Critic Cal

When The Snowden Revelations first broke in late May 2013, I couldn't help but notice his date of birth: June 21, 1983. A mere 20 days away from my own. Which means that we were both of us in the messy process of turning 30 when it happened. My experience of said process inclines me to conjecture that it may not have been altogether without bearing on his decision to go public. A costly act of selfless bravery, or a desperate bid for significance ahead of a conspicuous personal landmark? Or, if my own (far less internationally consequential) attempts at 'meaningful' adult life are anything to go by, a complex blend of both ...                 A CRITICAL AGE                 And it came to pass in his thirtieth year                 He found that he could not not speak                 A world watched and watching needed to hear                 The impulse unseating his quiet career                 Arrived at its zenith its peak                 And it came to pa

And the scribe and plutocrat brought unto us a man stated in obscenity; and when they had set him in the press, they say unto us, Reader, this man was stated in obscenity, in the very act. Now Murdoch as a rule commanded us, that such should be panned: but what sayest thou...? What we  did  sayest said more, I suggest, about us than about the Prime Minister [1]. How delighted we emerged in the emergence of such unparalleled grounds for disgust! Twitter was awash with pork puns, suggestive pics, quips about the Pig Society, and a derogatory spoof account,  conspicuously followed by the UK Russian Embassy; someone inevitably had the genius idea of putting the word 'gate' at the end of the descriptor of the implicated creature, thereby concretising the allegation as an official political scandal; my favourite societal prognostician , Charlie Brooker, had to publicly clarify that no, he had not heard any such rumour when he penned Black Mirror episode The National Anthem