Graun tries to be serious -- but class distancing triumphs

A Chakraborrty writes:

Constantly inconstant, Boris Johnson is faithful in at least one area: generating outrage. That he does as naturally as a dog cocks its leg at a lamppost.

Then there is the usual list of outrageous comments followed by this:

I would go on, but equally so might you – and we both know what typically comes next. The performative [fashionable!] pearl-clutching, the saucer-eyed wailing: “How could he?” The sound and rote fury on social media and rolling news, followed by a satisfied, full-bellied silence as grateful journalists wait for their next steaming dollop of Boris buffoonery... It passes time and it pads out [Toynbee's, Freedland's, Behr's and Kettle's] columns, but it is no way to scrutinise the man who may well be our next prime minister.

[Johnson and Trump] are adept at exploiting the media appetite for offence over ideas, for name-calling in place of nuance [claimed cultural capital of the petite bourgeoisie]...they grab coverage and set the terms of the debate.... The critics are so busy fact-checking his fibs that there’s less time and energy to investigate the inconvenient truth.

The Graun has been one of the gullible outfits who have fallen for it of course, and lost credibility and authority. Far too late and from too far away, Chakraborrty asks for serious journalism:

Look at the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of the Tory manifesto. Barely covered on the BBC or in the press, [or in his column] it gives the lie to those studio-sofa cliches about both parties “bidding to see who can spend the most”. Instead, it calculates that a Johnson government will spend less, day to day, on everything outside the NHS – which is to say crucial things such as teachers or social security or care for the elderly, than 2010 levels – even as the fallout from his Brexit crash sucks jobs and money out of the private sector [unusual -- isn't he privatising everything?]

Inevitably, there is a book.Just one. Islington reads it, no doubt. It appears agreeable:

Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt compile a checklist titled “Key indicators of authoritarian behavior”...“Do they reject the Constitution or express a willingness to violate it?”[we don't have one but let that pass] ...“Do they baselessly [this is the weasel --political scientists decide?] suggest that their rivals are foreign agents?”...“Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action against … the media?”[ the real offence and the real concern for the Graun?]

As a final example of class distancing, not very serious or nuanced after all:

[Johnson's] bad manners should not distract from the fact he is a bad man. Treat this election as some kind of joke, and we may laugh ourselves into plummy-voiced, perma-smirking, tousle-haired despotism.