SACKED to appease the SNOWFLAKE SOCIOPATHS
Her striking satirical tweet sparked a social media firestorm — and cost her a prestigious newspaper column. But in this fearless and unrepentant essay, JULIE BURCHILL reveals why the wokerati will never silence her
much of wokeness, there seems to be a sexist and misogynist element, in this instance towards witty women who have a savage streak.
Another ‘excuse’ — really, just a fact — is that I grew up in wilder times, when anyone could say anything to anyone without them running to tell Teacher.
I went from the English workingclass straight into journalism at 17; that’s got to make you tough. I despise the current wisdom which fetishises feelings and believes that vulnerability makes you virtuous. It doesn’t; it makes you self-centred, boring and wet. I was formed in a time when being offended was something to mock rather than respect; when a cat may look at a king, or a bitch diss a duchess.
I’m not upset in the least about losing my Telegraph column. I’ll always be grateful to them for ending my Wilderness Years; however, I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t often moaned to my husband about them rejecting my more provocative ideas and giving me more pedestrian topics — which I did splendidly anyway. I even thought about resigning a couple of times, so I’d be a hypocrite to wail about being sacked.
But generally, for journalism, and for young writers with spirit, it’s a very bad thing indeed — and it’s been happening for quite some time, since the unique interviewer Lynn ‘Demon’ Barber was sacked by the Sunday Times in 2018.
Newspapers with no original voices will decline even more rapidly than they would anyway in the digital age.
It’s ironic that a conservative newspaper which castigates cancel culture cancelled me for castigating wokery. ( Sounds like a tongue-twister!)
Of all my sackings this is the most illogical; all the people who demanded my sacking would never dream of buying the Telegraph anyway. We live in an age of cultural insanity, a topsy-turvy land where men are women, harassment is justice and the Left are jostling to tug their forelocks and call for those of us who criticise royalty to be punished.
As Sex Pistol John Lydon put it: ‘I never thought I’d see the day when the Right would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the Establishment and the Left become the snivelling self-righteous ones going around shaming everybody.’
I grew up being told ‘You can’t say that!’ by bourgeois people older than me: as a sexagenarian, little has changed except the fact that the bourgeois bed-wetters are now younger than me.
Woke is the revenge of the dullard on the wit, the curtain-twitcher on the hedonist, the wallflower on the whirling dancer. I may be sacked, but no sackcloth and ashes for me. I’m looking forward to a gorgeous summer in Brighton, writing for anyone who’ll have me.
I can also be my outrageous self on my new Substack subscription account, Notes From The Naughty Step — for which, incidentally, I briefly revisited Twitter in order to post a link. I felt no urge to hang around — I’ve kicked the habit!
In the autumn, I’ll be back with my book, Welcome To The Woke Trials. And thanks to Twitter, the Telegraph and a pair of hypocritical fibbers whose fantasy land is so fragile brilliant journalists (me) must be silenced in order to maintain the illusion — it will have a whole new ending.
Woke is the revenge of the dullard on the wit, the curtain-twitcher on the hedonist