Clarity and directness, factual and balanced, is a prime virtue of journalism. Literature, like ordinary conversation, is more subtle or more personally direct. It is resourceful in its use of allusion and irony, as well as a levelled certainty which is the home truth. Language must range across a spectrum of approaches and their impulses. Irony can express a sympathetic censure which crude ridicule cannot.
Earthy irreverence can display a latent reverence of selfless goodness.
By tall winged strangers dressed in satin. The mockery is not of the Nativity, but of our over-reverential, elaborate and precious masking of religion. The Murdochian account returns to the event, mysterious as it is, seen in human terms. It resembles a school Nativity play, a term synonymous with amusing mishaps. A birth is a natural occurrence with all the messy contingencies of human affairs.