Blair-ing the truth...

Well tomorrow the Orwell centenary goes down at Wellesley College, embossed by a few high maintenance and decidedly third rate public intellectuals.
Eric Blair, that former policeman, bookstore clerk, soldier and man of letters would be chagrined if he knew the reptilian likes of Andy Sullivan and Chris Hitchens were set to keynote at a conference celebrating the late writer's life.
Orwell the conservative icon's anti-stalinism will get big play, as well has his cultural writings....
No doubt Eric Blair's flinty socialism will be passed over in silence. As late as 1947 the writer was still wondering why Clement Atlee and the labor party hadn't abolished the monarchy in Britain?
Blair thought little of such enduring neo-con fetishes as Winston Churchill, he was bitterly critical of the conservative torpor that helped set off World War II.
He'd been sold out by both left and right in Spain and lived to tell the tale...that liberates a man's soul I think.
In all Eric Blair the writer stood for the working man, clear concise writing, and rigorous criticism.
And what the hell he tried to be sensible...things that'll get you denounced and suspended in Andy Sullivan's America.

Let me leave you with one paraphrasal of Eric Blair's enduring dictum:
Let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around....once words start undermining meaning, then we are all in deep kimshe.
:)