Expensive Talk

MRS. JELLYBY, in Dickens’s Bleak House, was so concerned for the welfare of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, that she quite neglected to look after her own children, who lived in squalor and misery as a result. How many Mrs. Jellybys, metaphorically speaking, were there among the two billion people who were said to have attended or watched Live 8’s rock concerts?

No scientific research has been done into this question, but I suspect that the number is in the high hundreds of millions. The idea that you can simultaneously entertain yourself and do immense good by watching performances of the Peter Pans of pop music (who are stuck in permanent adolescence rather than permanent childhood) is a most agreeable one, though surely destructive of a truer, albeit less comfortable and undemanding, conception of virtue.

About the Author

Anthony Daniels

Mr. Daniels, a retired doctor who worked in several parts of the world, is the author of Mass Listeria, a book about health scares.

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MRS. JELLYBY, in Dickens’s Bleak House, was so concerned for the welfare of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, that she quite neglected to look after her own children, who lived in squalor and misery as a result. How many Mrs. Jellybys, metaphorically speaking, were there among the two billion people who were said to have attended or watched Live 8’s rock concerts?

No scientific research has been done into this question, but I suspect that the number is in the high hundreds of millions. The idea that you can simultaneously entertain yourself and do immense good by watching performances of the Peter Pans of pop music (who are stuck in permanent adolescence rather than permanent childhood) is a most agreeable one, though surely destructive of a truer, albeit less comfortable and undemanding, conception of virtue.