Gormless Is...

NoIfA(nd)sOrButs
StupidVille

....As Gormless Does.

Last Saturday in her 'As If' column in the Globe and Mail, Heather Mallick wrote a scorching piece on the Guardian's shabby treatment of Noam Chomsky.

Here's a bit of it.

"So, why have I cancelled my subscription to The Guardian? It sent Gormless to interview Noam Chomsky, the famed professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of such classics as Manufacturing Consent and recently named the world's top intellectual in a poll conducted by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.Either Gormless wanted to do a hatchet job on him or was put up to it by the editors (although why a left-leaning publication would want to do such a thing is a mystery). This is fine for subjects who hand you the hatchet, but Prof. Chomsky did not. (I must tell you with Canadian pride that last year Gormless tried the same thing on Margaret Atwood, who coolly and politely cut that notion to pieces.)"


Well, it turns out that what Ms. Mallick actually wrote was actually much more scorching. Here's a bit of the real copy which she sent to Rabble who published it the following day:

So why have I cancelled my subscription to the Guardian? They sent a Gormless to interview Noam Chomsky, the man recently named the world's top intellectual. Chomsky laughed, but such is his achievement in linguistics that no one even wrote one of those Lists are Stupid columns. He's Chomsky.

Gormless is a feature writer named Emma Brockes. It's not clear whether she is nasty or so malleable (likely both) that she will do any hatchet job an editor puts her up to. This is fine for subjects who hand you the hatchet, but Prof. Chomsky did not. (I must tell you with Canadian pride that in 2004, Ms. Brockes tried one on Margaret Atwood, who coolly and politely cut her to pieces using mere words.)

So, why is there a difference between the two versions?

Well, it looks like Fast Eddie G's foot soldiers put the screws to Ms. Mallick.

As a result Mallick has quit the column. Here is an explanation, purportedly in her own words, from Antonia Zerbisias who added the links:

"My reason was that I had asked that a column be pulled last Friday and the Globe refused.

I had written a column on the Guardian's deplorable and grotesque libel of Noam Chomsky. The handling editor then said I had to repeat the libel. I said that it was libellous to repeat a libel, as any editor should know. I waited to see the final version (I had my editor's word that I always get to see a final version) and on Friday morning was horrified to find that the column had gone to the printer without my having seen it. I said pull it. The Globe refused.

My column runs Sundays on rabble.ca, a great website. I sent them my original version.

That's the dispute.

I am a great admirer of Prof. Chomsky. I think he is the modern Orwell and the moral point mattered a great deal to me, more than anything. Obviously."

There are a lot of things that matter a great deal to Ms. Mallick.

Things like this.

And we greatly admire her for that quality.

And now we admire her even more for standing up so straight and so tall on principle.

****

At the end of her (real) story on quitting the Guardian (as a reader), Mallick had this to say:

Subscribing to a rival Murdoch paper hardly improves journalism. So I shall do my best for Canada and send the New Democratic Party a cheque (for the amountof the Guardian subscription refund). Plus I will no longer have a kg. of newsprint coming from Manchester so I've done my bit for climate change. Bye, Grauniad. I’ll miss the paper I thought you were.

Now, we've got to decide who to send our Globe and (no longer)Empire Mail refund to.

A weekly contribution to Andrea Reimer's next campaign perhaps?

Regardless, we know this much for sure.

Edward Greenspon won't have us to kick around any longer.

.