From the NYT:
That meant Labour-held seats were ripe for the picking, especially since northerners were not enamored of Mr. Corbyn, 68, a far-left urbanite. He seemed weak on defense and security, shaky on economic management, passionate about places like Venezuela and Nicaragua, had once had strong sympathies for the Irish Republican Army and liked to make jam.
Jam? Jam tho? Don’t northerners make loads of jam? Are they too tough because putting up fruit is for the weak? It’s actually a reasonable amount of trouble, even if very worth it.
{ 24 comments }
Val 06.09.17 at 2:34 am
Nice.
I wasn’t all that impressed with Corbyn (from a distance of 16000 kms, I admit that’s a hurdle) – not because I disagreed with his policies just because he seemed like a self-righteous person who couldn’t manage his party.
But making jam makes me warm to him. Maybe that’s the secret of success in contemporary politics, as last?
Val 06.09.17 at 2:34 am
in contemporary left wing politics I mean
Harry 06.09.17 at 2:45 am
It was the Jam what done it.
basil 06.09.17 at 3:13 am
Feminism for the win!
Corbyn’s also a patient gardener – a builder and nurturer.
They’re not weak on defence, just not a genocidal racist.
Explicitly against the project of white supremacy.
Explicitly anti-capitalism.
Explicitly against colonialism.
Explicitly against the accumulation of privilege by the powerful.
These principles won’t persuade many people, but they are maybe winning ingredients for a tasty jam!
Yankee 06.09.17 at 3:44 am
There was John Podesta’s troublesome risotto recipe. Politicians should not be puttering in the kitchen. Clinton’s chocolate chip cookies!!
Peter K. 06.09.17 at 3:46 am
I like Corbyn b/c he’s disliked/hated by all the right people. The American center left has been absolutely silent about the UK election.
Plus he likes to make jam (i.e. a closet hipster)
Collin Street 06.09.17 at 3:47 am
Jam is red because it’s made from sugar, from the blood of our black brothers.
JakeB 06.09.17 at 7:19 am
weak on defense–
“Oh, Arnold. The brigade! The best years of our lives!”
Moz of Yarramulla 06.09.17 at 7:59 am
Did someone say pump up the jam?
Moz of Yarramulla 06.09.17 at 8:04 am
That meant Labour-held seats were ripe for the picking, especially since northerners were not enamored of Mr. Corbyn, 68, a far-left urbanite.
I remember when the NYT was a newspaper that published informative, informed articles. I must be old. Looking at the way Labour have regained some Scottish seats I do wonder just where in the UK the NYt was thinking about… the Labour heartlands in England where gosh it does look as though Labour increased their count. Hmm.
Also, another video for those who remember the 80’s. All dreary and bleak, as the area tends to be.
Donald Johnson 06.09.17 at 11:20 am
In America he could maybe have overcome this deficit in manliness by bombing a country or invading it, or by being a Republican. Or shooting something, though preferably not a friend in the face like Cheney, though even that would be better than making jam. To be safe he should do all four. And not make jam.
basil 06.09.17 at 1:13 pm
@Collin Street,
Not trolling, have you read the revelations about HRC/Bill and their slaves as recounted in their Takes a Village book? Perhaps CR will write a blog about it. It’s really raged about the USian left’s social media this week.
Dragon-King Wangchuck 06.09.17 at 1:50 pm
Maybe Corbyn makes bad jam. Not as in “this tastes a bit off” – but more like Preserves from the Root of All Evil or somesuch. This was May’s real mistake – not campaigning on Corbyn’s jam making. “Alone and naked with nought but a pot of homemade jam.”
LFC 06.09.17 at 2:10 pm
Moz @10
Didn’t click through to the NYT article, but the past tense in the passage quoted by Belle suggests to me that it’s referring to the previous general election, where Labour, I think, did indeed lose seats in the North.
Heliopause 06.09.17 at 5:29 pm
“From the NYT… Mr. Corbyn, 68, a far-left urbanite.”
Yes, of course. So that would make the coalition that can only retain power with the help of former UKIP voters and Ulster Unionists, what?
nastywoman 06.09.17 at 7:11 pm
– strawberry jam was my favorite before I discovered plum – and as I always thought – if the people will discover plum too – May and Trump will be history.
Ronan(rf) 06.10.17 at 3:44 am
I assume jam is now up there with all sorts of non instant coffee and a variety of slightly unusual salad extras that are apparently incredibly important markers in a culture war based around trivial food preferences that doesn’t actually seem to exist anywhere outside of the Daily Mail comments section.
LFC 06.10.17 at 3:21 pm
quote of the day
”There is…something both pleasure-intensive and peculiarly disappointment-resistant about goods [such as food] that disappear in the process of consumption. The Roman emperors knew, so it seems, what they were doing when they took care to supply the masses with bread and circuses: both vanish once you have taken them in, without leaving behind a corporeal shape on which consumers can vent any disappointment, boredom, or anxiety they may have suffered or may yet suffer.”
— A.O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements (Princeton U.P., 1982), p.29
So if you eat a variety of jam you don’t like, the disappointment is fleeting, whereas if you buy, say, a chair you don’t like, you are reminded of the disappointment every time you look at it (until you give it away or throw it out).
This has no particular relevance to anything, but then I”m not sure Corbyn’s jam-making does either.
LFC 06.10.17 at 3:25 pm
p.s. sorry, new (virtual) keyboard doing weird things with apostrophes and quotation marks.
Barry 06.10.17 at 9:38 pm
I’m tempted to say ‘Forget it
JackBelle, it’sChinatownThe NYT’.It’s clear that the NYT had a twenty-five year feud against the Clintons, and is 100% uncaring and unregretful about the collateral damage to the USA and the world caused by it.
roger gathmann 06.10.17 at 11:59 pm
I like treating this article humorously, but we should at least glance at the journalist, Steve Erlanger, who wrote that horsepucky. He has a good claim on Judy Miller’s crown. It was Erlanger who reported in 2009 from Egypt that, basically, Mubarek was the great popular choice of the people, and was brilliantly negotiating the Hamas issue with the Israelis. Set Erlanger down in Petersburg in 1917 and he would have reported that Palace sources have credibly assured us that everything is under control under an amazingly popular czar. The man is an idiot of that peculiar species the NYT cultivates – a sort of Tom Friedmanlike ability to get everything not just wrong, but sweepingly wrong, big picture wrong.
Belle Waring 06.11.17 at 2:19 am
a sort of Tom Friedmanlike ability
ice cold
Barry 06.11.17 at 2:23 am
I’d add onto Roger the observation that all of these people have track records.
ozma 06.11.17 at 11:50 pm
You kill me.
You also almost killed me. I laughed so hard at this post that I just inhaled bits of cucumber. Then some aspirated into my lungs. Luckily, it’s not winter so I’ll probably make it without any dread diseases. Don’t eat and read, they always say!
I don’t know why I find this so funny but I think it might be the funniest blog post I’ve read in a few years. Something about the simplicity of it!
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