Unravelling Allison Pearson’s Message For Lehman Brothers Sorority
ALLISON Pearson, of the Daily Mail, is discussing the impact of the Lehman Bothers “earthquake” and what investments bankers did to us when they never had it so good:
For years, investment bankers could outbid any family on a London house because they were always cash buyers. Flash Harrys and Jaspers with bonuses as big as their egos were happy to pay stupid money. So the property market duly went insane…
Who can afford those cray-zee prices?
Film studio Miramax has demanded that Allison Pearson return the $700,000 it paid her for rights to her novel I Think I Love You after the Daily Mail columnist failed to deliver the book. The novel, Pearson’s second following her successful debut I Don’t Know How She Does It, is about one girl’s infatuation with David Cassidy.
Pearson goes on:
The quality of British life became dangerously frayed. Kids unravelled.
Unravelling children. For shame! You’ve seen them, with their frayed fingers, unstitched heads and loose bits of digestive tract trailing behind them on a sodden grey pavement.
Pearson’s seen them. And she’s seen the kiddie unravellers at Lehman Brothers, once addressing the banks sorority:
Attractive women in their 30s told me that they couldn’t imagine finding the time to get pregnant. I told them to go home that night and make love to their husbands. One beautiful trader said angrily that if she had a baby she would miss out on the bonus she had sweated blood for. ‘Babies are a bonus,’ I said. If you’re lucky, they give you an amazing return for the whole of your life.’
Especially if you can make a living writing about your kiddies.
Personally, I would be far happier for my children to glimpse Batman’s buttocks than to see a pencil skewered into a man’s eye, but what do I know? I’m just a mother…
As the mother of a 12-year-old girl, I feel helpless rage at morally bankrupt ’sex education’ that just encourages under-age flings…
Back to the woman at the Lehman Brothers offices. Says Pearson:
What is the right age to have a baby? Recoiling a little from the photographs of 62-year-old Patti Farrant cradling her newborn son, I think we know instinctively what the wrong age looks like. The right age is a trickier matter. The other day I was sitting with my friend Nicky watching our ten-year-old girls play together when my daughter announced: “Mum, I’m not going to have babies till I’m old. Like 23 or something.”
What did Pearson do?
Heavily mortgaged members of the Having It All generation, Nicky and I have been successful, but I’m not sure we’ve been good at being happy. Our jobs ate us up, but we were so hungry to do well that we didn’t care if we were stressed and miserable. Then, when we hit our mid-30s, we dialled up our babies like a takeaway. And, yes, they came and were lovely beyond imagining, but it turned out we were the lucky ones.
To conclude:
“Today, financial disaster has forced those women to reconsider their priorities. If one good thing can come out of the present fiasco, perhaps we can all reflect on our priorities and be honest about the toll that the pursuit of money takes on our happiness.”
Yeah, so says the Master Of The Universe…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
You left out the worst bit:
‘Today, financial disaster has forced those women to reconsider their priorities. If one good thing can come out of the present fiasco, perhaps we can all reflect on our priorities and be honest about the toll that the pursuit of money takes on our happiness.’
Dear Goddess, please spare a few nanoseconds and delete her from your memory banks…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Aaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
I read something written by Allison Pearson…
My brain’s melting………..
September 17th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Indeed - a re-edit is required…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Dialled up their babies like a take-away? I suppose it’s better than some poor sod having to actually make love to Allison Pearson….
Aaaaaaaaagggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
I read something by her again… the agony….
September 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
My thanks, Anokra; the Wail’s answer to Ming the Merciless in all her hypocritical glory…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Has anyone ever seen Pearson in the flesh - is she real?
September 17th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Gulp.
I’m not volunteering to find out.
Maybe we could put a sign up in Bridgend?
‘Don’t top yourself here; do something useful before you die’
‘Find Allison Pearson’!
September 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
God, where to start with this woman’s hypocrisy?
Some suggestions:
a) Accusing Fergie of using her daughters for publicity, but shamefully using her own children as publicity props (cue mother’s day article and photo in the Mail, and relentless column references to her own offspring - would she even have a career if she couldn’t plunder her own kids and her ‘my experience as a mummy’ stories?).
b) Writing about the terrible toll of unrealistic media images of women’s bodies - especially the pressure it places on young women, including her own precious young daughter - yet taking the time slag off Princess Beatrice for exposing her perfectly normal body in a bikini. Classic.
c) Extolling family virtues and the benefits to children of being raised by married parents, yet being unmarried herself and, even better, trying to conceal that fact by referring to her partner as her ‘husband’. You can run, honey, but you can’t hide - Madame Arcati called you on that one!
d) Yes, talking about the credit crunch and the pressure on everyone’s families - including Allison’s, let’s not forget! - while she has obviously blown the hundreds of thousands Miramax paid her, despite having not delivered the book she promised them; but also sitting on a reported £400k a year at the Daily Hate. Nice work if you can get it.
As an aside, what’s with her uncanny ability to place herself at the centre of every big new story? Lehman Bros goes bust, she knows how profligate they were because she went to their HQ and gave a speech (er, presumably in return for a stack of cash?)! Couple brutally killed on their honeymoon in Antigua - Allison knew just how the (Welsh-born) bride felt about being there, because she was also born in Wales and she has been to Antigua too! The effect of violent films on young people - Allison saw and was horrified by the new Batman movie, then drove past the place where Ben Kinsella was shot on her way home! (This is slightly odd, given that Pearson apparently lives in Cambridge, and presumably wouldn’t be driving to London, past a shooting site, in order to catch a screening of Batman?…) She is truly uncanny!