Reidy’s Digest #2 - the difficult second round up

Welcome to , the tortured sequel to the wildly successful Reidy’s Digest #1.

This week!

• Far-left gossip on the definitely-happening soon Corbyn/Sultana party

• South seas Zionism

• Further Bob Vylan and Kneecap reading

• Is that an iPhone charger up his nose?

• Bring back funny characters

• Pop was better in my day

1. The Internet got briefly excited at the back end of the week when ex-Labour MP announced that she was to co-lead a new socialist party with Jeremy Corbyn. Unfortunately the MP for shareable #content appeared not to have given Corbyn or many other people the heads before sending her PERSONAL NEWS KLAXON. The truth is negotiations on a new left movement and its precise form have been going for a while now. A final announcement was due this summer, but Sultana, wittingly or not, jumped the gun. As any fan of left factionalism and sectariana goes, the Weekly Worker is the place to go for gossip. Its write up on the jostling for position in the new popular front against Starmerism is worth a read, if that’s your kind of thing.

2. In Harper’s this month, we encounter the intriguing story of how and why many citizens of South Sea countries including the Solomon Islands and Fiji identify as ardently pro-Israel. While a Jewish friend scornfully suggested this has been covered a thousand times, Pete McKenzie’s story came, for me at least, with added depth and a new angle: namely, do any of the preachers and politicians who spread the myth of Israelites sailing to the Pacific actually believe it? Extra bonus for the reporting on the Indigenous Embassy, Jerusalem.

3. Staying on Israel and identity, I guess we can’t avoid Bob Vylan and Kneecap. Fortunately, two good pieces this week: In Haaretz, Daniella Peled writes despairingly of what she sees as crude gestures by the likes of Bob Vylan hampering genuine acts of solidarity. And on Substack, Sara Morrison tries to place Kneecap in the context where they make sense, i.e. West Belfast.

4. DJ Carey was one of the greatest hurlers the game has ever seen. Now he faces shame, having this week pleaded guilty to soliciting money for “cancer treatment” for nearly a decade, when there never was any cancer. A player who dazzled with his dexterity will now only ever be remembered as the guy who stuck a phone charging lead up his nose to look like a feeding tube. Read the extraordinary story in the Irish Examiner.

   

5. I’ve been watching the new season of The Bear lately, and also had reason to watch a lot of. Cheers! There wsa something intangibly great about both shows, but Stephanie Boland - one of the smartest culture writers out there - has made it perfectly tangible: in a world where we are used to laughing at silly or weird characters, the Bear offers characters - especially Richie - who actually are funny themselves, who tell good jokes, rather than are good jokes. Likewise Cheers! would have soon become unbearable if it was about a bar full of social inadequates. The point of Cheers! Is that at least half the characters are exactly the kind of wisecracking clever genial people you want to have a beer with.

6. As an antidote to all the Oasis chat this weekend, here’s electroclash heroes Fischerspooner on Top of the Pops. Fischerspooner’s emergence (see what I

   did there) was probably the apex of the electroclash moment in 2002 (or “the summer of Electroclash! as the Shoreditch Twat jokingly called it). They were both art and arty, and one could say high camp, except, in Sontagian terms, true camp can only really be found in the act of fallng short. And I’m not sure this performance does- though sadly the recording itself isn’t a total success).

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, please do forward to someone else you think might enjoy it too. Journos, if you have interesting pitches (literary/ideasy) for Little Atoms, or social affairs for The Lead, email me at padraig [dot] Reidy [at] gmail [dot] com.

Oh, and I know YOU don’t need to be told this, but some OTHER PEOPLE might: saying “this is an interesting read” is not the same as saying “I agree with and personally endorse every word of this”.