I have a friend who subscribes to Private Eye and sometimes gives me a bunch of old magazines. They are in almost random order so who knows what you might find? I read them mostly for the book reviews but they can also be interesting about British politics. It’s great that we have a magazine like this in Britain that doesn’t have to be polite about public figures who lie, cheat or steal, but just publishes them. On the other hand it’s annoying that liars, fraudsters and thieves are allowed to pretty much get on with their business after being exposed repeatedly.
Anyway, I found the above story hilarious/horrifying. This guy Dominic Sandbrook is apparently a respected popular historian! But that doesn’t seem to stop him from writing stupid articles for the newspapers.
But the more general point is how effective it is that Sandbrook has the audacity to simply expose his own contradictions without having to deal with them at all. For most of us, this would be difficult to do. We would want to resolve the contradiction, explain it away, deny it, or… do something about it.
I’m not saying that Sandbrook’s professional heights required nothing but audacity. I’m sure it took a fair amount of talent, hard work, and connections, as is usually the case. But audacity seems to be a key part of the mix.
Back to the title of this article, shamelessness seems to be a “superpower” in the current sense, meaning a common habit that almost anyone can develop.
