So Boy George's neighbor is named Tom Leonard, and he's a columnist for the Daily Telegraph who writes on the topic of fatherhood. A couple of weeks back, he took to explaining the problem with daddyblogs: In a nootshell, 'e says that dads 'oo care about their kids're jus' ahn't min, they're joost nootless pooftahs tawkin' aboat wiminy things, wishin' they wair wimin. It joost i'n't raight. [Or something like that. It doesn't make much sense without the accent, either, I'm afraid.]
But what brought Mr. Leonard to this dire conclusion, you might wonder? Mr Leonard, who's paid job is writing about names, and bedtime stories, and dad-friendly gadgets? Well, for starters, he appears to have airdropped into the site in the middle of Mutsy Week. And all these years, I thought the country who brought us both Benny Hill AND Bean had a sense of humor. And I would be wrong.
Day of the dad: blogging [telegraph.co.uk]
Previously: "Bitty!"
What a humourless tosser. If it's any consolation, the Telegraph's readership of tittering Surrey housewives and John Major voters probably doesn't have much overlap here.
I read your blog because I don't have to read about celebs, and because it is not gooey. I'm a mom, but I could never deal with the mommy blogs. I want odd facts and cool gadgets. (I could decorate a nursery in ten minutes if someone would just let me adopt their baby.) He clearly has no clue what he is talking about, or just afraid the daddy blogs will put his daddy column out of business.
[oops, sorry about that whole Prince Haakon thing, then. And I should take a moment to say thanks, but also to point out that I wasn't fishing for compliments in that backhanded, "Aww, am I really not interesting?" kind of way. -ed.]
He probably has bad teeth. Not to stereotype or anything.
Um, which accent were you aiming for there? New Zealand? South African? Maybe you could get Gwyneth or Renee in to do it for you next time ;)
[I was saving this for the DVD commentary, but since you asked, the accent I was going for was that of a retrograde, football-watching, conservative-by-reflex, underemployed pub denizen who can only articulate his sense of insecurity and woundedness by barking angrily at all the world's problems paraded across the nightly news. There's a short film by Nick Park called "Creature Comforts", which has interviews with miserable zoo animals trying to be polite, that's kind of the effect I was going for. Of course it came out sounding like a bad Fat Bastard impression. -ed.]
Rule 1. No pooftahs
Rule 2. No pooftahs
Rule 3. No pooftahs
Rule 4. Nooooooooooooooooooo POOFTAHS
there was humor from that place... but it all came out in the 1970s...
[and just to set the record um, straight for any non-Bruces out there, pooftahs are now welcome. -ed.]
Whiney wanker! However, I did appreciate his use of the phrase "cutesy ghastliness."
Wrong accent, Greg, though I love the Creature Comforts reference and can see what you were getting at. That would be for the anti-daddyblog articles in The Sun. The Telegraph is the more upper-middle-class Conservative type, yearning for the days of Empire, and if not that, at least for Maggie Thatcher before she was a Baroness and was busting unions and stuff. More the stuffed shirts John Cleese portrays.
[ah, like those puppets. Maybe my headline should've been, "We Are NOT Amused." -ed,]
Love this comment in his article, "Contrary to the notion that the internet opens up debate, blogging seems to do the opposite - corralling like-minded people into ghettos where they can indulge opinions and passions that, in some cases, they previously had to hide from polite society."
This really could describe British newspapers--being that they are so stratified and targeted to certain audiences that it's totally not uncommon in the UK to call someone a reader of the "torygraph" for example and mean it as an insult.
If Daddytypes is such a horrid blog why does it pull in 15,000 readers everyday? Hmmmm.
So,um, are only American dad's blogging?! Or was Mr. Leonard just trying to kill two birds with one stone?
Love your post, makes me want to go home right now and hug my daughter.
Jeff