Russel Brands "The Trews"

[troon_villan]

aesthetically palatable

Purely subjective

An ecumenical matter.

[villaajax]

Whatever the opinion that some people here have about Brand, largely constructed from his self-portrayal as a bit of a clearing in the woods, and his association with the Andrew Sachs thing, the 9/12 Bin Laden thing or his don't vote thing, certainly it'd be strange not to agree with his overall message that some people have too much money and other people have too little money, and that this is a reality that rests entirely in the hands of the people who have all the money, so it is unlikely to change.

 

He's a very intelligent guy, who has recognised that there is an appetite for revolution that has been missing an aesthetically palatable, benevolent and high profile leader. He is gaining thousands of followers every day, and I hope it continues. His YouTube subscriber number has tripled in the past few months and the increase is exponential. To write him off because he's a bit camp and his antics annoy you is a bit ignorant. His message is good, and his method of delivery effective. 

 

Just because you wear a tie and billionaires wear a tie, doesn't mean you're their peer. In terms of earning you are far nearer the children selling bananas in Africa.

 

I think a lot of people would write him off because as I mentioned previously, his ideas are all flawed and when challenged on them, he can't back them up ever, he just resorts to childish behaviour, talking over the top of people, trying to change the subject, using long words he doesn't seem to know the meaning of.

 

I think Robert Webb's response is worth a repost

 

 

Dear Russell,

 

Hi. We’ve met about twice, so I should probably reintroduce myself: I’m the other one from Peep Show. I read your thing on revolution in these pages with great interest and some concern. My first reaction was to rejoin the Labour Party. The Jiffy bag containing the plastic membership card and the Tristram Hunt action figure is, I am assured, in the post. I just wanted to tell you why I did that because I thought you might want to hear from someone who a) really likes your work, takes you seriously as a thoughtful person and c) thinks you’re wilfully talking through your arse about something very important.

It’s about influence and engagement. You have a theoretical 7.1 million (mostly young) followers on Twitter. They will have their own opinions about everything and I have no intention of patronising them. But what I will say is that when I was 15, if Stephen Fry had advised me to trim my eyebrows with a Flymo, I would have given it serious consideration. I don’t think it’s your job to tell young people that they should engage with the political process. But I do think that when you end a piece about politics with the injunction “I will never vote and I don’t think you should either”, then you’re actively telling a lot of people that engagement with our democracy is a bad idea. That just gives politicians the green light to neglect the concerns of young people because they’ve been relieved of the responsibility of courting their vote.

Why do pensioners (many of whom are not poor old grannies huddled round a kerosene lamp for warmth but bloated ex-hippie baby boomers who did very well out of the Thatcher/Lawson years) get so much attention from politicians? Because they vote.

 

Many of the young, the poor, the people you write about are in desperate need of support. The last Labour government didn’t do enough and bitterly disappointed many voters. But, at the risk of losing your attention, on the whole they helped. Opening Sure Start centres, introducing and raising the minimum wage, making museums free, guaranteeing nursery places, blah blah blah: nobody is going to write a folk song about this stuff and I’m aware of the basic absurdity of what I’m trying to achieve here, like getting Liberace to give a shit about the Working Tax Credit, but these policies among many others changed the real lives of millions of real people for the better.

 

This is exactly what the present coalition is in the business of tearing to pieces. They are not interested in helping unlucky people – they want to scapegoat and punish them. You specifically object to George Osborne’s challenge to the EU’s proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses. Labour simply wouldn’t be doing that right now. They are not all the same. “They’re all the same” is what reactionaries love to hear. It leaves the status quo serenely untroubled, it cedes the floor to the easy answers of Ukip and the Daily Mail. No, if you want to be a nuisance to the people whom you most detest in public life, vote. And vote Labour.

 

You talk of “obediently X-ing a little box”. Is that really how it feels to you? Obedience? There’s a lot that people interested in shaping their society can do in between elections – you describe yourself as an activist, among other things – but election day is when we really are the masters. We give them another chance or we tell them to get another job. If I thought I worked for David Cameron rather than the other way round, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.

 

Maybe it’s this timidity in you that leads you into another mistake: the idea that revolution is un-British. Actually, in the modern era, the English invented it, when we publicly decapitated Charles I in 1649. We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then. Aha! Until now, you say! By those pesky, corporate, global, military-industrial conglomerate bastards! Well, yes. So national parliaments and supernational organisations such as the EU need more legitimacy. That’s more votes, not fewer.

 

You’re a wonderful talker but on the page you sometimes let your style get ahead of what you actually think. In putting the words “aesthetically” and “disruption” in the same sentence, you come perilously close to saying that violence can be beautiful. Do keep an eye on that. Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of “thinker”, with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won’t really do.

 

What were the chances, in the course of human history, that you and I should be born into an advanced liberal democracy? That we don’t die aged 27 because we can’t eat because nobody has invented fluoride toothpaste? That we can say what we like, read what we like, love whom we want; that nobody is going to kick the door down in the middle of the night and take us or our children away to be tortured? The odds were vanishingly small. Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege. On Remembrance Sunday, for a start. And again when I read an intelligent fellow citizen ready to toss away the hard-won liberties of his brothers and sisters because he’s bored.

 

I understand your ache for the luminous, for a connection beyond yourself. Russell, we all feel like that. Some find it in music or literature, some in the wonders of science and others in religion. But it isn’t available any more in revolution. We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder. In brief, and I say this with the greatest respect, please read some **** Orwell.

 

Good luck finding whatever it is you’re looking for and while you do, may your God go with you.

 

Rob

 

New Statesman's upload

[maqroll]

 

 

I’m aware of the basic absurdity of what I’m trying to achieve here, like getting Liberace to give a shit about the Working Tax Credit

LOL

[YLN]

 

Whatever the opinion that some people here have about Brand, largely constructed from his self-portrayal as a bit of a clearing in the woods, and his association with the Andrew Sachs thing, the 9/12 Bin Laden thing or his don't vote thing, certainly it'd be strange not to agree with his overall message that some people have too much money and other people have too little money, and that this is a reality that rests entirely in the hands of the people who have all the money, so it is unlikely to change.

 

He's a very intelligent guy, who has recognised that there is an appetite for revolution that has been missing an aesthetically palatable, benevolent and high profile leader. He is gaining thousands of followers every day, and I hope it continues. His YouTube subscriber number has tripled in the past few months and the increase is exponential. To write him off because he's a bit camp and his antics annoy you is a bit ignorant. His message is good, and his method of delivery effective. 

 

Just because you wear a tie and billionaires wear a tie, doesn't mean you're their peer. In terms of earning you are far nearer the children selling bananas in Africa.

 

I think a lot of people would write him off because as I mentioned previously, his ideas are all flawed and when challenged on them, he can't back them up ever, he just resorts to childish behaviour, talking over the top of people, trying to change the subject, using long words he doesn't seem to know the meaning of.

 

I think Robert Webb's response is worth a repost

 

I disagree. I like Robert Webb, but I think he could have written that in his diary, or just had a wank instead, for all it did in addressing Russell's position.

 

Maybe Brand's ideas are flawed. You say they are with some confidence, so it's either rhetoric based on your overall opinion of the man, or backed up by a carefully considered and researched assessment of his ideas. I'm going to wager it's the former. Brand is no polymath. He has not got the economic degree from Cambridge that Evan Davis has, and so when pressed to argue a point of economics on live television, Russell could either concede his ignorance, or shout the economist down using what he learned dealing with condescending adults growing up in Essex. 

 

Russell is only a figure head. He's a comedian - not an economist, not a philosopher, not a political scientist. He touches on all subjects in his book and on the trews, and invites experts in these fields to contribute. He has the benefit of being on the just side of the argument here, and only tries to convince people to challenge what they believe. His function is to collect the information and present it in a humorous way. The scumbags you hate, the immigrants you mistrust, the homeless people you ignore, the prisoners you condemn, the drug addicts you hate, mistrust, ignore and condemn - These people are all where and how they are because the people with all the money make you just comfortable enough to not care about the dichotomy between how rich the rich are and how completely **** the poor are. This information needs to be presented to people in a funny way, or they'll not have it presented to them.

 

He is an orator, not a master debater, so when confronted he will do his best to not be drawn into a war of words with someone who argues with well versed politicians for a living.

[maqroll]

 

He is an orator, not a master debater, so when confronted he will do his best to not be drawn into a war of words with someone who argues with well versed politicians for a living.

 

He was on the show to sell his book and promote his web series. When the presenter asked a couple of pretty soft questions, Brand turned defensive and belligerent. Nobody expects him to be a master debater, but maybe a news show guest with some manners. He wasn't confronted or provoked, he was just asked to explain his positions that he wrote about in his book. 

 

I agree with some of what Brand talks about, but it's mostly pie in the sky stuff, idealistic daydreaming.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

There are better thinkers and writers out there, and most of them aren't sexist clearings in the woods either.

 

I would recommend the baby faced Owen Jones if you want Russell's ideas but, like, with some thought behind them.

 

I also recommend baby face because he elicits a violent, frothing at the mouth hatred from the right wing. That is generally a good sign. Russell just makes everyone laugh.

 

Srsly that guy looks about 12.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

There are better thinkers and writers out there, and most of them aren't sexist clearings in the woods either.

I would recommend the baby faced Owen Jones if you want Russell's ideas but, like, with some thought behind them.

I also recommend baby face because he elicits a violent, frothing at the mouth hatred from the right wing. That is generally a good sign. Russell just makes everyone laugh.

Srsly that guy looks about 12.

Funny really, you Google Owen Jones and one of the first things that comes up is a piece about him and Russell Brand getting together to discuss revolution.

Your obsession with sexism is ceaseless isn't it.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

If someone claims to be a spokesperson for the people, their view of half the population is relevant.

Edited October 26, 2014 by CarewsEyebrowDesigner

[dont_do_it_doug.]

What is Russell Brands view of women then? I am genuinely intrigued. I know the stereotypical view of his "kind" and I know of his past, vaguely, but I've yet to see recent evidence of his sexism.

Edited October 26, 2014 by dont_do_it_doug.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

I'm sure you could Google for examples if you really wanted to.

 

On Brand, Laurie Penny pretty much summed up the problem (and a problem on the left in general) in the New Statesman

 

 

But what about the women?

 

I know, I know that asking that female people be treated as fully human and equally deserving of liberation makes me an iron-knickered feminist killjoy and probably a closet liberal, but in that case there are rather a lot of us, and we’re angrier than you can possibly imagine at being told our job in the revolution is to look beautiful and encourage the men to do great works. Brand is hardly the only leftist man to boast a track record of objectification and of playing cheap misogyny for laughs. He gets away with it, according to most sources, because he’s a charming scoundrel, but when he speaks in that disarming, self-depracating way about his history of slutshaming his former conquests on live radio, we are invited to love and forgive him for it because that’s just what a rockstar does. Naysayers who insist on bringing up those uncomfortable incidents are stooges, spoiling the struggle. Acolytes who cannot tell the difference between a revolution that seduces - as any good revolution should - and a revolution that treats one half of its presumed members as chattel attack in hordes online. My friend and colleague Musa Okwonga came under fire last week merely for pointing out that “if you’re advocating a revolution of the way that things are being done, then it’s best not to risk alienating your feminist allies with a piece of flippant objectification in your opening sentence. It’s just not a good look.”

 

I don’t believe that just because Brand is clearly a casual and occasionally vicious sexist, nobody should listen to anything he has to say. But I do agree with Natasha Lennard, who wrote that “this is no time to forgo feminism in the celebration of that which we truly don’t need - another god, or another master.” The question, then, is this: how do we reconcile the fact that people need stirring up with the fact that the people doing the stirring so often fall down when it comes to treating women and girls like human beings?

 

It’s not a small question. Its goes way beyond Brand. Speaking personally, it has dogged years of my political work and thought. As a radical who is also female and feminist I don't get to ignore this stuff until I'm confronted with it. It happens constantly. It's everywhere. It's Julian Assange and George Galloway. It’s years and years of rape apologism on the left, of somehow ending up in the kitchen organising the cleaning rota while the men write those all-important communiques.

 

It comes up whenever women and girls and their allies are asked to swallow our discomfort and fear for the sake of a brighter tomorrow that somehow never comes, putting our own concerns aside to make things easier for everyone else like good girls are supposed to. It comes up whenever a passionate political group falls apart because of inability to deal properly with male violence against women. Whenever some idiot commentator bawls you out for writing about feminism and therefore 'retreating' into 'identity politics' and thereby distracting attention from 'the real struggle'.

 

But what is this 'real struggle', if it requires women and girls to suffer structural oppression in silence? What is this 'real struggle' that hands the mic over and over again to powerful, charismatic white men? Can we actually have a revolution that relegates women to the back of the room, that turns vicious when the discussion turns to sexual violence and social equality? What kind of **** freedom are we fighting for? And whither that elusive, sporadically useful figure, the brocialist?

 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

I do not want to google for examples no. You made the point so I have asked you to back it up with something, anything.

 

Laurie Penny doesn't seem to be able to provide any examples either. 

[villaajax]

 

Russell Brand Sexually Harassed A Wardrobe Girl – But Don’t Worry, It Was Funny

 

Let’s not pretend like movie sets operate just like any other office building. Obviously they have their own rules, their own brand of etiquette and their own relationships. And since I’ve never worked on a movie set, I probably don’t understand all of the unspoken codes of conduct. However, I’m pretty sure that demanding a woman show your her breasts is not considered acceptable behavior. Or God I hope it isn’t.

 

On the set of Eric Idle‘s musical What About Dick?, production was apparently halted for two hours because Russell Brand refused to perform until his wardrobe girl showed him her tits. That’s right, a grown man an paid professional just sat there like a toddler who was refused candy because he wanted to see a woman’s breasts.

 

According to the story reported in The Sun, the woman involved was not happy about the request and refused to give in for quite a while. It wasn’t until she started to get worried about the movie production itself and the time delays that she finally acquiesced, apparently saving an entire film with one lift of her shirt. That wasn’t so hard, right? Wrong.

 

I guess we’re all supposed to feel better about this disgusting incident because Bill Connolly ha a conscious an gave the comedian a stern lecture about appropriate behavior. The whole thing is being brushed off as “a bit of fun.” And an insider reports

 

“Russell is a charming scoundrel and everybody let him get away with murder on set — except Billy.

But after their heart-to-heart he settled down and gave a great performance and filmed the scenes like a consummate professional.”

 

I’m sorry, random anonymous source, but no. Russell Brand doesn’t get to be referred to as a “consummate professional” after an incident like that. It wasn’t just a schoolyard prank that Brand pulled before having his wrist slapped.

 

 

This is a grown man who demanded that a woman, who was simply trying to do her job, expose her breasts to him. She HAD to do it, just because he was powerful and he said she did. This isn’t just “a bit of fun.” It’s disgusting. This behavior is absolutely unacceptable.

 

As a female working in any industry, I would love to know where the directors an producers were during all of this. Where were all the people waiting for Brand while he was refusing to work until he could see some boobs? Because if they were aware of what was going on and they did nothing to remove this woman from the situation and correct Brand’s completely horrible behavior, they’re just as despicable as he is.

 

Russell Brand’s behavior wasn’t just a bit of fun, it was sexism as its worst. It was degrading, not just to the female who was put on the spot, but to working women everywhere who are more than a set of breasts for a guy to ogle. The actor and anyone who stood by and watched it happen should all be ashamed of themselves.

 

source

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Ah yeah, "The Sun" reports...

Thanks for the effort.

[villaajax]

Ah yeah, "The Sun" reports...

Thanks for the effort.

 

I do remember Billy Connolly talking about it

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Fair enough. I don't. Did Brand get a chance to defend himself?

[OutByEaster?]

Brand is a bit of a dick, but, he's showing something about the urge for those who aren't happy with the status quo and don't want to go even further to the right to find some sort of flag to rally around.

 

With the media being quite so biased as they are, it's really difficult for a true alternative to find a way to put itself out there, Brand's profile allows him to become a point around which people with similar ideas can gather. It's just a shame he's a bit of a dick.

[Dr_Pangloss]

He's full of utter shit. He doesn't have any real ideas and he encourages ignorance, as evidenced by his Newsnight performance, where he said he didn't want to look at that 'confusing graph'. 

[villaajax]

Fair enough. I don't. Did Brand get a chance to defend himself?

 

Probably rambled on about something completely unrelated.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Brand is a bit of a dick, but, he's showing something about the urge for those who aren't happy with the status quo and don't want to go even further to the right to find some sort of flag to rally around.

With the media being quite so biased as they are, it's really difficult for a true alternative to find a way to put itself out there, Brand's profile allows him to become a point around which people with similar ideas can gather. It's just a shame he's a bit of a dick.

This, pretty much. He's undeniably "a bit of a dick", but people are allowing their opinion of how much of a dick he is to be swayed be the very same media that he is attempting to rally against. That was my point.

The media has portrayed him in a certain way. The more he talks against them (though he seems more politically motivated lately he will open his mouth and piss off the wrong people soon enough) the more they will ramp it up. If there's one thing I agree with him on it is that we must resist the might of the media and it's will to spoon feed us our opinion.

It's time we opened our eyes. This cannot be ignored any longer.

[villaajax]

This story came out a couple of years before he tried his hand at being a revolutionary. That and the whole thing with Andrew Sach's granddaughter to be fair.