"Gay bashing" Accusations

While I would never miss an opportunity to slate the Daily Mail and the bigoted, biased approach to reporting it takes, the recent furore over this comment on Stephen Gately does not seem entirely justified.

Charlie Brooker of The Guardian has provided an even more sensationalist diatribe on Jan Moir than the Daily Mail was ever achieved on refugees and asylum seekers.

The entire media coverage of Gately's death has been immense, you only have to look at news results on google to ascertain that. But the key facts are hard to find and there is a vast amount of speculation without basis.

He died from a pulmonary oedema. Fluid on the lungs. But the cause of the fluid of the lungs has been associated with a variety of nefarious activities, from mild drug use and drinking to, in Jan Moir's case, alleged, speculated hedonistic sexual acts.

I agree that her comment is presumptuous and entrenched with misconceptions of homosexuals, celebrities and a consiracy mentality an American would be proud of. Not to mention being a poorly structured, nonsensical argument that would have been slated by any GCSE teacher. Or utilised by Brown as a constructive argument at the Labour conference (the structure, not the content).

But in the true essence of the hyperreality media constructs such as twittter, the issue has been blown into a state of apoplexy where the true meaning has been lost.

I think more people should remove their advertising from the Daily Mail, and leave those who read the extremist waste of print to look at pictures of vinegar cures and plates with dead celebrities on them. But they should do so because the majority of the paper is prejudiced, partisan and entrenched with rightwing exclusion propaganda, not because of a poorly executed column that most people only read because they have Stephen Fry on Twitter.

Rant over.