Julie Burchill
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| The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this article is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [July 3, 1959 in Frenchay, Bristol, UK) is British journalist known for her acerbic writing. She started her career writing for the New Musical Express (NME) after responding, with her husband-to-be Tony Parsons, to an advert in that paper seeking hip young gunslingers to write about the then emerging punk movement. Until 2003, she wrote a weekly column in The Guardian. She currently writes for The Times. Shortly after starting her weekly column she referred to George Galloway but appeared to confuse him with former MP Ron Brown, reporting the misdeeds of Brown as those of Galloway. Galloway threatened legal action which was averted when she apologised and The Times paid damages [link]. Burchill is noted for her confrontational and iconoclastic views, which have been criticised as contradictory. In the 1980s, she wrote in favour of Margaret Thatcher, but she has always claimed she has never renounced the Communist beliefs of her youth. She is a consistent defender of the old Soviet Union. Burchill champions the working-class against the middle-class in most cases, and has been particularly vocal in defending the much-maligned chavs. Burchill is famed for her frequent attacks on various celebrity figures, which have been criticised for their cruelty, though her supporters note the self-deprecating aspects of her writing. She is perhaps best known in America for the "Fax wars" or "Battle of the Bitches" with author Camille Paglia [link]. She has written many books and has made a television documentaries about the death of her father from asbestosis and about Heat magazine. Burchill was briefly married to Parsons and then to Cosmo Landesman, the son of Fran and Jay Landesman. Both marriages produced a son. Both sons live with their fathers. In 1990, Burchill and Landesman established a short-lived magazine Modern Review through which she met Charlotte Raven, with whom she had a much publicised affair. She recently married again, to Raven's brother Daniel, a much younger man. She wrote of the joys of having a "toyboy" in her Times' Weekend Review column. Fellow NME journalist/author Paul Wellings wrote about their friendship in his book "I'm A Journalist...Get Me Out Of Here". Her 2004 lesbian-themed novel for teenagers Sugar Rush was adapted for television in 2005 by Channel 4. In 2003, Burchill was ranked number 85 in Channel 4's poll of "100 Worst Britons". The poll was inspired by the BBC series 100 Greatest Britons, though it was less serious in nature. The aim was to discover the 100 Worst Britons We Love To Hate. The poll specified that the nominees had to be British, alive and not currently in prison or pending trial. Having previously converted to Christianity, she announced in February 2006 plans for a years sabbatical from journalism, during which she plans, among other things, to study theology. The Times has recently dropped her Saturday column, and had arranged a more flexible arrangement where Burchill writes for the daily paper.[link] Despite her sabbatical, 2006 is proving to be a busy year for Burchill. As well as continuing with her studies, she is working on three books and two documentaries, and has contributed an introduction to the novel A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep by Greg Stekelman. She has lived for many years now in Brighton, and a book on her adopted home town is forthcoming. Controversy over views on Israel/PalestineBurchill's departure from The Guardian was caused, in part, by disagreements with the readers over her anti-Palestinian, pro-Israel views in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict#redirect [[Template:Fact]], although she claimed that it came down to differences between her claimed working class origins and the middle class stance of the Guardian. In an interview in 2004, Burchill stated that she had left the Guardian because they refused to increase her salary. Although Burchill's views appeared to find some focus in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they were evidently part of a wider, more open animosity that she had developed towards Muslims in general in the years preceding her departure from the paper. Burchill's arguments in this regard were characterised by their frequently incoherent and poorly developed nature - a principal cause of the controversy, rather than the opinions themselves. A number of wide-ranging, disparate topics such as the war in Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan and the wearing of the hijab were seemingly confused, with Burchill's opinion pieces in her column on these matters appearing suddenly and without context, and commonly juxtaposed by starkly lighter subjects such Victoria Beckham's dress sense or the author's ruminations on her grocery shopping for that week. Bibliography
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