Lists

It's that time of year again, where every journalistic outlet worth no salt at all compile their personal, definitive list of everything that's been hot and everything that's not throughout the year. Seeing as we're moving into a new decade, they seem to think this gives them some authority to compile a list for the last ten years.

The Guardian posted their top sporting moments of the decade, failing to mention Michael Phelps at all, reminding everyone why we don't buy The Guardian for the sports supplement. Similarly, with no less vigour, The Times put Brazilian classic, City of God and P.T. Anderson's masterpiece, There Will Be Blood behind the likes of The Incredibles and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy in their list of the best 100 films of the noughties.

Beware: Epic Fail alert! The Times go one further in their countdown of the best 100 books of the decade, placing the likes of Coetzee's Youth and Dawkins' The God Delusion behind (yes, you guessed it) The Da Vinci Code.

What really pisses me off though, what really grates at the tip is when columnists flat-out get something wrong. We're not talking difference of opinion, we're talking flagrant mischief of the lowest calibre. Take a certain Books Blogger over at The Guardian Online, Sam Jordison. He asks:

Who passed the law that everybody had to give a good review to On Chesil Beach? What fear prevented so many journalists from admitting that McEwan had laid down a stinker?

Well, Mr Jordison, you're wrong. I don't think there's any ulterior motive to his claim, I think he's just, in the words of Stewart Lee, 'a idiot'.

Equally, this month's Spin magazine provide their grimy, restless, half-inarticulate, vomit-scoffing readers with a list of "16 Rock myths", managing all the while, to forget the sixteenth, settling instead for fifteen. Nevertheless, they set about "debunking" them one by one, concluding in their No.1 Rock myth: "Radiohead can do no wrong." They gracefully set us straight:

REALITY: Radiohead kinda blow.

There's no arguing with that kind of logic, dear reader. And yet, the author, Chris Norris solidifies things for us all the same:

So we sit, wearing headphones and frozen grins, and continue denying that guilty, nagging feeling that actually, in some ways, when you think about it … Radiohead kinda blow.

I'll just leave that out there. Spin even put a picture of Thom Yorke on the cover of the magazine. Honestly, you wouldn't spit on them, would you?