Jenny McCartney writing in Unherd believes that misfortune has a certain cachet in woke circles – but is ignored where it counts.

Do you remember when, if people were going to lie, it was about being more successful than they actually were? Jeffrey Archer, for example – despite a career as a hugely saleable author – was found to have added some fictional lustre to everything from his school exam results to the nature of his Oxford degree. Gordon Ramsay, the chef, reportedly exaggerated tales of playing in the first-team squad for Glasgow Rangers, when, in fact, it was a single match as a triallist.

Most frequently, people bumped up their academic qualifications to get them to a next stage denied them otherwise, or to jazz up a mediocre past. Their belief was that the perception of past success would help to create its future equivalent. They were often right – unless they were unmasked.

Today, though, there is a new form of faking it to make it, with the same potentially explosive risks of discovery, and it speaks of a fundamental cultural change in our age: the steady rise – in specific settings – of social status associated with victimhood. In recent years, intensifying in the last few months, there have been a number of scandals in which people are alleged to have lied about grievous misfortune or perceived disadvantage.

Continue reading in Unherd.

Who Takes Advantage Of Disadvantage?



Jenny McCartney writing in Unherd believes that misfortune has a certain cachet in woke circles – but is ignored where it counts.

Do you remember when, if people were going to lie, it was about being more successful than they actually were? Jeffrey Archer, for example – despite a career as a hugely saleable author – was found to have added some fictional lustre to everything from his school exam results to the nature of his Oxford degree. Gordon Ramsay, the chef, reportedly exaggerated tales of playing in the first-team squad for Glasgow Rangers, when, in fact, it was a single match as a triallist.

Most frequently, people bumped up their academic qualifications to get them to a next stage denied them otherwise, or to jazz up a mediocre past. Their belief was that the perception of past success would help to create its future equivalent. They were often right – unless they were unmasked.

Today, though, there is a new form of faking it to make it, with the same potentially explosive risks of discovery, and it speaks of a fundamental cultural change in our age: the steady rise – in specific settings – of social status associated with victimhood. In recent years, intensifying in the last few months, there have been a number of scandals in which people are alleged to have lied about grievous misfortune or perceived disadvantage.

Continue reading in Unherd.

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