Julie... WHO?

A friend came to my hotel room today and, waving a British newspaper at me, asked me in a tone of puzzled, almost squeamish disgust:

"Who is this woman? And why is she famous?" 

(I should point out right now that neither of us is British.)

Another friend, a fellow journalist (who is British), peered over our shoulders and said: "Hah! Because her publicist said so." 

"Ah - not so!" I replied, pointing to a page from a popular online encyclopaedia. "Look what a fine mind from the Observer wrote about her":

If Burchill is famous for anything it is for being Julie Burchill, the brilliant, unpredictable, outrageously outspoken writer who has an iconoclastic, usually offensive, view on everything.

This quote reminds me of those parents who call their screaming and mentally challenged brats "spirited" and "independent-minded". 

Then again, the impulse behind said quote might have been just the author's possible - and possibly justified - fear of being spat at in public. Not by the public, I might add.

If nothing else, he got the first part right, all right.

What puzzles me is the basis of this fame, or rather notoriety.
She is the kind of person that people love to hate, to use the brilliant Hollywood tagline used to sell the soi-disant Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall (born as Erich Oswald Stroheim, not an Austrian prince but the son of a Jewish hatmaker from the Vienna ghetto, a fact that should appeal to Miss Burchill, which is why we mention it here).

Still, you would expect a reasonable source of attraction underlying, and feeding, that pet "hate" - much like the unseemly attraction of evil debasement in von Stroheim's characters.

In the case of an "outspoken" and "iconoclastic" journalist you would expect at least a modicum of wit or acerbic intelligence (however misguided). 

I can understand why many people admire - and love to hate - Christopher Hitchens, for example.
I do not find him all that admirable, and I certainly do not love to hate him.
In fact, I do not hate him at all; and quite often, I feel sorry for him.
(No, not because he's ill, but because his own intellect is a severely misfiring and self-defeating weapon. Apparently no friend has made him see that his irrationality is making him sick - possibly literally. Or maybe he just didn't listen to them. Or maybe he just can't help himself.)
But at least he has the wit to respond - and often attack, unprovoked - with a certain feel for the situation and a coherence of thought. He can be witty. 

I do not admire Hitchens - but I "get" him.
I get his fame and attraction in certain circles. And I respect it.

But how can anyone find anything remotely interesting in a person - a journalist, no less - who counters the following statement:

"You think yourself madly clever but ... you seem trapped in juvenility."

 with this reply: 

"... Fuck off you crazy old dyke. Always, Julie Burchill." ?

It might be predictably funny as a scene from a film a la Shirley Valentine or Educating Rita.
And, of course, it would not be out of place as a sketch in Monty Python.
In fact, I can think of quite a few MP sketches based on this type of interlocution.

But outside the world of Monty Python it is not funny. There is no wit there, acerbic or otherwise, no sly observation, no bon mot... Nothing, nothing at all. It is the type of retort that the local schoolyard bully - you know the type: all brute force and loud mouth, not one grey cell to spare - would utter.
And for a purported journalist, such lack of wit is astounding.
How could this person be a journalist for respectable newspapers - and for several decades, no less?
It boggles the mind. It certainly lessens my respect for the Times and the Guardian and the Observer. (My respect for the Sun, however, remains untouched.)

I have no dog in this race and could not care less about either of the protagonists of this uneven and decidedly dull duel of pens. 
But I can nod in agreement with the very last sentence of another thing her opponent, somewhat clumsily, told her:
 

"I am read around the world from Japan to South America, and the basis of my fame is not just journalism ... You are completely unknown outside England."

Yes, you are - except perhaps as a freak show.
And, if I may presume to speak on behalf of said world, it is no great loss.