I sometimes wonder why I bother with The Guardian Music Blog. While Readers Recommend is always fun, and there is the occasional good article, they also publish an awful lot of complete drivel. And in response to this drivel, the comment section all-too-often turns into Usenet on a bad day; the fact that far too many ‘articles’ are little more than trolls doesn’t exactly help.
Alan McGee’s weekly column is one of the worst offenders. Very occasionally he’ll come up with a meaningful re-evaluation of a neglected artist from the 60s or 70s, but all too often he spoils what might have been an interesting article with provocative hyperbole – “ELO were better than The Beatles” was an infamous one. Far more often he’d go on about some mediocre landfill indie band with hype turned up to 11. His lastest is a ridiculous puff piece bigging up Oasis (yet again), which naturally gets shredded by the commentators.
Of course, he will never respond to any comments, failing to recognise the essential two-way nature of blogging. Instead, he comes up with pearls of wisdom like this twitter,
i mean you work in the fields i live in the mansion that’s the way it rolls guardian blog readers.xoxoxoo
Oh yes, that really epitomises The Guardian’s left-of-centre ethos, doesn’t it.
Four pages into the comment thread, a commenter calling himself “Kingspark” comes up with this:
On “Twitter” you invite people to apply to clean the toilets in your mansion. Is that the best you can come up with? Look through the comments. Apart from Paul Brownell’s myriad of aliases – avatthecat, heavytrash, marycigarettes, DoubleDeuceDalton – you’ve only got one fan, Elaine S. She seems like a nice lady. And at least Paul Brownell will always back you up, he’s your employee, isn’t he? He helps you write the blogs and tells you about groups you’ve never heard of and tries his best to make it seem like you’re not completely out of touch.
And I ought to mention that several of those sock puppets have made repeated often unprovoked ad-hominem attacks on myself and others, often in completely unrelated threads (which to The Guardian’s credit have always been removed by the moderators for violating the rule against personal abuse). I consider sending an employee to post under multiple aliases to make it look as if he’s got some supporters isn’t exactly professional behaviour. Using those sock puppets for personal abuse is simply beyond the pale.
Assuming “Kingspark” is correct about those usernames he mentions (and the similarity in writing styles for those aliases he mentions gives me no reason to doubt him), then I don’t think McGee has an awful lot of credibility left. If I was the Guardian Online editor, I would definitely think twice about continuing to employ this man as a contributor.