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M.E. and the London Review: Memories are made of this...

akrasia

Senior Member
Messages
215
People who knew Karl reported his turns of phrase to each other (of ME, a fashionable condition in the 1980s: ‘that disease where your wrists go numb from carrying money home from the bank’ Diary 9 October 2014

The thing to note in this quote from the obituary of Karl Miller, written by Mary Kay Wilmers, the current editor of the London Review of Books, is not that Miller uttered this stupidity at some point but that it is recalled and presented as an example of his trenchant wit and insight, an enduring truth that stirs the soul and tickles the funny bone even now, something to remember him by.

The slavish conformity and lack of curiosity exhibited by both the left and right wing members of the English intellectual and chattering classes is a subject for another day, but the evidence for it is on vivid display here.

e-mail: edit@lrb.co.uk

London Review of Books
28 Little Russell St.
London, WC1A 2HN
 
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akrasia

Senior Member
Messages
215
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n21/letters

A Serious Illness

Mary-Kay Wilmers’s offhand dismissal of ME as a ‘fashionable condition in the 1980s’ shows a disturbing level of ignorance about an increasingly prevalent illness which has destroyed the quality of life of many sufferers (LRB, 9 October). As a former kick boxer, now bed bound as a result of ME, this is something to which I can attest. ME is a complex neurological illness recognised for many years as such by the World Health Organisation, and more recently classified by the US Food and Drug Administration as a serious life-threatening disease.

Tony Gee

Potters Bar, Hertfordshire


and

Mary-Kay's response:

Apologies to Tony Gee. With more thought I would have said ‘that first became widely known in the 1980s’.




Of course, this is no apology at at all but an expression of invincible ignorance, as the good book says "there are none so blind as he who will not see."

What's interesting is that the editorial board at LRB received a significant number of responses and, at least some of them, felt obliged to print a response from a patient. Tony did a good job.

Thanks to everyone who pushed back.
 
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