A furious Simon Schama finger-points at Rod Liddle on BBC's Question Time
(15 Oct 2015) and tells him to stick to writing his hack journalism
and turn his "suburban face from the plight of the miserable".
I've no reason to dislike the historian and art critic Simon Schama: he's clever, good-looking, cosmopolitan, and compassionate; he's even born on the same day as me (13 Feb). But in his recent clash on the BBC's Question Time with Rod Liddle, Schama did reveal a side of himself that is perhaps not quite so admirable or attractive; a proneness to dismiss those who don't share his moral and sentimental humanism on the subject of Syrian refugees as suburban.
It is, of course, a term of disparagement with a long and unedifying history amongst English intellectuals; one that is loaded with class contempt for those upon whom they look down and regard as crude, common, and narrow-minded.
And so, whilst I'm perfectly happy for Schama to discuss the European migrant crisis with feeling, he's wrong (and disingenuous) to characterize those who prefer to address the issue as an urgent political problem that requires a practical solution which considers the needs not only of the displaced, but of the native populations asked to absorb a huge influx of people foreign in language, culture and tradition, as provincial and uncaring, or in some way prejudiced.
Indeed, one is tempted to remind Professor Schama of what he said a few years ago when defending Israel's right to take military action against Hezbollah (including the bombing of cities in Lebanon): "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand."
- This Week, BBC One, 24 July 2006
Precisely! And that requires a cool head and what might seem to those who can afford to enjoy the indulgence of tears, a certain hardness of heart.
Note: those interested in seeing the Question Time clash between Mssrs. Schama and Liddle (as well as reading the latter's take on it in his blog for The Spectator) should click here.
