My Biggest Reason for Loathing John Derbyshire

I loathe the odious John Derbyshire for his horrid racism, but the thing that I take almost personally is that he is now the best known individual with the surname Derbyshire. I have long been a fan of pioneering electronic musician and recording genius Delia Derbyshire. You may not have heard of Ms. Derbyshire, but if you have a nerdy bone in your body, you have heard her best known work, an otherworldly take on a piece by composer Ron Grainer:





Here's a video of the charming (though possessing alarming dentition) Delia Derbyshire, presiding over her domain:





Here's the first part of a documentary about the visionary Delia Derbyshire (the stuff she was doing in the 60's sounds contemporary almost fifty years after it was recorded):





It's my solemn hope that this forward thinking, brilliant Derbyshire is remembered, and the backwards, contemptible Derbyshire is hounded into oblivion.

Oh, and about John Derbyshire's firing by the National Review... I'm not impressed. John Derbyshire's mistake was that he blared out his racism loud and clear, instead of couching it in code words and "dog whistles". John Derbyshire's screed makes him unacceptable company at the polite sorts of cocktail parties. Of course, such loud and clear racism was stock-in-trade at the National Review, which had a long tradition of opposing civil rights and demeaning African-Americans. The asshole's essay would have made a typical cover piece on an edition of "NR" from the 1950's or 1960's.

UPDATE: For contrast to Derbyshire's horrible injunction "Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally", here's an antidote... another Englishman, the Sainted Joe Strummer, relating how he attended a reggae concert and gained some insight into political and economic justice:

White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution





It's not a matter of white and black, it's a matter of right and wrong.