intercourse with biscuits a modern miscellany

I regularly write these critiques of Liz Jones’s unbalanced rantings. Most of the time I’m just mildly irritated by her unformed arguments and misanthropic streak. This time she’s taken her unpleasantness to a new level – drawing a connection between Emma Watson making millions from the Harry Potter series and Medine Memi, a Turkish teenager, being brutally murdered in an honour killing.

Drawing on her own titanic insecurities about ageing, looks and youth (shared by her employers at the Daily Mail), Jones asks: “Can we in the West really claim the moral high ground when it comes to condemning these ‘honour’ killings?” There’s some potential in that argument but as usual with Liz Jones’ arguments, its swiftly leaves the road of rationality for an unscheduled detour through Crazy Town.

Liz Jones contends: “I would counter that the number of women harmed psychologically and physically by the West’s obsession with extreme youth far outstrips the number of women who are murdered for adultery, or even for the ‘crime’ of being the victim of rape in Islamic countries.”

Well firstly, Liz has written and continues to write about fashion for a living. In her own columns for the Daily Mail she frequently highlights other women to be judged. She even essentially claimed breasts are disgusting. Liz Jones has not spent her career fighting for the rights of women. A remarkably large number of the thousands of words she vomits out into the world are about strengthening the idea the fashion matters. 

And who does Liz Jones use an example of the West’s failings? Emma Watson, the 19-year-old Harry Potter star. Her involvement in the franchise has netted her millions of pounds and put her in the top 20 earners. Jones’s goggle-eyed, head-spinning logic makes her believe that Watson has been successful because of “her portrayal of a virginal schoolgirl”. Not because she happened to be part of one of the largest film franchises in history? No, to Jones, Watson is successful because Western culture wants to gobble up Virgins. Boy I’d love to read Liz’s psychiatrist’s notes.

Liz ponders why Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren or Kathyrn Bigelow aren’t on the Top 20 list. I can explain that one pretty simply. Both Streep and Mirren have not made massively commercial films. They are serious actresses in a later period of their careers making subtler, more small scale films. As for Bigelow, she’s just starting to get some major success. Asking why they’re not earning as much as Watson is like asking why Ian Rankin isn’t as rich as Stephen King.

Then there’s those nasty old men for Liz to take on: “The most powerful men are inevitably all ancient and unglamorous with old-lady arms: James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and their ilk.” Again, Liz has let that trick thing called context slip through her overly manicured hands. Spielberg and Cameron have been working in Hollywood since they were extremely young. They’re rich old men now but they were once hungry young men and they’ve always made blockbuster movies. 

Jones might be able to justify her argument that “Hollywood is clannish…backward-thinking” but she has to go further trying to cram together the success of one young woman with the brutal murder of another. Medine Memi was buried alive for talking to boys on the telephone. Her lungs and stomach were found to be filled with soil. Liz Jones should be ashamed. Her column is trite and belittles a real issue.

Liz Jones takes serious issues and throws them in a blender with her own twisted vision of the world. She even asks for a “war between genders” in her piece. There is a real issue with the Western world’s veneration of youth. We do have a serious problem with violence against women but the kind of half-considered, bile-splattered bullshit written by Liz Jones does us no good.