Everybody is a critic

smart men telling me other smart men are stupid

In my early 20s, I was a smug little cunt who’d get frustrated when the politicians I supported and later on worked for would not perform well on TV and radio.

I would watch pre-election debates or question time (a popular British political panel debate), scream at my laptop screen, or hold my head from the green room. How hard can it be to answer a simple question live on air?

Well, very, as I was to find out eventually. God took note of my hubris and, years later, threw a side media gig at me and said CATCH IT BITCH.

The first time I went live on British TV, it was like learning English all over again. You can’t use the neural pathways of casual conversation because political panels are fast and confrontational, and the audience doesn’t know you. You can’t use your polemic writing pathways either because the debates are oral, so you’d sound stilted and weird. I could hear my heart beating through my eardrum the first couple of times and would want to vomit from embarrassment every time I listened back to playbacks. On air, my spoken English would revert to its primal form.

Eventually, I got over the anxiety and, more importantly, the smugness about judging anyone debating live on TV or radio. Now, when I watch Question Time, I MARVEL at the MAESTRY of its panelists. WOW, that Tory I cross the road to avoid strung a complete sentence without flinching. Am I ….a Tory? That Labour backbencher cited THREE (3) different numbers and got them all correct without looking down at her notes? What a talent, Prime Minister Starmer, send this lady straight to the frontbench.

It’s easy to be a critic. It is hard to do shit.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.

-Anton Ego, Ratatouille

On X and WhatsApp groups, I push back on criticisms of work that’s not perfect but done. I am unsuccessful, as people love to tear down the old rather than build up the new.

In a scene in Goethe’s Faust, Baccalaureus, a boastful young graduate, mocks and insults Mephisto, loudly proclaiming that the new generation has surpassed the old and that all old men, like him, may as well be dead already. He doesn’t know he is addressing the literal Devil.

I see my discourse leaves you cold;

Dear kids, I do not take offense;

Recall: the Devil, he is old,

Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!

People are impressively perceptive when authoring behind anon accounts and in private DMs. They have expertise, imaginative ideas and high taste. But if they tried to implement them, they would realise how difficult it is and how obnoxious they sound. In politics, it is insanely difficult to rise up the ranks because the system is chaotic, not meritocratic, but not entirely corrupt either, so you cannot depend on any well-trodden path to assent. Even when you get any semblance of political power or clout, using it is incredibly difficult and requires a village of support.

I especially see this attitude when I speak to men in politics about other men in politics. Otherwise, very judicious people are blinded by their biases (and testosterone). I will talk to a guy whose expertise and judgement I trust about another guy whose knowledge and judgement I trust, and the most incomprehensible bile will come out. No, that other man is not just wrong on that specific topic but an outright moron who has never done anything right in their entire life and should be discarded from your ‘men-good-at-things’ Rolodex immediately and permanently.

The female equivalent is when I speak to gal friends, and they argue about whether an objectively good-looking woman deserves the fascination she receives, but women are more socially aware, so we temper our jealousy.

This is not only true for men from opposite political factions, either. Men from the same parties hate each other the most, perhaps because they are in more direct competition with them.

People who have built an intellectual career criticising cancel culture and have suffered personally from people judging them on one part of their work without considering their contribution as a whole cannot see how they do the same to others. They also do not temper their judgement on sins that they themselves commit, like, for example, being guilty by association because you hang in spaces with contemptible people. They are okay with bending the rules of discourse when it serves them, but when others do it, that’s a red line crossed.

Others look at projects I know they would love to do themselves and nitpick on details that can be ironed out later. Rather than reaching out to help or to learn more about the people ~doing the thing~ they fester in their rage group chats about the things they are getting wrong.

Intellectual humility and self-awareness are under-appreciated attributes in politics, but our campaigns would be so much more effective if they were waged in a spirit of generosity and openness.

If I could get all the intelligent, competitive men I know to work together rather than against each other I would be a happy chappy, but then that might require me getting some hot female friends who, historically, have been curiously absent from my daily life.

Jealousy is a feeling to run towards, not away from. When we feel enraged with someone, it is often because they remind us of ourselves or because they have something we want for ourselves. We are disgusted when we encounter people with flaws that we subconsciously try to beat within us.

Nobody judges a fat person like a recovering bulimic.