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Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes feel like there isn't much alternative to The Guardian - on the other hand the opinion pieces are often wearisome and at times the whole thing starts to feel like a parody of itself. It is as if, in becoming "worthy" of "support" it has to crank itself up to an insane degree...just as sugary drinks become more sugary over time to retain their core drinkers.

This is especially noticeable when ludicrous lifestyle pieces sit cheek-by-jowl with slightly overwrought culture wars content. I can't find an example today so I'll make one up:

- Is enjoying the movie Chinatown an act of molestation?

- Why Colombian hemp chocolate makes for the best edible luggage

I mean I both think Polanski should be in jail and that Colombia tourism should be encouraged...but this stuff isn't news.

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What about the recent editorial condemning Taylor Swift: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/the-gu...

Wow, I haven't seen that before! Just stunning how distorted the Guardian's editorial board has become.

Their hatefulness must have become so deep seeded that they are unable to tolerate anyone out there who does not wanted to get instrumentalized by their 'either you are with us or you are our enemy' crusade.

I rarely read the opinion pieces... they seems to be deliberately designed to provoke a discussion. And occasionally, just plain clickbait.

But they are clearly labelled "Opinion" and then I don't have a problem ignoring and being very critical when I do happen to read such an article.

What utter rubbish. Just when you think it's already reached "Peak Guardian", they come out with that.

See my problem here is not the analytical over-reach - it's an editorial that mentions Taylor Swift...

I think they explain why a high profile celebrity's position - or lack thereof - on modern day issues is a concern. They are arguing that not having a public position on issues means you are siding with the status quo and, since the status quo is Trump, they find it wrong for the "worlds biggest pop star" to take that stance.

> They are arguing that not having a public position on issues means you are siding with the status quo

No, they are assuming that everyone must have an opinion. It seems outside of their reality to accept that people don't care about the things they care about.

Just because I don't voice my opinion on which days I prefer the garbage collection truck to arrive doesn't mean I am a big fan of them arriving on Monday. I just have other things in life going on.

> Just because I don't voice my opinion on which days I prefer the garbage collection truck to arrive doesn't mean I am a big fan of them arriving on Monday.

Sure, you may not be a fan of it, but you don't find it a big enough problem to complain to the city.

For the editorial in question, the subject is Trump and their opinion is that finding Trump not big enough a problem to complain about is not an acceptable position for someone of such wide social reach. You may not agree with that assesment, but I think it's a fairly normal position for an editorial board to take.

What they are doing is advancing the politicizing of everything and driving an agenda of divisiveness.

Why is an artist is not allowed to be an artist anymore but needs to be an political activist?

Even worse, because TS doesn't follow the Guardian's absurd logic, they are trying to shame her with their imaginative interpretation.

That's not journalism, that is a 6-year old's fantasy world, who dreams up stories about celebrities and why they are their imaginary friends/enemies.

But everything is already political? They're saying that _this_ specific person should have a more explicitly political stance, and not taking one is a political stance still.

58.9% of Americans voted last election. Has the Guardian already lost that much touch with reality to accept that those 41.1% of the population exist who don't care about their outrage theater?

America is not the world but that's not even the point. You're claiming they're politicizing the world. Election numbers don't represent willingness to make something political or whether it is. Not voting is a political decision.

I am only talking about the US situation here and treating the situation as if the Guardian were a US publication. That whole 'foreign media trying to meddle with US politics' narrative has reached an ironical meme status that is not worth arguing over any more.

"Everyone is jumping off cliffs therefore so should you"

This is nothing but grade-school peer pressure coming from adults and supposedly legitimate news organizations.

Please link me to any other article from The Guardian complaining about one of the scores of other popular music artists who have also said nothing about Trump.

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality."?

A 'moral crisis' for the Guardian's editorial board is not a moral crisis for a 20-something popstar.

Dante's Inferno is not actually a good source of morality.

You meant "moral panic" right?

"They're burning all the witches even if you aren't one..."

The status quo is actually hating on Trump and attempting to shove politics down every last crevice of the universe.

I think in fact The Guardian and most other "journalistic" outlets are a tad bit jealous of Taylor Swift, as she is one of the very few public people/entities these days who seems to be able to garner attention, and importantly rake it shit tons of money, without resorting to daily Trump outrage spam and culture war nonsense.

I guarantee you rags like The Guardian are shaking in their boots at the eventual prospect of Trump being out of office. They might want to take a lesson from Ms. Swift and learn to create actual quality content to prepare for that coming day of reckoning.

Yeah I get that. It’s not crazy. It’s just a world away from the kind of thing I can engage with. If that means I’m on my way out in terms of relevance I’d accept that. I’m not cross about it...I just can’t take it seriously.

Celebrity drama - political or otherwise - seems daft and boring to me as well, but I think people who think so are on their way out (in terms of age, if nothing else). So if the idea is to reach a younger audience in a language they'd understand / in a way they find appealing, I'm all for it.

Its a stupid stance, and rather easy to refute. Good reasons for Taylor not to say anything: she doesn't want to.

Nobody complains about my stance of not talking about unicorns as being pro unicorn. Complaining about Taylor Swift not taking a stance on trump as being pro trump is a failure in logic at the most basic level.

How about we stop caring so much what celebrities think instead?

> since the status quo is Trump

Why would a British newspaper think that?

It's an international newspaper, which has significantly invested in their US presence [1] in the past decade.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_US

Not in print though, and the linked article is from the UK version, so statements about the status-quo in the UK edition are still relevant.

Unfortunately, the opinions of a sitting US president on any given issue has relevance not just for the US, but for the world as well. As long as that remains true, status-quo being Trump is a concern for everyone.

Notice also, no byline, and no comments allowed. The Guardian often panders to culture war outrage bait then hides behind taking responsibility or criticism with tricks like this, and the fact that an occasional decent article exists.

Why again does this failing rag deserve support, and why is this obvious propaganda upvoted to the top of HN?

Comments are only allowed on the blog-like "comment is free" posts, which presumably they don't consider editorials part of despite them now obviously being part of the same platform technically (hence the /commentisfree/ URLs).

This isn't something specific to this editorial; it is the general rule the website works by.

(As an aside, I'd much rather Comment is Free just died, because so much of what the Guardian gets lambasted over is content posted there—and its explicit point is less editorial control over the contents. If people don't want what gets posted with less direct editorial control over content, just don't give it to them.)

No idea what their arbitrary rules are, but I noticed a review by The Guardian of Swift's new album linked at the top of this article did have comments enabled. Both of these are obviously opinions, so I'm not sure what the difference is, besides the fact that one article (GP) was way more likely to receive backlash in the comments than the other.

Weird. It certainly used to be the case no "newspaper" article had comments enabled, but that definitely does. So yeah, OK, I don't understand when commenting is enabled any more.

I mean, at least the old "newspaper" platform v. "blog" platform distinction made sense—there were many more differences (editorial control being a major one) than just commenting.

For a while they had comments on almost everything, then they realised that the majority of comments were opposed to their viewpoint, and even ridiculed them. So they shut most of it down

That's not to say the readership wasn't with them - that's a lot harder to quantify - but thencommenters largely weren't.

Show me a comments section of an online newspaper that isn't full of bile and hate? It unfortunately seems unavoidable, and so many publications are just removing their comments sections. Much better than leaving the hate in, IMO.

It's the selective nature of their disabling of comments. Notice on this very article, at the top, is a link to a review by The Guardian of Swift's new album, and comments are enabled for it.

Both articles are obviously opinions, so why the difference? Only thing I can think of is one is more likely to see a backlash in the comments (because the article is ridiculous and deserves it) than the other.

They used to have comments enabled on most stories. I remember, from the time they were covering Snowden, all their stories seemed to have comments enabled.

I believe they largely shut down comments for a couple of reasons:

- Like a lot of newspapers, they feel very strongly that they have to moderate comments very aggressively. They didn't use automated systems to do that, because often the comments they wanted to delete were highly scored, so they ended up paying an army of moderators. That's not affordable for an organisation that loses tens of millions of pounds a year.

- As their columnists got crazier the comments got more vitriolic. It became commonplace for me to read a loopy story and go down to the comments to find people pointing out factual errors by the writers, or flaming them for their extreme opinions. I think the staff got tired of commenters trying to bring them back down to earth.

Nowadays they only rarely seem to enable comments. Presumably to keep mod costs down.

> I sometimes feel like there isn't much alternative to The Guardian

I stopped reading The Guardian years ago. A little part of me dies inside every time I see some piece of completely off-topic Guardian propaganda make the front page of Hacker News and nobody seems to care.

Some good examples collected here: https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2017/08/22/guardian-columns-look-l...

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