As someone with a brain in my skull and more than a grain of love for humanity in my soul, I of course think that the Daily Mail is a morally repugnant, house-price-fixated, crypto-xenophobic waste of ink and trees. And if that sounds like an overreaction, do bear in mind it's a matter of public record that they supported Oswald Mosely and his fascist group the Blackshirts in the run-up to World War II.So, given this depth of feeling, I can only be delighted that someone's gone to the trouble of creating the Daily Mail Headlineinator.
Simply add in a picture of something that the Mail might consider a threat to white middle-class suburban living (so, that would be anything at all), and the Headlineinator will condemn it for you. Immediately. Without regard for whether it's actually to blame for anything at all. Just like the Daily Mail. As demonstrated above.
(Many thanks to Graeme for his permission to publish this link. He's a gentleman, a scholar, and an acrobat.)
3 comments:
I always find it mildly amusing when the Mail's support for Mosely is brought up... it was 70+ years ago! Strangely, Germany was supporting Hitler at the time and Italy was supporting Mussolini and we're meant to have forgiven and forgotten about that and become good Europeans... by this token we should all have become good Daily Mailians! ;-)
And everybody forgets that Disney and Ford both rather liked Fascism and we haven't ditched our Mondeos and Snow White (surely with it's Aryan notions of 'white' meaning goodness and all things black being evil)!!! :)
Oh, and I just thought why don't people have as much of a go against the Express (a truly horrible paper, Diana and immigration obsessed- far nastier than the Mail and run by a pornographer), the Sun (muck-raking, Fascist, anti-democracy, anti-human), the Guardian (achingly PC, borderline anti-Semitic, anti-Working Classes), the Mirror and Star (daily Gossip magazines) and The Sport (evil misogynist, pornography catalogue)!!!
Oh, there are many companies one could point to for their Nazi links or sympathy, I agree - though if memory serves, one paper's absent from the 'D-Day' montage in the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, though that may be more coincidence than a sly poke, I'll grant.
I think the reason why the Mail gets a lot of abuse is probably because it sells well - and is thus seen as influential - and because unlike the Sun or Sport (doesn't the latter have the tagline 'The Paper Adults Read'? It's not renowned for its words, if I remember correctly) - it tries (and in my opinion fails) to mix craftily-worded logical syllogisms with viewpoints that often seem to spring from the lowest level of thought; I think it wants to be seen as the voice of middle england (which I guess could be seen to be expanding), but its approach is as logically and factually lacking as the worst kind of 'Cor! Foreigners, eh?' editorial in the tabloids.
I wouldn't want to be seen as an apologist for any newspaper - I stopped reading any when the Diana volte-face took place - but I do find the mail particularly repugnant; this might, though, be influenced by the fact that my grandparents used to read it avidly, and combined with the fact they didn't get out too often, they became increasingly convinced that the world beyond their driveway was a dangerous one full of drugs, AIDS, illegal immigrants, and, of course, tumbling house prices (which the Mail does seem fixated on, despite the fact that, at any time, only a small percentage of the nation is buying or selling, surely?).
J
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