This article drips with the poisonous snobbery of the British pseudo-left.

The main justifiable objection to Cherie Blair is that she has a weakness of New Age quackery that most normal people regard with derision. This is undoubtedly a character flaw, but not one to fill Wheatcroft's flagon of vitriol.

So what if the Blairs make money after he retired? The salary of a British prime minister is pathetic, amounting to a couple of week's wages for a Manchester Utd player, and a fraction of the bonuses paid in the City of London.

No, the real reason Wheatcroft despises Cherie is because she's a successful barrister, and such success in Britain is usually reserved for the male progeny of expensive feeder schools and Oxbridge - in other words, people exactly like Geoffrey Wheatcroft. When someone not from this background succeeds, the upper class closes ranks in its bitchy, self-pitying style.

The rest of the article is without factual merit. Cherie had nothing to do with the woman burying bad news on 9/11. His comments about David Kelly are undercut by the fact that Kelly was convinced Saddam had WMD, though this does not relate to Cherie either. Indeed, Kelly's conviction in that regard also explode his complaints about Blair's Iraq policy. Poisonous, bilious rubbish.

Take a look at the Catherine Bennett article. Channeling Hitchens when it comes to concentrated scorn. There's a bit more to it than jealously for her wonderful legal career.

I keep getting surprised by the attacks on her for using the term "good Catholic girl." Are any of these writers Catholic? My upbringing was thoroughly Catholic (I did not know any practicing Protestants until I was 15), and Catholic girls, especially the good ones, are quite willing to use birth control and have premarital sex.

I get the feeling that this attack has more to do with dislike of Mrs. Blair than any concern for upholding the standards of the Church.

eofiss:

I get the feeling that this attack has more to do with dislike of Mrs. Blair than any concern for upholding the standards of the Church.

You're quite right, but it is also that he dislikes, politically and personally, her husband, Tony. Dislikes him enough to write an entire book slamming the man.

Whether his views are right or wrong, it seems a bit heavy handed for Slate to allow this kind of scornful editorializing on the subject of Mrs. Blair. This article purported to be about how wildly the British press are piling onto Mrs. Blair regarding her book, but then proceeds to pile on top of the existing pile more viciously than the the other press.

He blatantly shows his bias, when he refers to the former government as the "Blair Junta". It is not as if he would have approved of any final version of Mrs Blair's book.

You're right that Wheatcroft obviously wants in on the feeding frenzy, but your opinion that the reaction against Cherie Blair is explained by class resentment is quite unconvincing. Does the name Margaret Thatcher mean anything to you?

I know who she was, but not how she relates to this. She was a Tory while Blair was (in label anyway) Labour Party, right?

It does seem clear to me that Cheri Blair is the female equivalent of the upper class twit so beloved of English comedy. I wasn't defending her, really, just criticizing Slate for printing an article by someone who can't realistically pretend to any sort of even handedness.

Perhaps the Blairs do represent more smarm than charm, but ol' Wheatsie, here, sounds like one bitchy queen, himself.

that you can be female and middle-class (her father was a grocer) and succeed without undue class resentment in modern Britain.

The difference between Thatcher and Blair (so far as the present controversy over Blair's book goes) is that Thatcher adhered to very traditional standards of British feminine behavior, including a dignified retirement from public life, while Blair thinks it's mod and cute to flaunt her supposedly sexy private doings in public. She seems not to understand that that sort of tastelessness, in modern Britain, is a prerogative of royals alone.