Heroes and villains

👑 The King | 🛩️ Washington press | 🇧🇼 President of Botswana

5 April 2024

Heroes and villains

The new Union Jack? Thisaway.

Villains
Thisaway, the design company that rebranded the Union Jack for Team GB to make it more “relevant”. The result (pictured) is an “abomination”, says Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph, as if “Cath Kidston had an opium dream in Carnaby Street circa 1963”. I dread to think what was going through the “chia-seed porridge that passes for brains” at the firm when they received the commission. But someone should tell them that a flag which has “lifted British hearts for more than 200 years, and athletes who aspire to drape themselves in red, white and blue, needs no improvement”.

Villain
Shakespeare, according to academics at the University of Roehampton, who say the playwright’s “disproportionate representation” in theatre has propagated “white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives”. Well yes, says Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph, but that’s a bit like saying “Kylian Mbappé takes up too much space on the football scene or that Magnus Carlsen really needs to stop sucking up all the oxygen in the chess world”. Genius shouldn’t get trumped by diversity.

Villains
The White House press corps, who have been politely asked to stop pilfering souvenirs from Air Force One. Everyone does it, says Politico. When disembarking the presidential plane, it’s not uncommon to hear the sounds of “clinking glassware or porcelain plates” from reporters’ hand luggage. One former hack once hosted a dinner party “where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time”.

Hero
The King, for sending a “generous and warm-hearted” message to retiring BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, 19 years after he was caught on a hot mic calling the reporter “awful”, and telling William and Harry: “I can’t bear that man.” It’s a lovely gesture, says Polly Vernon in The Times, symbolic of “the inevitable cooling off of enmity over time, of the acquisition of wisdom and perspective, a sense of what actually matters, what’s really awful, and how nice it is for all concerned, in the end, to just let stuff go”.

Hero
Botswana’s president, who has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in response to proposed restrictions on the import of hunting trophies. Mokgweetsi Masisi argues that his country’s elephant population has to be kept in check to prevent herds from damaging property, eating crops and trampling people. Germans, he tells the tabloid Bild, should “live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to”.

Hero
Separè 1968, a restaurant on the Tuscan coast, which offers a €20 voucher to diners who leave their mobile phones at the door. “Dining without a cellphone gives people the chance to appreciate their experience more,” says owner Niccolò D’Andrea. “They can enjoy the surroundings, the food and the 500 wine labels that we have available.”

Heroes
Mississippi’s Christians, who have erected the state’s 14th giant cross – 120ft high and 64ft wide – in the town of Aberdeen. Mike Rozier, whose company is erecting the colossal crucifixes, says the $240,000 cost is money well spent, despite the state’s high poverty levels. “People say Mississippi is No 49 or No 50 in this or that,” he says, but “we’re No 1 in the number of crosses.”

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