more Daily Mail absurdities

[STN]

she really is a first-class tit; that fucking statement! the bloody nerve of it!

 

[matt b]

especially this bit:

"In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones."

true Moir, they weren't 'undertones', they were blatant

 

[jenks]

I don't think it was heavily orchestrated - people were reading this and making their feelings clear. Yep, there were RTs but no-one was organising it, that is the great thing about these things, sometimes, just sometimes people come to the same conclusions without someone telling them what to think!

and she seems to be confusing mischief with outrage

 

[crackerjack]

according to news 24, derren brown was the first to put the pcc email up and suggest people complain - so it wasn't just orchestrated, it was mass hypnosis

apparently wossy is tweeting about them too... with a heavy heart, no doubt

 

[crackerjack]

http://newsarse.com/2009/10/16/jan-moirs-career-to-die-of-perfectly-natural-causes/

The career of Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir is desperately clinging to life after suffering an adverse reaction following exposure to common sense, unbiased thinking, and the Internet.


“There are those who would call her a short-sighted bigot, perhaps even a wilfully deceitful crack-whore, but they don’t realise how upsetting the loss of her career will be to millions of witless homophobes and racists.”

 

[mistersloane]

jan.moir@dailymail.co.uk

 

[nomadthethird]

When I first read that I was like "I can't..believe...someone published this..." then I looked up and saw who did and it all made sense.

The sidebar links alone were full of the most blatantly sexist crap I'd seen in a long time in a newspaper and that's saying something. It made our tabloids over here look sane.

 

[crackerjack]

When I first read that I was like "I can't..believe...someone published this..." then I looked up and saw who did and it all made sense.

The sidebar links alone were full of the most blatantly sexist crap I'd seen in a long time in a newspaper and that's saying something. It made our tabloids over here look sane.

Funny you should say that - I was half expecting you to say how tame this is compared to what goes on in the US. Is homophobia not that mainstream over there, or is just confined to talk shows and their TV equivalents?

 

[nomadthethird]

"The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."

Oh really, Dr Moir?

"Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.
Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

What's funny is that I see a lot of people making a big deal about the fact that she implies that he "died of gay." But what's even weirder to me is that she implies that a) only gay people do drugs, b) only gay people OD, and c) only gay people can have dysfunctional or non-traditional relationships all in one fell swoop on top of the "he died of gay" thing.

 

[nomadthethird]

Funny you should say that - I was half expecting you to say how tame this is compared to what goes on in the US. Is homophobia not that mainstream over there, or is just confined to talk shows and their TV equivalents?

There are homophobes but you'd be absolutely crucified if you put that in a paper, no one would publish it. I really cannot imagine that getting published in a single newspaper here. Partially because they're all owned by a few corporations that control the flow of information.

The stuff I saw about women's "thighs" being exposed and Katie something or other's breasts "falling out of her dress" is the kind of stuff they wouldn't even publish in a tabloid here. They might put the picture in, but they'd never use those words, they'd just put something like "Fashion don't!"

Edit:

The craziest it gets is this, the Weekly World News, which I read religiously in college...

 

[crackerjack]

The stuff I saw about women's "thighs" being exposed and Katie something or other's breasts "falling out of her dress" is the kind of stuff they wouldn't even publish in a tabloid here. They might put the picture in, but they'd never use those words, they'd just put something like "Fashion don't!"

If there's one thing the Mail hates more than immigrants, it's "loose" females. It's one long hatchet job for prudish middle-aged women to tut tut at other people's daughters.

 

[nomadthethird]

If there's one thing the Mail hates more than immigrants, it's "loose" females. It's one long hatchet job for prudish middle-aged women to tut tut at other people's daughters.

I've noticed! This really got me laughing (lady *finger wag*):

Why has it taken so long for Labour's equal rights laws to blow up in their face?

It is clear to anyone with three brain cells that excessive amounts of maternity leave and gigantic sex discrimination payouts - of the kind shepherded through by Sir Harriet Harman - have not strengthened the position of women in the workplace.

If anything, they have hampered the prospects of many, particularly in a credit-crunched marketplace.

If you are a young, ambitious woman of child-bearing years, any employer is going to think once, twice, three times about you, lady.

Particularly small businesses, who are hammered out of all existence by discriminatory legislation and given no help to thrive.

This government, desperate to appease working mothers at any cost, has alienated employers, not encouraged them.

It goes on and on, but what is clear is that that great citadel of gender gelding, the Government Equalities Office, is doing more harm than good.

So netball and football are to be replaced as school sports by pastimes such as skateboarding and cheerleading. Pathetic. When are children going to learn that school sports are something to be endured, not enjoyed?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...e-lonely-troubling-death--.html#ixzz0UJ11R9KG

 

[scottdisco]

The sidebar links alone were full of the most blatantly sexist crap I'd seen in a long time in a newspaper and that's saying something. It made our tabloids over here look sane.

Nomad is quite right.

having lived in both countries and being a voracious meejah consumer i can say w confidence British tabloids are far worse than their American counterparts.
tbf it's not quite the same paper culture, but, no, there's nothing as bad as the Express in the USA, for instance.

sure you get nutty talk radio, but in terms of stuff that still carries a little bit of (wholly undeserved, of course) slight whiff of respectability in certain quarters, the British mid-market tabloids are out in front.

 

[scottdisco]

i liked Shiraz discussing the rather wonderful 'fuck you' from the Obama regime to FOX News recently, and i sighed at Max Dunbar's closing thought

The UK also has a reactionary media with massive delusions of relevance. If Labour had taken Obama’s attitude in ‘97, imagine what a great country we could be living in today.

whenever Phil Woolas (Oldham area MP aside from his national brief) talks shite about immigrants it gets uncritically noted in the Express and the Mail (and probably to a lesser extent in the Sun and Telegraph for all i know).
but, funnily enough, even his local Manchester Evening News don't take the guy seriously; it shows you how awful the Mail and Express are that an under-funded provincial newspaper has more smarts than them on basic issues. (that said, a tub of yoghurt has more smarts than them but you know what i mean.)

 

[scottdisco]

"Let the Mail make it clear for you: They don't like the BNP. They want to make it absolutely crystal clear that they don't like the BNP and that being racist, like the BNP are, is wrong, and a bad thing."

 

[crackerjack]

"Let the Mail make it clear for you: They don't like the BNP. They want to make it absolutely crystal clear that they don't like the BNP and that being racist, like the BNP are, is wrong, and a bad thing."

Boo for the blackshirts!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Ach. Daily Fail.

I was interested to see a friend of mine post a comment on FB saying that the Mail should retract the piece...now while I'm all for seeing this odious woman's career cut as short as possible, I think for the paper to distance itself from her article would give the false impression that this was some kind of uncharacterisitc lapse of judgement on the editors' part, as opposed to something that's entirely consistent with the rag's well known bigotry. This is the paper, after all, that not a million years ago ran with the headline Abortion hope after 'gay gene' found.

(Whoops, there goes nomad's jaw, could someone pick it up and hand it back to her?)

The article is made all the more stupid by the claim that young(ish), ostensibly healthy people don't just drop dead of undiagnosed or previously unproblematic conditions - this is just bullshit, it's happened to two guys I knew from school already.

 

[scottdisco]

^ i'm very sorry to hear that Tea

the gay gene story is absurd, how sadly typical.

nothing ever changes w our tabloids, eh :slanted:

In the summer of 1985, amidst a panic over Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka to Britain, the British government imposed a requirement that visitors from Sri Lanka had to obtain a visa before travelling to Britain. The change, the first time such a restriction had been imposed on Commonwealth citizens, was preceded and legitimated by scare stories in the press about an impending 'floodtide' of Tamils about to engulf Britain. One year later, the British press was at the forefront of a campaign to extend the visa restriction to other Commonwealth nationals and to defend Britain, once again, from an invasion by immigrant hordes.

(from a 1987 edition of the journal Race & Class)

yup, can't think why ethnic Tamils might be wanting to get out of Sri Lanka in the mid-80's, no siree

 

[baboon2004]

now while I'm all for seeing this odious woman's career cut as short as possible, I think for the paper to distance itself from her article would give the false impression that this was some kind of uncharacterisitc lapse of judgement on the editors' part, as opposed to something that's entirely consistent with the rag's well known bigotry. .

an excellent point.

further, while the level of internet damnation for the article was incredibly impressive there's much, much more bigotry out there to be exposed. the mail isn't the be-all and end-all.

And, just because lots of people profess to be liberals when discussing issues such as the Moir fiasco, doesn't mean they would act to oppose oppression when faced with it head-on. The proof is in action, not words.

 

[crackerjack]

Hard-hitting report on the controversy from....the Daily Mail.

worldwide debate over a Daily Mail article on the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately spread over the internet at the weekend.

Columnist Jan Moir's comments on the singer's shocking death sparked an extraordinary online response using sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Thousands have been moved to comment on Moir's column after she wrote in last Friday's paper about the circumstances surrounding the star's death in Majorca, when he and his civil partner invited a Bulgarian man to their flat.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-debate-dominates-internet.html#ixzz0UNZLQ2Su

Well done, Jan, sparking debate, moving people to comment.