jones

i believe i have confessed my love of the daily mail's liz jones. i just want to reiterate it here. i love liz jones. pretty much each sunday she is guaranteed to entertain. the real trick of her column is you are never quite sure if she is serious or if she is just one big wind-up. in this particular case it might be her sub-editor who is playing about with the concept of irony, or it may just be a very stephen fry like sophisticated play on words that goes above my head. she begins her piece about why people should not be complaining that there was no warning before the showing of graphic images in the witchcraft torture trial. liz, you see, lives in the real world and not disneyland. liz is an adult who can cope with all that the adult world throws at her - whether it be graphic violence or men who do not match her standards. from the horrors of torture on the tv she some how manages to say how something similar happened to her. (not the torture, but spineless busybodies complaining about adult things happening in the adult world). there she was in a nice restaurant telling a friend all about her hi-jinks at the recent paris fashion week (a girl and her clothes). i am sure the prestigious hotel/ restaurant she was in appreciated the name check as well as the mention that it was empty at breakfast aside from liz and her friend. liz's language was dotted with profanity. oh there was a family there. the father had the temerity to approach liz and ask that she did not swear while there were young children present. liz had to ask her friend if she had sworn. friend said she had. liz isn't concerned that she doesn't realise she is swearing, or that she is swearing in a loud voice. no she is just concerned for the man's wife - how can she be married to such a lickspittle who quails at hearing a few cuss words. men in liz's world should not only be conversant in industrial strength language, not only should they use it at every available opportunity they should also be ensuring that their children learn it at an early age. to punish the wife liz continues her, very interesting, conversation in hushed tones. here is where stephen fry learns about irony and the exquisite use of language to convey subtle layers of multiple meanings beyond what appears on the surface. this is a lesson in more than just semiotics. this is a lesson that barthes and saussure would have paid good money to have sat in on, listened to, mulled over and bowed down before. remember we live in the real world, not disneyland. the adult world where we have no need to be warned that harsh nasty things might appear on our tv screens. in the piece the offending word appears several times. this is what shocked the man, that shallow worm of a man, was upset by liz's use of 'p*** off'. i shit you not dear reader. while liz rails at how this man should not be offended by her use of earthy language she is making sure than none of the mail on sunday's readers have to suffer the pangs of torment as they have to decide do they get up in arms at her use of swear words only fit for the feral youth and the plasma tv watching benefit scroungers or do they stand up against the ever present nanny statism with its pc gone mad affects on daily life. what a sweet dilemma she has constructed for her readers - move over the gordian knot and zeno's paradoxes, liz has brought moral and ethical philosophy into the 21st century. that my friends is the genius of liz jones. that my friends is why i am in love with liz jones.