A study in bigotry: The Guardian’s “review” of Melanie Phillips’ new book

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
16 June '10
Posted before Shabbat

If there’s one thing that you should never forget when writing a review of someone’s book it is this: what you write will reflect just as much on you as on the book you are reviewing. Go over the top in praise of something that’s actually pretty run of the mill and it will make you look shallow. Start slamming something that’s a work of art and you’ll look like a philistine who couldn’t get the measure of a much greater mind. Start ranting and you’ll make an ass of yourself. Get personal and you look like a weirdo.

Enter John Crace, feature writer for the Guardian, who earlier this week reviewed Melanie Phillips’ new book, The World Turned Upside Down. If you read the review you’ll learn nothing about Melanie’s book. But you will learn a lot about John Crace.

Here’s how he starts out, mockingly using the first person singular as if it were Melanie Phillips talking about her own reasons for writing her book:

“This book arose from a sense of perplexity that almost everyone in the world thought I was clinically mad. Everywhere I looked there were people who believed boarding a humanitarian aid convoy in international waters and murdering nine people was a little bit naughty. So I did what I’ve always done as a columnist for the Daily Mail; go where my bigotry leads.”

As the piece goes on he slips in just enough references to “the Old Testament”, going to “synagogue”, “Judaism” and the like to be absolutely sure that everyone knows Melanie Phillips is a Jew. Apart from that, there’s no real need to add anything more from his piece. It’s all variations on the theme of the first paragraph.

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