on all reading lists) is not one of them.

Is there supposed to be a rule that nobody who has children can be a foreign correspondent? Who made it? What other jobs does it affect? In any case, doesn't parenthood give men and women valuable insights that the childless don't have? I should have thought so myself.

Don't attack him personally, especially if you don't know him.

If you disagree with him, say so. But say why.

I'd apply the same rule to some of my attackers on the free market discussion. Several marketist fanatics, oozing intellectual superiority and chilly Ayn Randist intolerance, posted to the effect that what I had said was 'stupid' etc. They felt this was so self-evident that they didn't explain why. But it plainly wasn't self-evident, as several others wrote to sympathise with what I had said.

Still others offered me gratuitous and useless advice. Yes, I do actually understand that some hotels use the TV set as an alarm. But oughtn't they, in that case, to allow the person sleeping in the room to decide the time that it goes off? And make sure that the previous resident's setting isn't imposed, willy nilly, on the next one? I suspect the author of this earnest advice has not actually been woken from profound slumber at 4.30 in the morning. Anyway, it was a sort of metaphor for the way in which the modern world doesn't give a tinker's curse about us.

And yes, I also know that by seeking out second-hand goods one can avoid the tyranny of manufacturers who insist on 'improving' devices in unwanted ways (why on earth would I want to take pictures with a telephone? I'd as soon connect with the internet via my refrigerator or use my bicycle to dry my socks). But this isn't what the manufacturers want me to do, and eventually it becomes more or less impossible as supplies dry up.

As for Mr Pooter, yes, I've always sympathised with him quite a lot. I'm amazed that everyone who reads this rather two-edged book imagines himself immune from, and superior to, Pooterish failures and misconceptions. I know perfectly well that when I laugh at Pooter I am to some extent laughing at myself. Maybe there are people who are never, ever Pooters. How tremendously superior they must be to the rest of us. But then, we knew that.

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