High life
Spin, not sin
Taki
SRougemont t Augustine believed that all sin springs from a lack of gratitude for God's gifts. St Augie had a point. Mind you, there are sins and there are sins. Lust remains the most enjoyable route to eternal damnation, followed a close second by gluttony. Lying is now called spin, which is extremely convenient for Labour politicians. For years Blair, Cook, Straw and the recently gelded Mandelson have been saying the exact opposite of the truth, in public, on TV, in the House of Commons, everywhere. They no longer need to worry as far as sin is concerned. From now on, ministers and divines will orate from their pulpits against Original Spin, that is, man's essentially spinful nature.
Ever since Clinton and Blair, the correct word for committing naughtiness is spin, not sin. It's a pity Jeff Bernard is no longer around. He would have had a grand old time with Mandy and the Brazilian boyfriend. Jeff hated bores, but what he hated even more was spin and PC. He called a spade a spade, pun intended, and always engaged homosexuals in conversation by demanding to know whether they were pitchers or catchers. Jeff used rude names for everyone, wogs, Yids, fig-flogs, fairies, yet I truly believe he didn't have a prejudiced bone in his body except for a slight xenophobia. I once asked him how the English could practise homosexuality in school and then go on as if it never happened, and he looked aghast. 'You should know, you f—ing Greek,' was all he said. In Jeff s mind, the real sin was to abstain from things that give one pleasure.
He once wrote a wonderful send-up of Antonia Pinter's 'My Day' for Vogue magazine in these here pages. 'I wake up, run the tap until the brown disappears, smoke a couple of unfiltered Senior Service fags and then cough for about ten minutes. After that I inspect my emaciated body to see if I had been in a brawl the night before...' One time he discovered a paper clip in his pubic hairs. `Alif he exclaimed, 'she must have been a secretary.'
I don't know why, but I have always loved sinners and hated goody-goodies. Perhaps it was a reaction against my mother, a saintly woman who thought non-virgins were whores and all bankers usurers and crooks. But is there a more innocent or harmless way of passing an evening than overeating, drinking to excess, filling up one's lungs with smoke, betting the year's budget on the queen of diamonds or, of course, fornicating to excess? Of course not. And people who do indulge in such virtues do not elevate themselves above others. Unlike the Blair gang, they do not try to oppress others. They do not try to make life miserable for others. They are peacefully engaged in ruining their own lives.
The truly wicked people of our age are those who try to tell us what's good for us. The Stalins and Maos of our time. The aggressive practitioners of abstinence. Do not confuse them with the Puritans. The Puritan denies himself pleasure so as to live a life righteous in the eyes of God. The abstinent denies himself pleasure so as to live a life more righteous than that of his fellow man. It never shocked me that Clinton got a Monica Lewinsky in the Oval office. In the unlikely event of laid being president, I would have done nothing else. But I would have chosen a beauty rather than a slob, and I certainly would have gone all the way. A blow job is more pornography than sex.
The reason I truly loathe Blair and his wife is because happiness to them is feeling morally superior to the rest of us. Alas, the opposite is true. Blair is nothing but a liar and a phoney obsessed by power and ready to do or say anything to keep it. Cherie's crime is that she's a bore and a goodygoody. What I don't understand is how things got as bad as they have. Who in hell are these common-as-shit people to tell us what to do? I like being a sinner as much as I love my freedom, and these commonas-you-know-what people are getting in my way.
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