[lbo-talk] Another Bernard Manning obit

Russell Grinker grinker at mweb.co.za
Wed Jun 20 09:46:07 PDT 2007


This certainly raises some interesting questions. Although I never saw much of Manning when I lived in the UK, I suspect there's no easy parallel between what he did and bigoted US redneck comedians. I think Manning's origins were much more in the working men's club tradition which I don't believe has a real parallel in the US. It was a mixture of racism, sexism, and homophobia, but combined with strong working class/labourist (sometimes also working class Tory) self-consciousness.

So what's all the current nostalgic sentiment about then? I could posit a few ideas: * Nostalgia on what remains of the UK left the for a bygone era of Brit politics when labour still mattered and there was still a distinctive working class culture, albeit one that was largely backward * What we used to call 'workerism' on the left i.e. glorifying (often backward) working class culture in a misguided attempt at ingratiating oneself * Nostalgia for a less pathetic, less grey, less offensively soft-repressive British society, an era which ironically, is for some symbolised by Manning's humour and iconoclastic outlook * Many of his jokes were genuinely hilarious and offensive to the establishment above all - notice that even Murdoch's arch-reactionary Sun takes the moral high-ground on his racism; and his overt bigotry maybe doesn't wholly negate that *Some left wing Brits have a strange blind spot when it comes to soccer-induced chauvinism and a few bigoted comedians. The condition appears to be otherwise harmless.

Russell

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of B. Sent: 20 June 2007 05:47 PM To: LBO Talk Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Another Bernard Manning obit

The Manning thing has really confounded me.



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