Follows on from the previous post after a comment by Edward Spalton who describes George Bernard Shaw as a first class shit which he most certainly was.
The clip also gives us yet another hint of how deluded so many on the political left could be when it came to the Soviet Union. A second video is here.
6 comments:
"By means of wit he concealed the fact that he was silly"
That's a nice line. There did seem to be a lot of silly people around in the early twentieth century; intelligent, but silly. The Webbs over communism; Forster; Huxley and daft theories; Conan Doyle and spiritualism; etc. That might be because it is a word that was used then, rather than the harsher and cruder judgements that we would apply today. Or it might be because public intellectuals were able to get their teeth into a subject by reading extensively, but didn't get much feedback from people who could tell them they were talking piffle.
I love Russell's accent, by the way. "Sta-leen" for Stalin.
Horrifying.
When we look at the media today along with access to archives and documents etc. and then compare it with was was available in the past, it is not surprising that a very limited number of "experts" could command attention at the time if they were lead players in the press etc.. I recall Shaw and when it was a case of when Shaw spoke all must listen etc. The missing part of Shaw is that he was a Dublin man by origin, a breed who had thinking processes all of the own among the intellectuals. Read James Joyce.
Sam - it is a nice line. I think there are a lot of silly people around now but as you say, harsher and cruder judgements are applied. Yet to my mind the word works quite well even today for just that reason. It isn't harsh but it can be accurate.
Sackers - it is. Difficult to imagine anyone actually putting pen to paper like that, presumably after some kind of reflection.
Demetrius - I'm not so sure about the thinking processes. He wasn't isolated yet Shaw failed some pretty basic moral tests in what he said.
AKH - I follow up some implications here:
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-western-cult-of-death-i-change-my.html
Sackers - sounds interesting, I'll pop across for a read.
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