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A review by michaelontheplanet
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
4.0
Copper feel of this: or, Carry On Citizen Kane. Waugh’s splendid satire on the news business still holds good today, albeit it’s smartphones and emails rather than telegrams barking out orders. Libel, lying, desperation, bullying proprietors, moral panic and virtue-signalling: it’s not really so different in print as online:
“There was an outbreak of plague...he was off to organise a hospital. He went without enthusiasm. ‘It is stupid work...I have been in a plague hospital before. How many do you think we cured?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘None. We could only catch the patients who were too ill to move. The others ran away to the villages, so more and more people got it. In civilised colonies, they send in soldiers not doctors. They make a ring round the place and shoot anyone who tries to get out. Then, in a few days, when everyone is dead, they burn the huts. But here one can do nothing for the poor people.’”
The cult of celebrity, the joys of the countryside, the public gets what the public wants and the whole of human life is there, picked in brine. Boot for next editor of the Daily Mail!
“There was an outbreak of plague...he was off to organise a hospital. He went without enthusiasm. ‘It is stupid work...I have been in a plague hospital before. How many do you think we cured?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘None. We could only catch the patients who were too ill to move. The others ran away to the villages, so more and more people got it. In civilised colonies, they send in soldiers not doctors. They make a ring round the place and shoot anyone who tries to get out. Then, in a few days, when everyone is dead, they burn the huts. But here one can do nothing for the poor people.’”
The cult of celebrity, the joys of the countryside, the public gets what the public wants and the whole of human life is there, picked in brine. Boot for next editor of the Daily Mail!