How not to write: 6/ Craven hypocrisy

Resist the temptation to cover-up

Stephen King once said that you can never teach people to be great writers, but you can encourage people to become better writers. Every error I highlight in this occasional series, I have made many, many times myself. Not least today’s fault of falling into the hypocrisy of so many political writers, who condemn the sins of their opponents while ignoring the sins of their friends.

For example, here is Alison Pearson writing for the Telegraph of 1 April. Donald Trump, she declared, was right to claim that freedom of expression was under threat in the UK.

She talked of the “woke” driving feminists out of universities for asserting the material reality of biological sex, and of sinister police visits to grandmothers, to builders whistling the theme song from Bob the Builder, and she might have added, to Alison Pearson herself, for utterly trivial reasons.

“It’s not difficult to understand why the current American administration views the spread of Orwellian non-crime crimes in the UK with such disbelief and hostility,” Pearson concluded.

All the examples of authoritarian oppression she raised in the UK were true. At no point, however, did Pearson mention that Donald Trump’s “current American administration” was engaged in an Orwellian campaign of his own to persecute critics in academia, the civil service and law firms.

The atmosphere has turned so cold in the US that last week even analysts for Wall Street banks were too frightened to tell the truth about Trump’s financial crisis for fear he would punish their firms.

Pearson gave no indication that she knew or cared

“What hypocrites right-wing writers are,” I hear you snort.

How can they expect us to take them seriously when they believe in freedom of speech only when it suits them?

But hold on. Here is Ezra Klein of the New York Times talking to the Guardian. He and Pearson could not hold more divergent views. But in terms of how they argue, the two merge into one. Ezra Klein is Alison Pearson (and vice versa) and the Telegraph is the Guardian (and vice versa)

Klein accurately described the fear Trump was instilling that Pearson so hypocritically ignored. And then the problems began.