charlie brooker saves the day again

[clementine_the_tangerine]

sorry kermit i had to post it! just wanted to see how people felt and if anyone wanted to make a complaint against this woman on the pcc website.

this morning jan moir published an absolutely hideous 'article' descibing stephen gately's death as 'sleazy' and understandably(!) after a short time of someone dying, seizing the moment to do a bit of a gay bashing in the daily mail. i cant believe that people can be this depraved. link to the orig article if you can bear to read it is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...g-death--.html

if you want to feel less like nauseous after reading that then please move onto charlie brooker's rebuke here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ately-jan-moir

[stargalaxy]

The Grauniad, already a place where dodgy journalism is king, has been particuarly shameless this week. First of all, it claimed that Carter Ruck and Trafigura were trying to block them from reporting on parliamentary proceedings. This isn't true, as it happens. The injunction on the Minton Report was in place since September 11th this year and the Grauniad's own lawyers accepted the need for such an injunction on September 18th. Not that you would know that from their extremely skewed, trumpet-blowing coverage on the issue. It just so happened that reporting on the question could have put The Grauniad at risk of breaking an injunction they themselves agreed was necessary.

As in so many other ways, The Grauniad is a fountain of hypocrisy and double standards. If the Daily Mail had posted such a biased and misleading story on their front page as "Guardian gagged from reporting parliament", they would have received no end of criticism from bloggers and the left-wing press. Proof that to The Grauniad, it's not what you believe that matters, it's who you are. Charlie Brooker - another unbearably smug cunt in the Polly Toynbee mould - proves this yet again here. Jan Moir, in my view a relatively poor writer, writes a piece which doesn't really say anything at all here. Yet one or two slightly ambigious sentences are taken by Brooker to imply homophobia. Yet again, we see The Guardian - who are always keen to accuse tabloid newspapers of inventing or embellishing stories - using exactly the same tactic. Presumably it's okay when boring loss-making broadsheets do it?

In the interests of fairness, here is the reaction of Jan Moir herself to the article. I can only - being of the charitable sort - assume that Clementine The Tangerine forgot to post the link to this in the opening post..

[Infinite Part Deux]

Originally Posted by stargalaxy

Charlie Brooker - another unbearably smug cunt in the Polly Toynbee mould - proves this yet again here.

Christ on a bike. There's wrong...then there's being so wrong that the magnitude of error is so huge that it creates a split in the universe creating a parallel world where penguins walk the streets dressed as men. You're even more wrong than that.

And you don't think that this paragraph is saying something?

"Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards."

The woman essentially states that the she, a 2 bit columnist in The Daily Mail, a.k.a the Fuckwits Guide to an Angry Life of Idiocy, knows more than the doctor carrying out the post mortem. And, because Gately was gay and took someone home his death must be sleazy in some way. His body isn't even in the ground and she's trotting out the 'gay man dies young, must have been something dody going on there" stick.

[stargalaxy]

Originally Posted by Infinite Part Deux

Christ on a bike. There's wrong... then there's being so wrong that the magnitude of error is so huge that it creates a split in the universe creating a parallel world where penguins walk the streets dressed as men. You're even more wrong than that.

I'm not defending Jan Moir - I think she's an extremely poor writer, as are most columnists at the Mail newspapers. Aside from the likes of Peter Oborne, I think they're a lacklustre lot. I just happen to believe she didn't think through what she wrote before submitting this column. Ultimately, the piece is full of cliches, unsubstantiated gossip and ambiguity - it doesn't really say anything we didn't know before and it's an extremely badly-written piece. If someone posted that on a blog, I sure as hell wouldn't read it, so it certainly isn't good enough to be in a national newspaper.

Originally Posted by Jan Moir's column

"Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered. And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy. After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards."

Is this homophobic? Possibly, possibly not. If someone considers it "sleazy" to invite a stranger back to their apartment, that's a legitimate view. I doubt this "young Bulgarian man" was going back to the apartment simply to have a nice cup of tea, though.

On a lighter note and not at all related to this thread, here is something about a "tedious left-wing spider". Hilarious.

[I'm With Stupid]

Daily Mail columnist judges something they know nothing about and have no first-hand experience of whatsoever? Who is really surprised?

SG can't get through another thread without finding somebody to call a cunt? Who is really surprised?

This is priceless though:

In writing that 'it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships' I was suggesting that civil partnerships - the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting - have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

Just as problematic as marriages? That didn't sound like what she was saying to me. "Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages . . . 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." Sounds far more like she's making a less that favourable comparison between gay marriages and straight ones (not in all cases though - how considerate of her), and now is backtracking at an alarming rate now that her obvious bigotry has been pointed out.

[Infinite Part Deux]

Originally Posted by stargalaxy

I'm not defending Jan Moir - I think she's an extremely poor writer, as are most columnists at the Mail newspapers. Aside from the likes of Peter Oborne, I think they're a lacklustre lot. I just happen to believe she didn't think through what she wrote before submitting this column. Ultimately, the piece is full of cliches, unsubstantiated gossip and ambiguity - it doesn't really say anything we didn't know before and it's an extremely badly-written piece. If someone posted that on a blog, I sure as hell wouldn't read it, so it certainly isn't good enough to be in a national newspaper. Is this homophobic? Possibly, possibly not. If someone considers it "sleazy" to invite a stranger back to their apartment, that's a legitimate view. I doubt this "young Bulgarian man" was going back to the apartment simply to have a nice cup of tea, though.

The point was that describing Charlie Brooker as an "unbearably smug cunt" then comparing him to Polly Toynbee reveals a staggering depth of ignorance. The only thing Charlie Brooker has in common with Toynbee is that they both write for the Guardian. I'm assuming that she was the only Guardian (and do please make an effort to spell it correctly - the deliberate misspelling wasn't funny the first time people picked up on their copy errors and now, at least 89 years later, it just makes you look like a tit) columnist you could think of and that's why you threw them together.

The column says a great deal more than we knew before. It tells us that even though Gately seems to have been the victim of an undiagnosed heart defect that has affected his family, which can be the cause of pulmonary oedema, there has to be something a bit sleazy about his death. There has to be. It's just not natural for a young man to simply pass away. Except that it is and happens with frighting regularity. If the half wit of had even put pulmonary oedema into Google she'd have found out that it can be caused by an ill functioning heart, instead of dropping in the "Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family." as if she, Jan Moir, world respected cardiologist, somehow knows better.

Whether or not this "young Bulgarian man was going back to the apartment simply to have a nice cup of tea" matters not a fucking jot. If he was heterosexual and had taken two women home would his death somehow be unnatural?

[SuzyCreamcheese]

'it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships'

because one of them dies?

[Franki]

Originally Posted by stargalaxy

Yet one or two slightly ambigious sentences are taken by Brooker to imply homophobia.

Him, and EVERYBODY ELSE WHO READ THE DAMN ARTICLE. Except for you, apparently.

[adogwithsunglasses]

I think if she needs a high publicity death like this one to illustrate the perils of gay marriage, it sounds a damn sight safer than traditional marriage which endless stories of heartache can be collated about from just about anywhere you look.

[Aladdin]

It's just typical of you, SG, to deviate from the point and start having a completely random and unrelated rant about The Guardian (wtf is that about, then? ), instead of commenting on the topic at hand.

Incidentally it is not just the sandal-wearing liberals from the Guardian you despise so much who have found the article in question revolting... It's just about everybody who has read it; celebrities, journalists, members of the public... and for good reason too. The article is a despicable piece of homophobic fucking shite.

But no. Let's bash the Guardian instead... far more relevant and important.

[jamelia]

I knew a straight man who died once. He had had sex with women in the past. Disgusting. It was inevitable that if he kept on with that straight lifestyle, having sex with women, drinking alcohol, going to nightclubs, he would die eventually.

[Yerascrote]

Originally Posted by stargalaxy

The Grauniad, already a place where dodgy journalism is king, has been particuarly shameless this week. First of all, it claimed that Carter Ruck and Trafigura were trying to block them from reporting on parliamentary proceedings. This isn't true, as it happens. The injunction on the Minton Report was in place since September 11th this year and the Grauniad's own lawyers accepted the need for such an injunction on September 18th. Not that you would know that from their extremely skewed, trumpet-blowing coverage on the issue. It just so happened that reporting on the question could have put The Grauniad at risk of breaking an injunction they themselves agreed was necessary.

As in so many other ways, The Grauniad is a fountain of hypocrisy and double standards. If the Daily Mail had posted such a biased and misleading story on their front page as "Guardian gagged from reporting parliament", they would have received no end of criticism from bloggers and the left-wing press. Proof that to The Grauniad, it's not what you believe that matters, it's who you are. Charlie Brooker - another unbearably smug cunt in the Polly Toynbee mould - proves this yet again here. Jan Moir, in my view a relatively poor writer, writes a piece which doesn't really say anything at all here. Yet one or two slightly ambigious sentences are taken by Brooker to imply homophobia. Yet again, we see The Guardian - who are always keen to accuse tabloid newspapers of inventing or embellishing stories - using exactly the same tactic. Presumably it's okay when boring loss-making broadsheets do it?

In the interests of fairness, here is the reaction of Jan Moir herself to the article. I can only - being of the charitable sort - assume that Clementine The Tangerine forgot to post the link to this in the opening post..

[Broken-Angel]

S-G Is there ANYTHING that you don't find fault with?
X

[Teagan]

Originally Posted by stargalaxy

I doubt this "young Bulgarian man" was going back to the apartment simply to have a nice cup of tea, though.

Why? Why the fuck does it have to be sleazy? I have been invited back to peoples homes on numerous occasions for a nightcap, a chill-out session after a night of clubbing, or a place to crash if I have been drinking and can't get home. I have left the house in the morning with my honour perfectly intact.

I have always given you the benefit of the doubt with your unfunny ranting and ravings but you have now confirmed that I have been wasting my time and that you're quite tedious.

[Broken-Angel]

Originally Posted by Teagan

I have always given you the benefit of the doubt with your unfunny ranting and ravings but you have now confirmed that I have been wasting my time and that you're quite tedious.

S-G, you need to chill. I dread to think what your views are on important matters.
X