Reply to: The Value Of George Orwell

[VectraMan]

The trouble with Orwell is that he can't write a page without rubbing your nose into his sanctimonious political credo. At every turn he aches about the misery of the proletariat (although a posh and comfortably-off Eton boy himself, who liked to play the tramp). It just gets supremely tedious after a while when the novel is supposedly non-political.

At least the film version of 1984 has some nudity.

[bogeyman]

George Orwell gets on my tits!

Honestly, he does.

A genius writer. A turn of phrase you couldn't match. An understanding of the English language sans-pareil (!) and yet the man is an utter fecking bore!

Why?

Well, I've read almost every novel and essay Orwell ever wrote (except 1984, believe it or not). My favourite was probably 'Coming Up for Air' for fiction, or 'Down and Out in Paris and London' for pseudo-biog.

The trouble with Orwell is that he can't write a page without rubbing your nose into his sanctimonious political credo. At every turn he aches about the misery of the proletariat (although a posh and comfortably-off Eton boy himself, who liked to play the tramp). It just gets supremely tedious after a while when the novel is supposedly non-political.

Orwell had a huge chip on his shoulder - and it wasn't even his own chip - he stole it from the 'working classes'.

Also, his real name was Eric Arthur Blair - which has got to be a bad omen.

[Central-Scrutiniser]

People in the Records Department did not readily talk about their jobs.

He knew that in the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed.

There was a certain fitness in this, since her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier.

And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual, dreamy creature named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent for juggling with rhymes and metres, was engaged in producing garbled versions -- definitive texts, they were called -- of poems which had become ideologically offensive, but which for one reason or another were to be retained in the anthologies.



And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels -- with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.


And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.

There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally.


Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.


There was even a whole sub-section -- Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak -- engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.

[Central-Scrutiniser]

Oh No. Say it isn't you AJP! What happened to the light hearted cosmic dancer? Bring him back I say ....

The former Party member and traitor AJPruffock was an outspoken critic of Engsoc and the Eurasian conflict hence his current re education session in Room 101.

Soon he will come round to seeing things our way,he asked the following message to be sent to you from room 101


Stuck inside these four walls
Never seeing nobdody

Nice Again
Like You

Momma
Like you...

If I ever get out of here
Thought of giving it all away

To a registered Charity
All I need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here...


Doubleplusgood

[sasguru]

Oh No. Say it isn't you AJP! What happened to the light hearted cosmic dancer? Bring him back I say ....

[DaveB]

For Dave

Fraid to say Dave , you have been Trolled by no less than former party member AJPruffock.

Of course, if you are actually the alter ego of some ancient and original member of the forum....

Ok, I'll give you the Ancient, jury is still out on the Original

[Churchill]

For DA

To answer your query DA in 1984 there was a perpetual War with Eurasia, War was absolutely necessary to justify the control and epression of the popultation, so the Iraq Afghansitan and and Iran (event to come) can be understood very well in relation to the Euraisa conflict.

For Dave

Fraid to say Dave , you have been Trolled by no less than former party member AJPruffock.

Readers may recall that AJP is currently assisting the Central Scrutiniser with his enquiries in room 101 ...

I prefer the old AJP, he wasn't as scary...

[Central-Scrutiniser]

For DA

To answer your query DA in 1984 there was a perpetual War with Eurasia, War was absolutely necessary to justify the control and supression of the popultation, so the Iraq Afghanistan and and Iran (event to come) can be understood very well in relation to the Euraisa conflict.

For Dave

Fraid to say Dave , you have been Trolled by no less than former party member and traitor AJPruffock.

Readers may recall that AJP is currently assisting the Central Scrutiniser with his enquiries in room 101 ...

[Churchill]

A few quotes (mostly cliches) from Orwell nicely spun by Charley Rees, how Orwellian if Orwell died in 1950 how did he manage to comment on the Iraq war?

He took a leaf from Nostradamus' book...

[DodgyAgent]

The Value Of George Orwell

By Charley Reese
3-6-6

George Orwell remains a valuable writer, though he died in 1950.

He was a man who was an active participant in his times, and since the new century appears to be going down the same road as the last one, we can still learn from him.

His essay "Politics and the English Language" ought to be read by every journalist and by everyone who reads journalists or listens to the babble on television.

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," he wrote.



"When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," Orwell wrote.


Earlier in the essay he had said, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

Our time and his time remain the same.


We invade a sovereign nation based on lies, destroy its infrastructure, depose its government and kill 30,000 of its people, and we call that "spreading democracy" or "defending freedom."

The phrase "war on terror" is a phony metaphor.

We are not at war.

Ninety-nine and 99/100ths percent of the American people are living the same way they've always lived. We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting an insurrection that our invasions of those countries caused.

They are at war * a war of their own country's making * but the rest of us are not.

Waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker on one's car cannot be called a war effort.

The "war" is being relegated to the inside pages, and it's a safe bet that no matter what happens in Baghdad, the Academy Awards will receive more coverage and notice than the war.

In our nutty society, the choice of a comedian to emcee a Hollywood trade show is considered big, national news.

What distinguishes us from other animals is language, and when we use language not to communicate truth as best we can determine it, but to deceive, mislead, obfuscate and obscure the facts, then we are committing the ultimate sin against humanity.

We are playing a dangerous game with our own sanity.

Our own journalists sanitize even their skimpy coverage of the war. The American people must not be allowed to see the real face of war, lest they withdraw their support.

The real face of war, of course, is broken bodies, blood, splattered brains and innards, horrible burns and other mutilations.

There are no pleasant aspects of war.

So, Americans are allowed to see soldiers giving candy to children, and occasionally an explosion on the horizon or the wreckage after the bodies have been removed.

In the meantime, the president and his folks blather on in carefully chosen euphemisms and newspeak just as if they were characters in an Orwell novel.

At least the American people are at last beginning to catch on, and Bush's approval rating is 34 percent and his vice president's rating is 18 percent.

That speaks well of the American people.

They do trust their politicians, though that trust is often abused, but eventually they begin to check actions against words, facts against claims.

Once they realized they've been bamboozled, then all the fancy words and euphemisms in the world won't restore their trust.

Bush has been in trouble in Iraq and Europe and Asia, and now he appears to be in trouble at home. He has three more years, so it would be a great help if this year one or both of the houses of Congress shifted to Democratic control.

That would restore the checks and balances so necessary to preserve liberty, not that Democrats are any prize.

That doesn't matter.

The genius of our Founding Fathers is that they realized that as long as government fights itself, the liberty of the people is safe.


Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.

A few quotes (mostly cliches) from Orwell nicely spun by Charley Rees, how Orwellian if Orwell died in 1950 how did he manage to comment on the Iraq war?

[DaveB]

or make irrelevent sub-Orwellian pronouncements that contribute nothing to the debate at hand,

The debate at hand can be determined by the name of the thread, which is, if you could only be bothered to read it , The value of George Orwell.

Orwellian or what ...

At any rate his true name was Eric Blair, now is that Orwellian or what ...

Which is sitting on a Board named "General : General issues affecting and of interest to contractors."; somthing which many here feel you are struggling to achieve.

However, I didn't know that Orwells real name was Eric Blair and I'm pretty certain that if you had pitched with that fact and drawn some brief and succinct political parralels with New Labour based on it we could have had a lively and informed debate on the current state of British politics and the nation in general, or not.

In any case, simply cutting and pasting other peoples work and expecting others to take you seriously because of that is not really the best approach - despite what some of the C++ coders on here would have you belive

Of course, if you are actually the alter ego of some ancient and original member of the forum then I have been well and truly trolled and I congratulate you on your success

[expat]

The OP? Orwellian Prat? Old Prole? Odd Plonker?

GAL!

[sasguru]

Central-Scrote, you do realise that you are officially the forum bore, don't you?

[Central-Scrutiniser]

or make irrelevent sub-Orwellian pronouncements that contribute nothing to the debate at hand,

The debate at hand can be determined by the name of the thread, which is, if you could only be bothered to read it , The value of George Orwell.

Orwellian or what ...

At any rate his true name was Eric Blair, now is that Orwellian or what ...

[sasguru]

Oh come on Dave, the subject matter is "General" and it's pretty well-named. And the OP has made many interesting posts, dare I say since before you have been doing so here?

The OP? Orwellian Prat? Old Prole? Odd Plonker?