Daily Express Poll Demands Something Be Done

Today we noticed something about the Express’s usual ‘ban something/bring it back/now the EU does this’ nonsense. The lead story’s headline read:

NATIONAL SERVICE: BRING IT BACK NOW

National Service should be brought back to cut anti-social behaviour and make Britain’s streets safer, a poll demands today.

At first we just assumed it was another of their polls which show that readers of the Daily Express agree with the Daily Express, like their famous ’99% of you say: Get us out of Europe’. However, on reading the actual article, it turned out to be even worse.

Given that the headline claims that the poll ‘demands’ the reintroduction of national service, the third sentence of the article therefore looks pretty strange:

Fed up with their yobbish behaviour, 40 per cent of the over-60s say a stint in the military should now be compulsory.

Ah, so only 40% of those polled agreed…

So a bit like the poll last week that ‘demanded’ Britain adopt AV then?

Liz Jones on Mails and Femails

Yesterday saw Liz Jones continue her formidable record of producing one dreadful article after another, in an outstandingly poor “thought-provoking confession”.

The gist of Liz’s argument is that, while women quickly lose interest in sex, men need a regular ‘fix’ (ah yes, that old chestnut). Ipso facto, men should be forgiven for getting said fix from sex workers, as they’re just giving in to their uncontrollable masculine urges. And hey, at least it means they give their sexless wives some peace and quiet.

Jones then explains how she split with her husband of four years after he had an extra-marital affair, and how this emotional infidelity was much worse than him merely going elsewhere for sex. As he explained to her “Sex to men is like going to the lavatory. We have to do it“. What a charmer.

In the bizarre world of Liz Jones, all women are heterosexual, and none use contraception:

“The only reason [women] have sex is to get a man, keep a man, steal his sperm and flatter ourselves that we are attractive.”

Um … okay. But wait, didn’t Liz’s own paper attack Stephen Fry for saying almost exactly the same thing? Funny that. It’s not like the Mail has a history of being inconsistent in its message.

In her defence, however, she does back up her arguments with facts:

“The truth is: we don’t really enjoy sex that much. And we definitely don’t want sex as often as men do. That is a cold, hard fact.”

And what she lacks in data, she makes up for in expert testimony:

“women most definitely, incontrovertibly, do not want sex once they have children – or so my friends who have children confess to me.”

This is good journalism, people. You may have thought it was a clumsy rehashing of tired old stereotypes, but Liz Jones deals in cold, hard facts. And she has friends who have children. So there.

Wading through sweeping generalisations and unsubstantiated claims, we were relieved to find the following qualification (blink and you’ll miss it):

“And while I don’t claim to speak for all women…”

PHEW. That’s OK then. Perhaps her continued use of the pronoun “we” was merely meant in the royal sense. A re-read of the article with this in mind would almost make you pity poor Liz. Almost.

Short and stumpy Cheryl Cole

Today’s Star has provided us with some genuine ‘close friend’ stuff, with what is, even by their standards, a really half-arsed Cheryl Cole story.

What kind of ‘close friend’ bothers to tell the Star about how Cheryl wants “long sinewy legs” in time for appearing on the American X Factor, or that she’s worried about looking “short and stumpy”?

That’s not all though. Worried that the legs thing maybe isn’t enough to fill an article itself, the ‘friend’ helps out with some more pointless filler:

“Cheryl wants the best body of her life for the US X Factor.

She knows she will be scrutinised as she is not well known in the US.”

This kind of article is a great example of the direction in which tabloid journalism is going, where you just shove the name of a celebrity in a headline, include a big photo of them, and don’t have any kind of content. At least when they’re just printing crazy stories about celebs there’s a comedy value aspect to it, but stuff like this is just so tedious.

But just in case you thought the whole ‘worried about her legs’ stuff was made-up nonsense, and barrel-scraping journalism, the ‘source close to the Geordie’ reassures us it’s not:

“Cheryl has always had a complex about her legs and it is the one thing she would change if she could.”

Good to know.

A close friend’s grief

Yesterday the Sun chose a horrible way to cover a widely reported story about the suicide of a woman who set fire to herself on a train.

Although not particularly shocking by the tabloids’ own standards, I still felt a bit ill reading this headline:

Grief at train ‘Human Torch’

I’m not even entirely sure why this angers me so much. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of an article which is supposed to be about the grief of her friend (more on that later), and the callous, sensationalist way she’s described as a ‘human torch’. This is a woman who’s taken her own life, not some comic book character.

The article itself is classic ‘close friend’ material, with the anonymous ‘friend’ conveniently providing some very print-ready filler:

“She had struggled with mental health problems. But something must have happened to make her do what she did.”

“She was adopted as a child and had gone through a series of terrible personal tragedies in her life. Her mood could change very quickly and she’d get very sad.”

Maybe it’s just the fact this was a suicide, but the vulture-like way the tabloids pick over a person’s death, desperate to make it as sensational as possible, really makes me sick.

Richard Littlejohn, Voice of Calm

We tried to keep out of the ‘Wayne Rooney says a swearword’ saga, honestly, but then leading star of the Mail, and Florida’s favourite immigrant, Richard Littlejohn waded in. As other bloggers have pointed out, the man reliably generates solid material for snide and cynical types like us, and this week has been no exception.

While Rooney was a naughty boy, we’re not sure whether his “splenetic fusilade of foul-mouthed abuse” (colourfully done, Richard) represented a worse crime than, for example, Ashley Cole shooting someone. Nevertheless, Mr Littlejohn takes it extremely seriously, arguing that Rooney deserves a ten-match suspension (twice as much, to take another example at random, as that which Roy Keane received for deliberately injuring an opponent), and that his outburst isn’t a case of a pumped-up sportsman celebrating, but of the whole country going to the dogs.

“Rooney’s rage seems to typify a trend in contemporary Britain. Half the country appears to be in a permanent state of extreme anger.”

And we all know where anger leads. It’s lucky we’ve got cool heads like Richard’s to remind us of reason and proportion. It’s not like he’d ever say anything potentially inflammatory or aggressive.

“It may be expressed in a drive-by V-sign, a mouthful of invective or, in extremis, an assault with a deadly weapon.”

So, for a bit of context, Wayne Rooney’s team were losing 2-0, he’s just scored a hat-trick to put them 3-2 up, and at the peak of that adrenalin rush, said the f-word (twice, the animal). But yeah, that swearing could just as easily be expressed as assault with a deadly weapon. Finishing with a flourish, Littlejohn concludes that:

“However pig-thick and disgusting, Richard Littlejohn is simply a grotesque manifestation of a much wider modern malaise.”

We’ve actually changed two words in that quote. Have a guess.

‘A danger to all men’

After a busy week in which we didn’t manage to write anything, an article from our favourite journalist – ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ – caught our attention. It described the jailing of a woman for a violent assault on two men [istyosty link], with the accompanying headline:

‘A danger to all men’: Judge jail ‘battered wife’, 49, for frenzied attack on two partygoers

Now, the way the headline is laid out deliberately suggests that ‘a danger to all men’ is a quote from someone, most likely the judge. However, in the article itself there’s no reference to anyone saying anything of the sort. What the judge actually said was:

‘You pose a significant risk of causing serious harm to members of the public.’

So where then does the idea that she’s ‘a danger to all men’ come from? When it appears in quotation marks in the headline, is it just the reporter quoting themselves? Why?

At the risk of being too cynical, it could create the impression that rather than a victim of abuse carrying out a drunken assault, this is actually a case of some crazy, violent, woman who hates all men and needs to be locked up forever.

Probably too cynical though…

The Daily Mail, defender of women

The Mail has roundly condemned the decision of the LSE to award a research fellowship to one Nir Rosen. Rosen, who last night resigned his new post after a media furore, gained notoriety in the aftermath of the sexual assault suffered by CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo this February, thanks to this horrible attempt to belittle her and the ordeal she suffered:

“Yes yes it’s wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too. Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major warmonger. Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women.”

This disgusting down-playing of a sexual assault rightly lost him his last job. How refreshing that the Daily Mail has now chosen, despite its chequered record on responding sympathetically to the female victims of violence and intimidation, to unambiguously defend Ms Logan, and condemn Mr Rosen (also, it’s worth noting that the second of those two articles, in an echo of the ‘gay manager’ incident, features a ‘woman judge’).

To suggest that this sympathetic stance is because the woman in question is successful and photogenic would surely be overly cynical, so we’re not going to suggest that. Progress. Lovely to see.

But what’s that? The Daily Mail’s actually had some problems with this particular case itself, and one of their diarists expressed some less than pleasant views at the time? I don’t believe you.

“Nothing excuses the Cairo sexual assault on Lara Logan, 39, the former swimwear model”

See, he’s condemning it, even if he is perhaps emphasising the swimwear model thing to imply something along the lines of ‘who wouldn’t?’. Truly, the Mail is starting to move into the 21st century, or at least the 20th. Wait, you’re saying there’s more? We’ve missed a rather crucial word?

“Nothing excuses the Cairo sexual assault on Lara Logan, 39, the former swimwear model but”

Oh dear. That doesn’t look good at all does it. But what, exactly? What heinous crime did she commit to, er, ‘excuse’ sexual assault?

“but she does have ‘form’ for dressing provocatively in inappropriate locations. In 2002, she was rebuked by British military officers in Afghanistan for ‘flashing her cleavage’.”

Ah. Hussy. Had it coming.

So to clarify; when the sexual assault happens, the Mail says she’s got form in terms of being pretty, and she’s not entirely innocent. A couple of months later, when someone who expressed similarly unsympathetic views gets a job, the Mail is outraged. Hopefully, this signals a dramatic change in the paper’s attitude, and it will now start treating victims of serious crimes with some respect. Or on the other hand it shows what a confused, hate-filled, and permanently outraged place the Mail offices must be.