It strikes me that my last post was somewhat... excessive in targeting The Sun. It's true. Oh, they're still a rancid turd of a paper, but in all honesty, I feel a little guilty attacking that paper when sitting next to them, completely clear of my anger, was The Daily Mail and Daily Standard / Express.
The problem The Sun had is two-fold; for starters, it had been pissing me off a lot very recently. The gloating boast of 'yuck yuck, we got exclusive pictures of a bloody Cole and Will.i.am,' and their self-congratulatory falsehood of' 'we're posting Prince Harry's naked arse in a stand for FRRRRRREEEEEEEEDDDDOOOM,' just really got on my tits. So yes, it got both barrels. However, the second fold is that the reason they are pissing me off is that I am reading them more nowadays. At work, we get a batch of papers to choose from. I gravitate towards The Daily Mirror because it sort of aims at my political leanings better then anybody else - okay, fine, it's missing, but it's kinda in the right direction and it is at least seeing the target if it squints - and after The Mirror the next in line? It's The Sun. Because of the bunch on offer, it's the best of a crappy bunch.
At least until they start bringing the i in.
So yes, I'm reading it more often, and in exposing myself to it I get more rope to string it up with. But the other two? The Mail, Express/Standard? I don't read those. No. I cannot read those: as in, I cannot physically read those.
(Yes, I am treating the Daily Express and Daily Standard as a singular entry. They are practically identical, and I stopped being able to distinguish between the two a while ago.)
I can't express how much The Daily Mail is a depressive nadir of waste. The Daily Mail has five stories to tell you: Everything is terrible, something is about to give you cancer, everything used to be better, health/safety/political correctness GONE MAD, racism. And in fairness I'm not even sure there's five stories in that, as you can crunch it down some to 'everything is terrible, it used to be better before health/safety political correctness went MAD. I can't get through a copy without tearfully stringing myself up off the light fixtures whilst sharpening a razor blade. It's only saving grace is that these five stories are often done to the point of ridiculous parody and you can have a nihilistic laugh at everything. I remember one story and the write-in follow up (which is always a risk, does hilarity or horror await?) The story was that a pagan policemen had successfully applied for certain pagan holy days to be counted a holidays. Nothing innocuous really I thought. Legitimate religion, legitimate holy days, move on. The written public responses was delicious. So. Much. Screaming. Apparently it was un-English, a disgrace, and all that was going to happen is that they let a known Satanist be a policemen to murder and rape children (in that order.) Never mind that Christianity is a foreign import (dear God don't let anyone at the Mail hear that) or that paganism was here first , that it does not equal Satanism and wait, what was that last one? Gah.
When we get to the Daily Express/Standard, I have less to say, because while I find the racism in The Daily Mail funny at a point of parody (remember, they were the guys who when Nick Griffin went on Question Time and everyone took the absolute piss of him - they came out with 'how dare you make fun of him! I mean, make him look sympathetic' - no, no one felt that other than you) the Express/Standard is racist beyond parody. They break Poe's Law, it's so bad. The greatest invention to them was white people who weren't English so they be racist towards white people without having to resort to class-ism. In attempting to read it, my eyes close shut in self defence. If I use my right hand to pry an eye open, the left hand punches myself in the nuts. If I soldier on, crawling onwards clutching my bruised testicles with one trembling hand forcing open a streaming eye, my forehead will slam itself upon the floor and send me into blissful unconsciousness. The headline's alone are enough to sicken me, let alone it's actual content.
So I can't really criticize something I can't bring myself to read. The Sun suffers by being just good enough - eh, no, let's not say that, not shit enough - to edge it's way off the bottom of my list of things I'll tolerate reading. Actually, that means in all technicality, that means I personally rate The Sun higher then Dan Brown. Huh. Of course, while my exposure is extremely limited, I still go out my way whenever passing to check out the MaExSt (that's a portmanteau now) headline's. It's sort of like passing a open dumpster full of bile, broken glass and hate on the way to work. It's annoying, sure, but fascinating to me that after all this time it's still there. Fascinating to me that's it's still tolerated. Fascinating to me that people still like it. Fascinating to me that people pay to jump into the dumpster and swim in it every day.
Though in truth I probably give the Mail a free pass because I can't be too brutal to a paper my grandparents read. It's hard to dismiss a whole segment of the population in a overly judgemental wave if, yah know, that includes people you actually like. And then the realization that the whole judgemental shtick is the MaExSt's thing.
Then you hear there's going to be a Hangover 3 and all of a sudden you realize it's okay to judge again.
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