A response in the British press to David Remnick's story on the dogged and bedraggled (and now victorious) Tony Blair. From Madeleine Bunting in The Tablet:

The nadir of this kind of political contempt was the interview of the Prime Minister by Little Ant and Dec, two ten-year-old interviewers who feature on ITV’s Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, as described by the New Yorker editor, David Remnick. One could sense the disbelief of the American journalist as he recounted that Blair was asked if he was “mad”, had ever eaten junk food such as Turkey Twizzlers, and worse.

The treatment of Blair—brutal, personal and demeaning—is similar to the way other celebrities are now routinely humiliated. Political strategists, early in the campaign, acknowledged the masochism of Blair as he got down to shirt sleeves, sweating profusely under the hostility. We may be a more tolerant nation in our private lives, but the flipside is the judgementalism and lack of basic charity we lavish on public figures. One of the primary impulses of the country driving the past four weeks has been to make Blair pay—a real desire to wipe the once-ready smile off his face. We have managed to make running for public office look like standing in the village stocks.

If you didn't click on the link above to Turkey Twizzlers, you really should. Despite their condemnation by "school dinner standards campaigner" Jamie Oliver (who looks disconcertingly like a lost member of Duran Duran), their popularity is rising. I wonder how successful Super Size Me was in the U.K.? One of the most inspiring things in the documentary (aside from its power to make me throw away a full box of Milk Duds), I thought, was the Appleton, Wisc., initiative that calmed down teenagers with healthy food. All America has hardly converted to non-pizza-and-Coke school lunches, but it might be a good idea on both sides of the pond to prevent any more small children from turning into the likes of Little Ant and Dec, who really do look perfect for a Lord of the Flies remake.

‘Choice is part of a new political consensus of Tories and New Labour’ [The Tablet; login]
Blair grilled by Little Ant & Dec [BBC News; featuring photo of the Prime Minister looking as though he's on the electric chair]
Banned in Scotland but good enough for English children [Guardian; extra-icky photo]
Letter From London: The Modernizer [Julian Barnes on Blair, 1994; New Yorker archives]