RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

222 | denis beckett
aristocrats who rampaged about how the coming of democracy
in 1832 would mean chaos and mob rule and the triumph of
ignorance and the rest (and I hope we both grow old enough
for me to hear them gulp and say “oops, sorry”) but for Tony
I make a special exemption. Hundreds or thousands of readers
have at some time told me that they love or loved Frontline, but
Tony uniquely put a large amount of his life into expressing
that. With pay, yes, most of the time, but even at its best it was
never the pay that he’d have seen putting the same effort into
the work of regular clients.
So when he insisted that “your writing is a joy to read except
when you write about new democracy and turn from Jekyll to
Hyde and write convoluted garbage”, he meant it from deep down.
It was Pieter le roux who first said that democracy was killing
Frontline but it was Tony who said it most often. I’ve told you,
he gets reward from midwifing words worth reading – check out
www.coldtype.net for lots of examples. for the fact that his idea
of words worth reading includes these words, I give him a real
and genuine thank you. It is he who kicked this book into life
– twice, with a barn-door pause between. I am glad and grateful
that he did, and I’ll even tolerate his quaint belief that italics is
supposed to be for publications’ titles rather than for emphasis
in readers’ minds.
One other thing to catch up on; Johnny Johnson’s appeal.
In December 1991 the chief Justice and two of his brothers
in Bloemfontein spoke, and all of them were much, much,
rougher on Johnny than Stephen robinson had come near to.
His columns were “… bad, both in style and in content; they
trivialise important matters in a manner no doubt intended
to be humorous but seldom achieving this … certain of the
writing is in extremely poor taste … there is throughout the
writings a recurring theme of sexual suggestiveness of the crude
variety…” The central judgment concluded an extract about
chris Barnard, the heart surgeon, and his new young wife going
“nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more”, with the words: “No
more need be said. The appeal is dismissed with costs.”