Hackish Humbug

Our journalists have been clinched by a queer mania that takes the form of a besetting urge to describe morons as “obviously bright”. I gather that so great a gap between description and reality is most likely a function of a perverse ideal of social justice; for almost invariably the moron afforded this hackish approbation is not some lamebrain or braying dolt of the middle or upper classes, but rather some wan-witted lowly rascal from the streets. The latter receives the largesse of our journalists; the former can expect no such charitable misrepresentation.

.....This bug of belying beneficence, that would in vain redress the scales of life, has its other side in miserliness, whereby a well-to-do person of ample wits is characterised as being a bit dim. Accordingly, if we were in madness to overthrow our senses and take the journalists at their words, we would build a picture of Britain in which the lowest quarters abounded with intellectual talent, and above which there was only a steady growth in privileged dimwittedness. False description weighs nothing, however, and serves only to measure the falsifier’s shortcomings.