| Ah, the furtive perusal of the newsagent's rack, waiting for the
queue to disperse before taking my purchase to the counter,
avoiding the cashier's eye, furling the publication into
anonymity as I shuffle off home. Yes, I bought the Daily
Mail earlier. Please forgive me.
"JAIL TRADE IN SICK TV SHOW", you see. Convicted child
abusers might have watched Brass Eye, and could even have - the
Mail is keen to suggest - gotten "gratification" from it. An
article written with a horrific salaciousness, full of subtly
twisted descriptions designed to outrage its readers and which,
when you compare the "poor innocent child actor" bits to reality,
actually highlight how carefully the programme was shot. Graagh.
The worst thing of all, though, is that they filled an entire
page with a sketch-by-sketch quote-heavy description of the
show "just to show how disgusting it was" - undoubtedly
written by an intelligent writer feigning outrage and sniggering,
as so much of the Mail must surely be. Yet huge swathes of middle
England take it at dead-serious face-value. Poison.
Bah. A few pages later we get a quarter-page cartoon of a pensioner who had a
hip replacement done in Germany to avoid NHS waiting lists,
and was involuntarily goose-stepping as a result. And
there's more stupid media hypocrisy here.
I'll shut up now before I devolve into incoherent rage.
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