During last year’s altercation with this country’s most famous serial plagiarist I was asked by one female magazine editor whether I really enjoyed being so unpopular.
Widely considered a prize shit as a result of my moral stand against the great pretender, I was told on many occasions that so-and-so in the industry hated my guts. It really didn’t bother me.
I bumped into another female magazine editor at a Johannesburg radio station not long after. I had written for her magazine a few months earlier but she cut me dead, refusing to even return a simple greeting. I have to say I haven’t lost any sleep over it.
In fact, I take a perverse delight in getting up people’s noses. I’ve been doing it very successfully since school days and can’t see any reason to break an enjoyable habit. Quite why I should get so turned on by all this personal animosity towards me would probably keep a team of psychologists busy for a few years, but I think I have probably managed to discover the key to it all.
I have such a high opinion of myself and such a low opinion of my critics that I positively rejoice in their comments.
For example, that little spat last year brought so many journalistic cockroaches out from behind the skirting boards that it was impossible not to look upon them with utter revulsion. What a sad bunch of losers.
Some even attempted to defend journalistic dishonesty in their feebly reasoned and unconvincing articles. Suddenly their whole cushy lifestyle was threatened because some bloody imposter who had whimsically decided on a mid-life career change questioned the ethics of copying chunks of other people’s work and passing it off as one’s own.
I’m also told my comments on “gush” journalism went down like a lead balloon at Associated Magazines, which is as good a reason to crack open a bottle of Bollinger RD as I can think of.
As you know, my current hobbyhorse is the lamentable state of motor journalism and, although mutterings have been heard, the SA Guild of Motor Journalists have yet to respond to my comments and defend the appalling dishonesty of some of their members.
I’m told their strategy is to say nothing in the hopes that I will get bored and go away. Not a chance my old darlings.
Of course, the obvious question is why do I bother? Wouldn’t it be easier just to allow myself to slide down to the level of the lowest common denominator and keep my head below the primordial slime? Even if I didn’t like what was going on, couldn’t I just shut up and pretend it isn’t happening like everyone else?
Well obviously I could if I felt like it but what, then, would be the point of being a journalist? Fortunately I’m old enough and financially secure enough not to have to brown-nose any permanent employer, which puts me in the ideal position to stir the hot and smelly should I feel like it.
By the way, you’re all free to come back with your counter arguments but you don’t really do that do you? Could that be because you know I’m right? Or are you simply too embarrassed to publicly defend the sort of trash journalism that goes out of its way to insult the reader’s intelligence?
Whatever your reason I’m spoiling for some verbal fisticuffs although I have to say the quality of invective in this country is pretty poor. The best Bovey and his cronies could come up with was that I was mad because I had never won a Mondi and some comment about cigar smokers having small dicks.
Tell that to Arnold Schwazenegger and see whether you still have your full compliment of teeth at the end of the evening.