My theory re the bombast around Hyde is that these liberal men have come to regard how funny you find her column as a barometer of intelligence. They think that the more they praise her the cleverer they'll appear. https://twitter.com/chienontheloose/status/1307279220347990016

Some will read her column and feel stupid because they don't laugh and simp even harder over it to compensate. It won't ever occur to them that it's just not funny.

I used to think they must just get horny over her weird Geoffrey Boycott mouth or something but I now honestly think it's a cultural signpost. They'll all have done the same thing with Radiohead albums.

Ironically, part of its appeal is that it's so studiously middlebrow.

The conceit is that there's this really complex and grown-up thing called politics that we all understand very deeply cos we're all part of this educated elite, and by reducing it to a cartoon we're demonstrating our intellectual superiority.

They like it precisely *because* it's facile and ostentatiously tossed-off.

It's not satirising the powerful, it's satirising the political.

And that preparedness to laugh at the political process being written about in this self-consciously effortless, off-hand way is exhibiting the privilege of being insulated from the consequences of politics.