Everyone a Winner

 

Oleg Gordievsky with his
book on the K.G.B.

In the past ten days or so, two men have died, each of which, in different ways, had led extraordinary lives: George Foreman, former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, and Oleg Gordievsky, spy and double agent for Russia and the U.K. The only connection between these two lives is the synchronicity of their deaths though one also might observe a similar tenacity and determination in each man.

George Foreman in his maturity

Although I have never been interested in the art of boxing one can observe how a career as a professional boxer has enabled many men to escape from early lives of poverty and deprivation to go on to fulfilment and perhaps riches eventually. There is a dreadful risk of injury, including brain injury, which exists, and which has adversely affected many such as Muhammad Ali, World Champion and confident wordsmith. His later Parkinson’s may well have been his destiny but sustaining constant serious punches to the head over many years must also have been an important contributing factor.

George Foreman at the 1968 Olympics celebrating winning
the Gold Medal. He was 19 and a boxer for almost four years.

George Foreman’s life did not proceed in a conventional way. He was Texan born in an impoverished, inner-city area and inevitably became a troubled child, dropping out of school at 15, joining friends in petty crime before seeking to become a carpenter and bricklayer. He was a big-muscled teenager and discovered boxing at 16 only after he joined the Job Corps, a U.S. government scheme to help young people learn a trade. He loved boxing and was a quick learner with natural boxing power, rising through the amateur ranks to win a stunning gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He caught the eye of the American public on that occasion when he famously waved a small American flag in the ring, winning both the gold medal, the approval of many and the approbation of others!

Joe Frazier

He turned professional in 1969 at the age of 20 and quickly earned a reputation as a ‘killer’! He rose rapidly as a pro with a series of 37 brutal knockouts in the heavyweight division, leading inexorably to a title fight with the undefeated champ, Joe Frazier in 1973. Foreman was the underdog at the beginning, but he stunned the boxing world by knocking down the champion six times in two rounds before the referee stopped the fight. Much later in his more adult years, Foreman confessed that as a young boxer, all he aimed to do was to kill his opponent.

Rumble in The Jungle. 
Demonstrating Muhammad Ali's 'rope-a-dope'
 tactics for the first eight rounds.

Foreman defended his title only twice before facing Muhammad Ali in what became known as The Rumble in The Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of Congo.] Foreman’s reputation meant that he was widely expected to win, but he fell victim to Ali’s famous so-called ‘rope-a-dope strategy’ in which Ali stopped moving away around the ring, from Foreman’s onslaught, leaning against the ropes and absorbing his opponent’s early punches. Effectively this enabled Ali to wear out his opponent while retaining much of his own energy leading to an energetic return onslaught by Ali and the forced finish to the fight in the eighth round. It was a defining moment in boxing history; the brutal might of Foreman felled by the intelligence, resilience and psychological effectiveness of Ali. Defeat was devastating for Foreman causing him to doubt his own ability and skill. He fought only five more matches, including a second knock-out against

Muhammad Ali
Famous for his boxing and his poetry
'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.'

Frazier before losing to Jimmy Young in 1977 when he claimed to have had a near-death religious experience in his dressing room afterwards which led him to quit boxing and become an ordained minister. However, he did later stage an extraordinary sporting comeback, returning a decade later and reclaiming the world title at the age of 45, the oldest heavyweight champion ever. His return to boxing was to fund the youth centre he had established.

World Champion, first
won at 19 and reclaimed
at 45.

His talents were not limited to boxing. He became a successful entrepreneur making much more money from his famous electric grill that he ever did from a highly successful boxing career. He admitted to earning $8million a month from his Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine, earning subsequently more than $200 million from the one endorsement. He also commented on boxing for many years for the American cable TV network HBO while also known for occasional acts of extraordinary generosity such as the cheque for $50,000 which he quietly handed to a woman who did a fairly low-paid job in Las Vegas and who fell on hard times. He also often funded scholarships to enable many young people to attend college. After the Rodney King debacle [King was beaten by policemen after they arrested him; the entire incident was captured on video though the police were subsequently acquitted leading to the 1992 riots in L.A.] most of the drug stores in downtown Los Angeles closed and Foreman wrote a cheque for $1m to keep prescription drugs for the poor elderly, flowing. Much of George's civic generosity was low key and unheralded, tending to be directed at people from humble backgrounds like his own. It was his version of 'giving back', of acknowledging his own good fortune in life.

George and his grill

In a multi-faceted career, Foreman achieved the heights, both in his boxing and in his entrepreneurial endeavours due not only to immense boxing skill but also to economic and commercial judgement and an extraordinary resilience developed after a difficult, deprived childhood. His resilience was, perhaps, the key to his impressive success in life. 

 

 

Lost Boys

 

Gareth Southgate

 My last blog on the Netflix drama, Adolescence, sensitised me to current social anxieties about the uncertain, perhaps harmful, psychological state of many teenage boys and very young men. Somehow, I had not truly noticed the increasing public disquiet about boys’ mental health which has coincided with publicity about the major new research project recently launched by the Centre for Social Justice entitled Lost Boys and its findings are disquieting. But the alert which sparked my present interest, came from a speech by a man I much admire, Gareth Southgate, former UK Football Team manager.

Gareth Southgate was credited with revitalising the England team and was knighted in the King’s New Year Honours in December 2024. He has just delivered the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, held most years since 1972 in memory of the distinguished broadcaster and he focussed on the importance of self belief and resilience for young men, citing three factors needed to build these characteristics: identity, connection and culture. He referred approvingly to the Centre for Social Justice report, just issued, which said that boys and young men aged 16-24, since the pandemic, were in crisis with a “staggering” 40% increase in those not in education, employment or training, compared to 7% for females.

Southgate left after missing important penalty in
Euro 96 against Germany
Right, as England manager in 2022

“Too many young men are isolated” he said. "Too many feel uncomfortable opening up to friends or family. Many don’t have mentors– teachers, coaches, bosses- who befriend them and understand how to push them to grow. And so, when they struggle, young men inevitably try to handle whatever situation they find themselves in, alone. They end up withdrawing, reluctant to talk or express their emotions.”  “They spend more time online, searching for direction and falling into unhealthy alternatives like gaming, gambling or pornography.” Southgate also added that boys do not get 
enough opportunities to fail and then learn from their mistakes.  “In my opinion, if we make life too easy for young boys now, we will inevitably make life harder for them when they grow up to be young men. Too many young men are at risk of fearing failure precisely because they’ve had so few opportunities to experience and overcome it. They fail to try rather than try and fail.” Reflecting on what he had learned from his career, Southgate explained, “If I’ve learned anything from my life in football, it’s that success is much more than the final score. True success is how you respond in the hardest moments.”

Centre for Social Justice advises to involve boys
at risk in sporting activities.

The Centre for Social Justice report shows not only a growing divergence in education and employment areas between boys and girls but also an increasing divide in the social and political attitudes of the sexes. Young men are increasingly drawn to conservative, traditional or right-wing views whilst girls become more liberal and progressive as they grow up and this developing incompatibility between the sexes is underpinned by widespread family breakdown. Furthermore, and more problematically, being poor and working class increases the likelihood of this bleak situation occurring. Boys are twice as likely to be expelled from school; 96% of prisoners are male; suicide is now the biggest killer of men [under 50]; young men often earn less and are more likely to be unemployed or economically inactive than girls. A lot of the concern regarding the impact of social media and technology has understandably been over girls suffering with increased rates of anxiety and self-harm. Yet boys investigating online, alone in their bedrooms, can lead them to embrace debilitating games addiction, exposure to often violent and extreme pornography and influencers like Andrew Tate with their relentless emphasis on toxic masculinity.

Ten years ago in 2014, this same Centre for Social Justice published Fractured Families which highlighted the alarming trend to fatherlessness in the U.K. Good parenting by fathers in childhood seems to have a disproportionate effect on the mental health of young men, yet teenagers sitting their GCSEs are more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their dad. A million children have no significant contact with their fathers while low-income fathers are half as likely to go to parenting and antenatal classes as higher income fathers: 71% v 31%. 72% of higher income fathers felt prepared for becoming a father for the first time compared to 61% of lower income fathers who felt similarly prepared. Indeed, 55% of low-income fathers said they were left to “pick it up for themselves” while only 29% of higher income dads felt the same. 46% of fathers with an income of under £20,000 said there were " not many good role models for being a dad." Economically poorer fathers found little useful information and support online with only 26% of those in the lowest income brackets involved in looking while 45% of higher income fathers regularly used the Internet for information and help. Again and again, boys' problems are further enhanced by class differences.

Strong and stable societies need strong and stable men in strong and stable families; boys are not born knowing how to harness their natural masculine tendencies for good; they need to be taught, trained, encouraged and inspired by positive examples around them, in their lives. The riots in the summer of 2024 were in large part a reaction to the sharp decline in value and status, perhaps subconsciously felt by working class British males. Large numbers of disenfranchised young men are a destructive force in society and on an individual basis, leave boys bewildered, not knowing how to be a good man.

 

Adolescence

Owen Cooper as Jamie.

Earlier this week, I read numerous tributes to the new Netflix limited series called Adolescence to say how special it was, both in the power of its message and the quality of its drama. The implied invitation was irresistible. I followed its four episodes over two evenings, entirely hooked but also impacted by the power of its presentation. It was overall, harrowing. I particularly admired as always, the acting capacity of lead, Stephen Graham, but was astonished by the amazing performance of the 14-year-old lead, Owen Cooper,who I discover, had never acted before. Unbelievable! His performance was so nuanced, so comprehensively true and empathetic that I seriously wondered if talented actors are born rather than trained or developed.

Stephen Graham as Jamie's father, Eddie.

 More astonishing information was to come. Each episode was filmed in entirely one shot, so no cuts or discussions or mini rehearsals between shots or location changes were possible. Actors had to perfect their lines and think through their entire emotional performances during rehearsals, in preparation for a one hour take per episode. I imagine that even for seasoned actors like Stephen Graham this is challenging but for a first-time young actor, hugely demanding.

Adolescence was co-created by Stephen Graham with Jack Thorne  and The Guardian described it as ‘the closest thing to TV perfection’ while Forbes Magazine called it "a technical masterpiece", in fact, the drama is earning widespread rave reviews for its technical achievements. In addition, the talented cast seems to have been chosen to perfection with performances by those playing Jamie’s mother, sister and the inspectors investigating the case,  plus the 

role of the child psychologist tasked with writing an independent assessment of Jamie’s character, all receiving wide acclaim. The drama closes with an emotional rendition of Aurora's 'Through The Eyes of A Child' sung by Emilia, which describes the loss of a 'childlike soul.' The haunting track is the only time that viewers hear the voice of Katie, the murdered schoolgirl.

However, gripping performances aside, the drama explores the incel subculture and what is called ‘the manosphere’ that dominates some online discussions, and which is a concept completely unknown to many older viewers. In this online subculture, incels are a community of men, mostly heterosexual, who define themselves as unattractive, who are therefore unable to find a romantic or sexual partner and who go on to blame women and girls as a result. Incredibly, this culture began to be delineated around ten 

Ashley Walters as D.C. Luke Bascombe

years ago after a misogynistic hate crime in the U.S. when a 22-year-old killed six people and injured 14 others after uploading a video on YouTube announcing his intention to punish women for their lack of interest in him. After this, the term 'involuntary celibate' came to prominence. This horrific incident inspired another mass killing in Toronto in 2018 in which 11 people were killed and 15 injured. This second perpetrator described himself as an incel to the police and this may have been the first public use of the term linked to mass murder. In 2017, Reddit banned a 41,000- strong incel group for violating its rules regarding violent content. Among the written comments during this exercise, one sad thought appeared: “A reminder that no female has ever looked at you and thought you were attractive.”  Another rather frightening addition said, “Women are horrible human beings in every aspect of life.” 

Eddie, the bewildered father, trying to get to the truth
and trying to understand
the unreal situation in which he finds himself.

Influencer Andrew Tate after his
release from  house arrest
 in Romania.

Through this incredibly poignant and honest drama the public is given a searing look at the manosphere encompassing the collection of online forums, websites and influencers who promote misogyny, toxic masculinity and the incel culture. An eye-opener for this viewer at least! I had heard the names of Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, but knew little beyond their publicly alleged misogyny, but I had not realised the huge impact of their opinions and culture on boys and young men who chiefly view this malevolent stream of hate alone in their bedrooms. Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and a self-described misogynist, has amassed over 10 million followers on X and is celebrated widely in the manosphere. He was banned from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok in 2022 for his extreme misogynistic views. Earlier he had also been banned from Twitter for several adverse comments about women, including that they "bear some responsibility" for being assaulted. However, no surprise to learn that

Tristan Tate looking 
regrettably gorgeous with no need to
be an incel.

the new owner of Twitter, now renamed X, Elon Musk, has reinstated Tate. The Tates, who have dual US/British citizenship, were arrested in late 2022 in Romania and formally indicted last year on charges that they participated in a criminal ring that lured women to Romania where they were sexually exploited. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape and both he and his brother have denied all charges. Mysteriously, the two were released from detention in Romania and flown by private jet to America after the Romanian authorities last month [Feb 2025] unexpectedly lifted their travel restrictions. There have been whispers that the U.S. President was sympathetic to the brothers’ plight.

Eddie Miller acknowledging the awful truth.

Stephen Graham is already a highly acclaimed actor specialising in roles depicting gritty, working-class men. With Adolescence he delivers a magnetic performance as Eddie Miller, the father of 13-year-old Jamie, accused of murdering a fellow pupil. He manages to capture the complexity of a bewildered family man completely out of his depth but who firmly believes in his son’s innocence and stands by Jamie as he is questioned repeatedly by the police. Graham’s face as he eventually hears his son confess his guilt after long denial, is eloquent and touching. As a first time TV script writer, Graham says that his deeper interest was sparked when he heard the shocking news that Brianna Ghey, a 16 year old transgender woman, had been lured to a Warrington park on February 11, 2023, by two friends who had planned their lethal assault on her; she was repeatedly stabbed to death. There were other random stabbing incidents involving teenagers which shocked Graham into asking himself what was happening to young men in society. He and co-writer Jack Thorne could see the immense harm in the development of the incel culture through peers, the Internet and social media, on today's young men and this hard-hitting series is the result. Hard to watch: impossible to forget.

  

Post Script                               

 Adolescence also introduces adults to the covert, sometimes sinister, meanings attributed by young people to emojis of which most parents are oblivious. It is a world of unexpected meanings explained to D.C. Luke Bascombe by his young son in the drama and reveals how to decode symbols, colours, shapes which are crucial in this new tech language. For example, different coloured hearts can have very different meanings. Red symbolises love; purple means horny; yellow means, 'I am interested; are you?';

pink means 'I am interested but not in sex'. The red pill self-identifies an incel who believes he cannot form normal romantic or social relationships with women.

Red pill

Much needed advice.

  means 'I'm interested, but not in sex' and orange means 'you're going to be fine'.

The Advance of J.D. Vance

 

J.D.Vance

Rust Belt America

James David Vance [August 2, 1984] has had an extraordinary journey in life before becoming the fiftieth Vice President of the U.S.A. The early years were spent as part of the white working class in southern Ohio; born to a mother who struggled for years with alcohol and drug abuse, was neglectful of her children and at times terrifyingly threatening to them. Her parents, most especially her mother, Mamaw, from Appalachia, were the people who really brought up Vance, instilling in him the right values and it is to Mamaw to whom he pays special tribute for providing him with the stability he needed at home and for her constant encouragement for him to work to rise above difficult circumstances. However, his grandparents’ lives were not without incident! His grandfather, Papaw, was an alcoholic who came home drunk after being warned off the booze by his wife and she set fire to him. Clearly, Mamaw was the rock of the family and most certainly the mainstay of Vance’s upbringing and he gives many tributes for the values she passed on to him, and indeed, for all she did to set him off on his life’s journey.

In his 2016 best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, he describes his growing up in Middleton, Ohio and the summers he spent with the wider family in Jackson, Kentucky. In his book, Vance paints a bleak picture of life in such communities as his, describing an environment in which poverty was the norm, a ‘family tradition’ for many people. He relates that substance abuse and domestic violence were commonplace and hopes for a better economic future, rare. People simply did not expect to move on or up. But Vance also brings his conservative political sensibilities to the discussion. He does not shrink from pointing out that some of those originally around him are still living lives of quiet desperation but without doing anything themselves to improve their plight. And he remembers his frustration as a teenager, when working a summer job in a grocery shop, seeing impoverished neighbours always on their cell phones while he could not afford one.

A youthful J.D.Vance in the Marines

 After graduating from Middleton High School, Vance followed a well-trodden escape path from deprivation into the army. During his formative years in the U.S. Marine Corps, he was deployed to Iraq and no doubt during these four years, he further witnessed the enduring value of higher education. He moved on from the Marines to attend Ohio State University receiving a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009 and then went on to study Law at Yale which equipped him to gain a post in the multinational law firm, Sidley Austin LLP after which he gained experience in several Californian investment firms.

His excellent Hillbilly Elegy was published during the 2016 Presidential cycle when Hilary Clinton was pitted against Trump. The strange appeal of the millionaire Donald Trump to poor working-class whites living in the outback, proved to be a key factor in Trump’s success and many people contended that the poverty and discontent described in Vance’s book, explained why working- class white men supported a political

Fervent white working class support for Trump.
Can Vance really be comfortable with this quasi-religious 
enthusiasm?

outsider like ‘the Donald’. An interview with Vance by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative, publicised soon after the publication of Hillbilly Elegy, crashed the magazine’s website and Dreher opined that Trump’s success could only be understood by reading J.D. Vance. Others denounced the book claiming it perpetuated stereotypes of the Appalachian poor and questioned to what extent his family’s experiences applied to others.

Nonetheless, Vance’s book became a bestseller and prompted him to move back to Ohio from California. In 2021, the Ohio Republican senator, Rob Portman, announced he would not seek re-election in 2022, and after having declined several invitations to run for the Senate,  Vance decided to enter the race to replace him. During the 2016 Presidential election, Vance had voiced strong criticism of Trump, expressing fears that Trump was 'leading the white working class to a 

Trump and Vance rallying the troops

very dark place.”  But soon after entering the Senate race himself in 2021, he apologised publicly for his earlier criticism of Trump and made his sudden conversion to Trumpism a central tenet to his campaign while aligning himself publicly with the M.A.G.A. movement. [Trump remained highly popular in Ohio despite his having lost the Presidential election] Vance also repeated Trump’s claims, which he knew to be false, that there had been widespread voter fraud in 2016 when Biden won, a sure way to win Trump’s heart and importantly, those of his M.A.G.A. supporters!

One may assume this fundamental switch in political loyalty had more to do with Vance getting himself elected than in any genuine re-consideration of where his loyalties and opinions lay. Sadly, it worked! Buoyed by an endorsement from Trump, Vance was placed first in the Republican primary in May 2022 and in the November general election, he defeated the Democratic U.S. Rep, Tim Ryan, and was sworn in in January 2023. He was not yet 40. His writings testify to his acknowledgement of how fortunate he has been. “The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future; if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose.”

In his first Senatorial year, Vance amplified MAGA talking points on social media and podcasts hosted by right wing commentators but also co-sponsored bipartisan bills in Congress on issues such as CEO accountability for failed banks and publicly sparred with high-level Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell over U.S. aid to Ukraine which he supported. He is not an average Republican by any means and he has made it big!! He can be both admired for his tremendous life journey and criticised for his unashamed moral dishonesty and perhaps exploitative, self-seeking behaviour. I found the following quote by Vance about why he wrote Hillbilly Elegy [published when he was 31] in which we can see both a touching honesty and genuine self-knowledge:

“I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the life of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family encountered it. I want people to understand how upward mobility really feels. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.”                                   

The Ambush which distressed so many observers

Elon Musk

In the present administration, the conservative side of J.D. Vance seems a more genuine quality than just mere expediency.  He has given backing to his boss's plans to reshape and scale back government and questioned the authority of US judges to stand in the way. But he seems often to have been overshadowed by Trump's cost-cutting tsar, Elon Musk, in his highly-publicised wrecking of multiple government departments. But in the area of foreign policy, Vance's first trip to Europe saw him berating U.S. allies at the Munich Security Conference, accusing European leaders of censoring free speech, taking in too many immigrants and undermining democracy; indeed, governing in anti-democratic ways. Then in late February came a televised meeting which began with Vance praising Trump's diplomacy and slamming the Biden administration, followed by the disastrous  argument with Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office with Vance acting as Trump's attack dog in what appeared to be a pre-planned ambush of the Ukrainian leader. The distaste following that has been universal and the support of U.S. voters for both Vance and Trump has begun to reduce.

 .

In his Hillbilly Elegy, Vance described
how his mother trapped him in a car; drove
recklessly and told him they were going to die;
made him pee into a jar so she could use his clean
urine to pass a drug test; disappeared for sudden
unpredictable intervals; spent other people's money dishonestly;
 slit her wrists; crashed her minivan
into a telephone pole.

eee

J.D Vance and his mother in earlier years