THE REVOLUTION STARTS HERE... unless that is, you disagree, in which case, we could talk about it (The Guardian)

Name: george_lazenby

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Product:	The Guardian
Date:	15/01/01 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: In itself, a good quality left-of-centre newspaper

Disadvantages: Not nearly vicious enough to satisfy evil liberal b*******s like me

Most newspapers attract certain assumptions about their readers. Daily Star - moronic breast-obsessed trucker. Daily Mail - small-minded suburban Nazi. Daily Telegraph - Retired forces, ultra-conservative, wistful for the colonies. I have no idea how true these cartoons are (I certainly know people who read the Mail who don't remotely resemble the stereotype, and some people who fit it in every detail), but one of them applies to me.

Yes, I am a Guardian Reader, and we all know what that means. Gripped by class hatred, full of trendy ideas about education and social policy, anti-royal, anti-religion, anti-family, anti-hunting, elitist, riven by intellectual snobbery and damaging ideas that assault the fabric of our great nation.

The funny thing is, at least as far as I am concerned, most of the above things are true. If you have a stereotypical vision of the nightmare Guardian reading pinko, you're probably thinking of me. The other funny thing is, these outlandish prejudices have very little to do with The Guardian, an infuriatingly reasonable and balanced newspaper.

You do read articles about how women shouldn't go out to work, about how refugees are spongers and about how The Family is under threat from television and Tony Blair in the Mail, and some of them aren't even coded, they're just explicitly about that. But when you hear the hysterical attacks you read about 'The Guardian' from right-wing people, only two conclusions seem possible - either people who castigate the paper's evil leftie agenda have never read the paper, or they regard anything to the left of Margaret Thatcher as raging communism.

Guardian leader writers always seek consensus, ask questions, and call for tolerance and compassion. If you have a problem with these ideas, you have a problem with most major religions and all but the most extreme ideologies. As someone who doesn't respect anything very much, I find the Guardi
an's humane, logical approach to the world rather too cautious, lacking in the acid and bite that stereotype would lead you to expect.

The paper is cherishably irreverant - Matthew Norman's Diary is not above making fun of everyone from Michael Winner to Peter Mandleson, and has frequently exposed the stuffed-shirts and hypocrisy of New Labour with far more finesse and success than any number of outraged Tory-supporting papers. Indeed, despite the thoughtless association of the Guardian with Tony Blair, it has been the most acute and intelligent critic of the Labour Government: little wonder that Tony hates it more than any other paper.

Its agenda is obviously left-leaning - the Guardian does not support arms-dealing to corrupt governments, privatising the NHS or fox-hunting, those cornerstones of a Conservative society. It also shows a marked willingness to question - and I underline this point - question the traditions and accepted ideas about how society is run. There are not weekly demands for the under-fives to be indoctrinated with pro-gay propaganda, to force women not have children or shoot the Queen - all the paper does is takes a standpoint of always wanting to analyse and question, rather than simply nodding along and accepting whatever the status quo is.

So, if what you want is a society built on deference and unswerving reliance on traditional modes of doing things, no matter how outdated, a society where people don't count unless they have money and the poor can starve, no the Guardian is not the paper for you. But don't kid yourself that we evil leftie scum are fully served by it either: it's a decent paper which is based on simple left-of-centre values, and all too rarely showing the kind of ruthless socialist zeal that we Degenerate Guardian Readers might want to see.

And the film section is the best of any national newspaper in this country.

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