Roger Scruton is probably Britain's most famous philosopher.  Aside from furiously red hair and a strangely affectless manner of speaking--"robotic" is the usual description--he is famous principally for his rightwing agenda.  The particular brand of romantic Toryism that he favors (pro-fox hunting, hanging, and hereditary privilege; anti-homosexuality, immigration, and feminism) once prompted Ted Honderich, a professor of philosophy at University College London, to dub him "the unthinking man's thinking man."  It's not so surprising, then, that news of a libel suit being brought against Scruton by the British pop duo the Pet Shop
Boys has been met with excitement and delight in the ranks of liberal British journalism.  "O frabjous day, calloo callay," began one reporter's gleeful account of the legal contretemps.

The suit, which promises to provide a vivid tableau of the low-high culture war, is a response to a passage in Scruton's latest book, "The Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture."  In this characteristically
combative volume Scruton attacks various excrescences of "moronic" modern culture.  The French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault are accused of "doing the work of the devil," conteporary art is dismissed as "not a new form of art but an elaborate pretense at art," and popular music is reviled as an "unreal ecstasy which also penetrates and pollutes what is real."  Scruton is particularly appalled by the "melodic paucity" of pop compositions. 

This lack, he contends, deprives listeners of "one of the most
important gifts of folk music--the gift of song,"  and makes it "almost impossible to sing the typical pop-song unaccompanied."    He continues, "Sometimes, as with the Spice Girls or the Pet Shop Boys, serious doubts arise as to whether the performers made more than a minimal contribution to the recording, which owes its trademark to
subsequent sound engineering, designed precisely to make it unrepeatable.

"  Thus far, the Spice Girls have maintained a dignified silence on the subject of this slur, but the Pet Shop Boys--otherwise known as Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe--are irritated enough to have demanded up to fifty thousand pounds in damages.  Tennant and Lowe, who write and produce all their own music, joined forces in 1981, after bumping into each other in a hi-fi shop.  They achieved their greatest commercial success later that decade, with a series of
electronic disco songs, including "West End Girls," which was a No. 1 hit in the United States in 1986 and proved, despite Scruton's critique, to be eminently catchy--even hummable.    Scruton, speaking from his farmhouse in Wiltshire last week, expressed wounded astonishment that the two pop stars had taken legal recourse:  "I certainly think it's incredible that they're suing.  I don't know why they are."  Their reaction was, he suggested, unduly sensitive--but in keeping with a society that has become uncritically relativist.  "People who are seriously concerned about the intellectual life and the state of
culture ought to comment more about such things," he said.  "But now there's this sense that anything goes, and that there isn't any point in making criticism.  If intellectuals started suing each other every time one of them said something unfavorable about the other in print, all the learned journals would go out of business tomorrow."  Here there was a crackly pause on the phone line.  "But perhaps," he added, "that wouldn't be such a bad thing."   

Happily, despite his concerns about the debased quality of contemporary music and its effects on the younger generation, Scruton is perfectly confident that his own son, seven-month-old Samuel, will emerge
from childhood unscathed by the Pet Shop Boys or any other manifestation of "yoof" vulgarity.  In a recent newspaper article, outlining the precepts by which he will be rearing young Master Scruton, he promised that, unlike most children, who are brought up by newfangled methods and are "not, on the whole, very likable," his son will grow up with a firm faith in God, a repect for classical literature and music, and an appropriate sense of his own subordinate status.  "It goes without saying," he wrote, "that Sam will not
enjoy his childhood....But that is not the point.  Childhood is not an end in itself but a means of growing up." {posted to Introspective by Andy Weaver}

  PET SHOP BOYS  PRESS RELEASE - Dated 21 December 1999   Pet Shop Boys today settled their libel action against
  Professor Roger Scruton and his publishers,   Duckworths in relation to passages in a book by   Professor Scruton in which comment was made about   the contribution of Pet Shop Boys to recordings in their   name.  

Pet Shop Boys have accepted damages from Professor   Scruton and Duckworths, together wtih payment of Pet Shop Boys legal costs and the Defendants have   undertaken not to repeat the words of which complaint is made.   The Defendants have also agreed the reading of a statement in open Court on behalf of Pet Shop Boys in which Professor Scruton and Duckworths recognized that the allegations are entirely without foundation and represent a serious slur on the professional and personal integrity of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe and have caused them considerable distress.

The following interview was in the Sunday Express, week of Jan 9, 2000:- TENNANT CALLS FOR PENANCE There is an engaging postscript to our favourite culture clash of 1999. Roger Scruton, eggheaded author and academic, was forced to pay ten thousand pounds  to the Pet Shop Boys just before Christmas after his claims that they didnt  write their own songs was found to be libellous. But Scruton, who made the claim in his book An Intelligent Person's Guide to  Modern Culture, is clearly not nearly as intelligent as he likes to think-the  Pet Shop Boys didnt want his money and he could have avoided all the hassle  by simply saying sorry. "All we ever wanted was an apology"the groups Neil Tennant tells us.

And the university educated,who should reach the top 10 tonight with the  poignant You Only Tell Me You Love Me When Your Drunk, pronounced himself  baffled by the mental machinations of the philosopher. "Scruton originally maintained that we'd misunderstood him and he did not  mean that we hadn't written our songs. And then when we started the  proceedings, he submitted a defence trying to prove we had nothing to do with  the making of our records,which is ridiculous. So he actually tried to argue from both sides-first he didn't mean the things

we took to be libellous-and then that he did mean them after all and he could  prove them too !!
In the end pop scored a glorious victory over pomposity. Neil says"They ended up having to make an apology and they paid us ten  thousand pounds damages and they paid the legal fees" Yet all i wanted was an apology. "Its ridiculous that it had to go all the way to court just for someone to  say 'yes i was wrong'.

Even now he probably doesnt admit he was wrong. If he doesnt we suggest Neil pass on Scruton's description of Oasis to the Gallagher brothers-he called the band "mindless oafs".