In which some rarefied notion of ‘civility’ is prized above all else
So what O’Hagan does, in summoning the spectres of his childhood (a Daily Mail reader’s fantasy of hard-working salt o’t’earth types who “refused to see themselves as victims”), is offer an anticipatory self-defence that appeals to precisely the sort of material analysis he is attempting to discred…
[...] When he says, disingenuously , that “the leaders of those [other] councils, Labour as well as Tory, are presumably not being accused of detesting the poor for being in power when their managers installed it,” he ignores the fact that the majority of blame has been laid at the feet of the sys…
[...] The question becomes, then, who is permitted to feel? Whose feelings count? To borrow from Judith Butler, which bodies—indeed, which hearts—matter?5 Who do we choose to hear? In tacit response to these questions, O’Hagan grieves the jobs of Nicholas Paget-Brown and Rock Feilding-Mellen at lea…
There are moments when the mask slips, when his failure to truly engage with the humanity of the victims and survivors shines through. He often appeals to a ‘we’ that is all too clearly a cypher for his own responses to the event. “All over Britain, the sight of the burning tower gave people a horr…
