Thursday, September 24, 2015 

Three ring circus sideshow of freaks.

People on social media, aren't they all a bunch of whining, quick to take offence charlatans totally unrepresentative of the wider public?  You'd be forgiven for thinking so, considering the number of thinkpieces as well as the occasional news article that consist almost entirely of "look at what these bastards said about my last missive advocating the drowning of the first born".  

At the weekend even the normally wonderful Marina Hyde dedicated her Graun column to mockery of the angry, vocal self-righteous shits in our midst, the people who are so enamoured with their chosen outsider they'll go so far as to get Alex Salmond or Nigel Farage inked on their skin.  Fairly easy targets, you might have thought.  That she did this just a week after writing one of the best responses to the Charlotte Proudman affair, comparing the creepiness of Proudman's flatterer describing his own daughter in sexualised terms with Donald Trump's repeated remarks that if his daughter wasn't his maybe he'd be dating her, was all the more surprising.

It does seem odd then that of all the people the Graun could have got to respond to Lord Sumption's worryingly complacent remarks on the representation of women in the judiciary, they decided on... Charlotte Proudman.  This is not to say there is anything much wrong with her article.  There isn't.   Nor was much wrong with her piece the previous week on the furore following her shaming of Alexander Carter-Silk for messaging her on Linked In to express his non-politically correct admiration for her "stunning" photo.  Generally, if you realise the message you're about to send isn't in the best taste, or wouldn't be acceptable as a part of saying hello in like, real life, you are deserving of the kind of response Proudman gave.

This said, and this is part of the reason I will probably never properly understand social media or the battle of egos and narcissisms that go hand in hand, there was no compelling reason to name Carter-Silk on Twitter as she did.  Her point about sexism, as well as her question about whether other women had received similarly objectionable messages regarding their physical appearance on the professional social network would have remained just as powerful with his identity blanked out.  Indeed, if anything it would have further highlighted her withering response to Carter-Silk, especially the cutting reference to his being twice her age.  It would also have helped to prevent the likes of the Mail then deriding Proudman and others like her who dare to object to unwanted advances as "feminazis", and everything else that followed on.

The media as ever wants to have its cake and eat it.  This week, columnist Lindy West encouraged women to #ShoutYourAbortion.  Whether you agree with that sentiment or not, I side completely with West when she says abortion needs to be safe, legal and accessible to everyone.  In her previous piece though, she took issue with an unfunny viral video titled Dear Fat People.  Again, more than fair enough.  Nicole Arbour's past work is characterised as slut-shaming, the video itself is fat-shaming, and so on.   West's response to this is simple: she is a far better person than Arbour because she fights for her regardless of what she thinks or says.  West's argument is nothing more than I'm brilliant and certain of my righteousness, and that's why you're wrong and in time will appreciate just how right I am.  West doesn't seem to have any problem with how Arbour's YouTube channel was temporarily removed after complaints, as she doesn't so much as mention it; perhaps this is because she realises that when discourse becomes reduced to characterising criticism or mockery as always being about shaming, demands for censorship are bound to follow.  Or it might be that West thinks that "shaming" is a perfectly appropriate response, so long as the shaming was started by the person being targeted.

When the usual cretins then reflect that however unpleasant it might be to be the centre of attention for a few days, to receive death threats and all the rest, if it gets you a regular gig in the media it can't be all bad, it's more and more difficult to argue against them.  Fact is that the "mainstream" media and social media have become interdependent; increasingly neither can operate without the other.  For all the complaints about trolls, people being zoomers and monomaniacs, the media wants more rather than fewer Katie Hopkins and Charlotte Proudmans.  The circle might be vicious, but it keeps on turning.

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9/24/2015 08:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, October 29, 2014 

I didn't know.

Art critics say porno's easily obscene / Late Show retards, Dice Clay's true poetry

At times, as anyone who really knows me is all too well aware, I give in to my worst instincts.  I've never been shall we say convinced by some of the motives behind the Everyday Sexism project, which to me has at times come alarmingly close to suggesting there are no circumstances in which it is ever OK to give someone a compliment, at least without it being misconstrued or taken as evidence of that person's latent misogyny.  Reading Lindy West's column in the Graun last week, in which she related how twice women sitting near to her in a coffee shop were approached by creepy older men trying desperately if obliquely to get into their pants, I felt the bile rising.  I had never experienced anything like she was describing happen.  It's true I've also never patronised a Starbucks in my life, but I would have noticed if it went on in similar places and situations.

So I asked an American guy I've talked to on IRC for over a decade now whether it could be this is more of an American thing.  Yeah, it's a real problem, he said.  His girlfriend worried about going out alone as some men were so creepy, and he linked me to this piece on Jezebel, written by a woman told to her face by the man harassing her it was her fault for being pretty.  Her fault for having the nerve to be attractive in a public place.  A man, who, for whatever reason (perhaps he'd had a terrible day; perhaps he'd tried the same "what are you reading" approach before and it had either worked or rather, had never worked and so released all his pent-up anger and self-pity in this almost empty train against this woman who dared to tell him to leave her alone; or perhaps, and this is the most likely explanation, he was just an entitled prick of the highest order used to getting what he wants), took it upon himself to terrify someone he had just met simply because she wanted to read her book in peace.

Except it obviously isn't just an American problem.  When someone captures over 100 examples of harassment, from sustained, aggressive following and invasion of personal space to less troubling but still unwanted remarks in just 10 hours of filming, as Shoshana B Roberts did just walking around New York, somehow resisting the urge to tell these man children exactly what they could do, it touches a nerve.  It touched mine.  I honestly didn't know.  I really didn't.  No, I don't suppose it's this bad universally; on a couple of occasions I have seen women being harassed in a similar fashion, and once I did check if the victim was OK, telling her how those who'd catcalled and then insulted her were arseholes, as if she didn't know.

It poses a whole number of questions.  Do these men really not know any better? Are some of them, while undoubtedly frightening, otherwise harmless, as the guy asking whether he's "too ugly" might be, apparently oblivious to how it's what he's doing rather than his looks that make him unattractive?  Moreover, is it really so difficult to look, as men (and women) always will, without passing comment or going out of their way to make that person feel uncomfortable?  I don't doubt some long-term relationships have begun due to chance encounters, an especially flattering compliment or just chatting someone they meet on the street up on the off chance; there's a way of going about it though, and let's not pretend the vast majority want any more out of it than the (extremely remote) possibility of a quick fuck.

Just as pertinent is how it puts or should put silliness like this into sharp relief.  We are once again in the season of gesture poppytics, when almost everyone put in front of a TV camera has to be wearing one, regardless of whether they want to or not.  Little things like how this completely dilutes the meaning of remembrance are cast aside, lest the Daily Mail start whining again or what used to be the red ink brigade start complaining about lack of respect.  Perhaps both Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband really are feminists, but is David Cameron, despite what he's said in the past?  I'm not a feminist and wouldn't pretend to be, regardless of how my politics overlap with most of those who identify as such, mainly down to how modern identity politics seems more concerned with arguments over privilege and who's the most oppressed than with doing something about it.  This kind of hashtag style activism is at best false and at worst encourages further cynicism about people's motives, and also seems meant to catch those already deemed to be the enemy out, as the Sun has previously with Ed Miliband failing to pose with a Help for Heroes wristband.

As couldn't be made clearer by Hollaback's video, we really do need feminism.  We also need men, and yes women, who know friends who've acted similarly to those in New York to make clear just how upsetting such behaviour can be.  By contrast, what we could really do without are the sweeping generalisations of some of those who really ought to know better.

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10/29/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, January 20, 2014 

Much as I'd like to just laugh...

Is there anything quite as hilarious as a political party tearing itself apart?  Well, obviously, almost everything is funnier than a party being plunged into crisis over what amounts to in practice a refusal to apologise, even when the party is the Liberal Democrats, but bear with me here.  It's more to do with how the Lib Dems have so often portrayed themselves as being holier than thou, having such deep integrity, being above the petty squabbling which the Tories and Labour have so often descended into.  In actuality the party can be and has been brutal, not least in the way it dispensed with the services of Ming Campbell in double quick time, while if anything it's long been a master of the political dark arts, smearing and engaging in ad hominem attacks on opponents when it's suited them.

It also takes quite something to relegate the small matter of a UKIP councillor informing the world that the recent floods are God's punishment for the government daring to legislate for gay marriage to being a lesser story.  Nigel Farage, bless him, has pledged to smoke out the "extremist, nasty or barmy" from his party ahead of the all important European elections, raising the question of when he intends to resign, especially considering his intervention today to claim that sexism no longer exists in the City.

The Liberal Democrats, it's fair to say, have a problem with women.  Not necessarily on the policy front, and I fully respect their decision not to introduce all-women shortlists in an attempt to increase the party's share of women MPs, but clearly something hasn't been right for some time.  All the main parties have their dinosaur tendency, especially among those elevated to the Lords, and it seems due to a mixture of old fashioned views on what constitutes unacceptable behaviour as well as loyalty towards Lord Rennard that they weren't exactly fully enamoured with the verdict of Alistair Webster QC, who while deciding that the evidence and allegations made against Rennard were "broadly credible", also felt they couldn't be established beyond reasonable doubt.  His suggestion was that Rennard should make a formal apology.

Rennard however has refused to apologise, believing that if he were to do so it would amount to an admission of guilt and leave him liable to pay compensation if sued.  He also continues to maintain his innocence, and so an apology would be fairly meaningless in any case.  The Lib Dems have duly reacted by suspending Rennard again, although it remains to be seen exactly what sanctions can be brought against a peer who is refusing to apologise, other than continuing to withhold the whip.  Rennard in response has released a statement saying he's considering legal action against the party, ably assisted as he has been throughout by Lord Carlile, the former "independent" reviewer of terrorism legislation, the same Lord Carlile who never saw a control order he thought wasn't justified, and pretty much complained only during his time in the role of the overuse of section 44 of the Terrorism Act.  It's also the same Carlile who took to the Mail on Sunday yesterday to complain that Rennard had been subject to treatment "that Thomas Cromwell would have hesitated from using on behalf of Henry VIII".  Quite apart from how the Mail and its sister paper were in the vanguard, leading the charge against Rennard, it's odd that someone so outraged by an injustice done to a friend never expressed anything even approaching such passion when it came to the "mistakes" of the state.

This isn't to say there hasn't been skulduggery on the part of all sides.  Despite the insistence of Channel 4's Cathy Newman, it always felt suspect that the allegations against Rennard were brought out into the open so close to the Eastleigh by-election when they had been known about for some time, and the email chain which fell into the hands of the Rennard camp more than suggests it was timed for maximum damage to the party.  This said, equally clearly those who complained about Rennard believed that the only way they would be taken seriously was to go all out, and they were fully entitled to do so.  We don't know the exact details of the allegations, not least because it doesn't seem as though Rennard himself has been given a copy of Webster's report, but they amount to more than Rennard just putting his hand on the women's knees.  The Telegraph, having heard of the allegations in 2010, noted that they included accusations of groping, and most seriously, two prospective parliamentary candidates who after a dinner at Rennard's home were told to "go upstairs", and were only allowed to leave when one threatened to call the police.

Rennard could of course be telling the truth, but when you consider the allegations against him were so widely known at Westminster before they became public knowledge, and it was believed his resignation in 2009 from his role as party chief executive was not entirely about his health it becomes less and less likely.  The opaque nature of the investigations also hasn't helped, making it unclear exactly what he had been accused of.  Whatever it was he thought he was doing, some came to see his approach as being to promote those who played along, while those who didn't found their careers floundered.  Whether accurate or not, he clearly has plenty to apologise for, and his mealy-mouthed and self-pitying statement today has exacerbated the situation rather than brought it nearer to a conclusion.

Much as we could enjoy the schadenfreude and leave it at that, it reflects badly on politics as a whole.  One suspects Rennard abused his position precisely because he felt he was indispensable, a situation which isn't analogous to the other main parties, although it has been true of the SWP, which has been going through its own agonies over far more serious allegations.  The sooner the party gets a grip, difficult due to its structure and how Rennard is no longer an employee, the better.

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1/20/2014 09:22:00 pm | |

Friday, February 15, 2013 

The tabloids: publishing death porn since the advent of the printing press.

Much comment, understandably, on the Sun's decision to run a front page splash (and in this instance it really does seem the right word) on the death of Reeva Steenkamp, illustrated with a full page photo of the model and presenter appearing to undo her bikini top.  It's certainly tasteless, and as Marina Hyde notes, just happens to come the day after the One Billion Rising protests, the campaign intended to bring more attention to violence against women.

It's hardly the most egregious recent case of tabloid death porn though, and one which at the time barely caused a ripple of complaint as far as I can remember.  Back in 2008, the Daily Star splashed on the latest evidence heard at the trial of Mark Dixie, who was subsequently found guilty of the murder of Sally Anne Bowman.  "MY SEX WITH SALLY ANNE'S DEAD BODY", the front page screamed, alongside the ubiquitous shot of Bowman from her modelling catalogue, hands in the top of her jeans.

As for the motivation behind using such photographs to illustrate crime cases, Dixie's trial more than provided a clue.  Found on Dixie's digital camera was a video of a man masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail, the front page of which featured a photograph of Bowman.  The police also found said copy of the Mail in Dixie's possesion, and noted the cover was dashed with a "sticky substance".  The Mail, all but needless to say, merely reported that the police had found a video of Dixie "performing a lewd sex act on the six-month anniversary of the model's death".  Not, you understand, which publication and what material had further energised his "lewd sex act".

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2/15/2013 06:12:00 pm | |

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 

Stay classy, Matt Bendoris!

Call it fantasy, but my lack of recent posts on the standards of journalism at the Sun hasn't been down to not looking, rather that Dominic Mohan has turned out to be less sensationalist and overall far better editor than Rebekah Brooks ever was. Last week's antics over Prince Harry aside, that is, so let's not jinx it now.

We may well then have to rely on the Sun's Scottish edition to be reminded of the bad old days. Enter Matt Bendoris, chief feature writer, and his rather sad apparent medical condition, priapism. Unleashed upon "Scots violin queen" Nicola Bendetti, Bendoris turns on the charm:

STUNNING violinist Nicola Benedetti becomes as tightly strung as a Stradivarius when pop babe Rihanna’s name crops up.

I must have hit a bum note after asking why the sexy Scot doesn’t make more of her fabulous figure — when she suddenly flies off on one.

Ah yes, becoming tightly strung and flying off on one at the suggestion from a tabloid journalist that she sexs her act up a bit. Nothing in the slightest bit chauvinistic here, nope.

So I guess Nicola won’t be posing for the lads’ mags anytime soon. Pity, because she looks fit as a fiddle when we meet at Edinburgh’s plush Sheraton Hotel.

The classical musician is wearing skinny jeans which show off her long legs. She’s also busty with a washboard flat tummy, tottering around 5ft 10in in her Dune platform wedges.

Frankly, you get the feeling that Nicola Bendetti would have been better treated by one of the lads' mags. Sure, they would have leered at her, asked her to get her kit off and posed exactly the same questions, but for the most part they don't insult their interviewees:

But Nicola doesn’t always take the bonniest photo — she’s beaky in pics sometimes, which is weird because in the flesh she’s an absolute knock-out.

Class, pure class. One suspects that Matt didn't mention to Nicola at the time that he feared he had been sent to interrogate a pelican, so it's natural he let his relief out in the piece itself. And what relief!

Nicola says: “It’s eight years since I won Young Musician of the Year. In the next eight years I’d hope to be a better violinist and I’d like to have started a family. I’ll be in my early 30s so I would probably like a baby or two by then.”

Better get busy making sweet, sweet music, Leonard. Lucky boy...


With the cliche quotient duly filled, Matt no doubt made his excuses and left. Whether there was a mess to be cleared up once Matt had returned to base, perhaps the cleaners at the Scottish Sun's offices can be persuaded to get in touch.

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8/28/2012 05:07:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 

Coincidences and conspiracies.

Is it ever a good idea to sue your employer? Of course, when Andy Gray went to the high court last week in an effort to force Glenn "Trigger" Mulcaire to name which News of the World journalists had allegedly instructed him to target his mobile phone, he wasn't technically suing BSkyB directly; as any fule no, News International has only a 39% share in Sky, albeit one it wishes to turn very shortly into a full 100% stake.

It does however seem to be a strange coincidence that in the same week Gray's lawyers sought the identities of their client's former pursuers that he should so suddenly be ratted out, apparently by the same people that must have put up with similar outbursts to the one directed towards Sian Massey, the unfortunate young female referee caught in the middle of the understandable furore surrounding Gray and Richard Keys' comically clichéd views on women not being able to understand the offside law. After all, it's one thing for your antiquated and expletive strewn musings on football going mad to be leaked to the Mail on Sunday, which would be quite conceivable for an underling at Sky to do under their own volition, it's another for your own broadcaster to then add fuel to the fire by releasing an earlier exchange with a different reporter containing much the same outpourings of disbelief at a member of the opposite sex being allowed to officiate what has always been and will hopefully always remain a Man's Game.

There are, it must be said, some discrepancies to be dealt with before it can even begin to be proved that Gray has been the victim of believing he could take on his ultimate employer and still remain in a job. It could just be that Sky had finally tired of Gray's boorishness and saw an opportunity once the original leak had been made to the MoS to get rid of him. Neither was it clear that Gray could stay in his job at all, with many instantly comparing his and Keys' exchanges to the infamous racist remark which did for Ron Atkinson back in 2004. There does though seem to have been some fairly major stabbing in the back involved: the video which resulted in Gray's sacking was posted anonymously on YouTube and removed almost as quickly before being reposted by those who downloaded it while it was up, and a new video of Keys engaging in banter with Jamie Redknapp has gone up in exactly the same fashion. It also seems rather remiss, considering the warning was made as regards Gray's future behaviour for him to then be sacked over another unfunny, sexist exchange which took place at the beginning of December.

It could just as much be that with Rupert Murdoch himself in the country and with Sky trying desperately to keep under the radar while Jeremy Hunt takes his time over the decision on whether or not to refer the takeover bid to the competition commission that Gray's sacking was inevitable, removing any further embarrassment to the broadcaster, or any additional stick to beat the company with. The Mail itself points out that Gray obviously wasn't off limits for other parts of the Murdoch empire if he is now seeking to find out who authorised the alleged hacking of his phone, as well as bringing attention to stories in the Sun about him four years ago. It's doubly mysterious then that Monday's Sun contained no mention whatsoever of Gray and Keys' troubles - only today did the paper splash on it, albeit in the form of a photograph stolen from Massey's MySpace profile, although perhaps as the social networking site is wholly owned by News International they treated as if it was already their intellectual property. The paper often remains silent about the travails of employees on sister publications and broadcasters - perhaps the OK was only given to go with it yesterday as Gray's fate was being sealed, or then again, it had simply become too big a story to ignore.

Regardless of the internal politics and machinations, Gray's sacking ought to be just the beginning of a wider clear out of the supposed punditry talent not just on Sky but also the BBC. Match of the Day, once a relative joy to watch on a Saturday night has become a tired wasteland of pomposity and incompetence, Alan Hansen having long ago become a parody of himself, his relevance and connection to the modern game being just as questionable as Gray's. While Gray and Keys were criticised for their glibness and insular regard for the English game, questioning whether Lionel Messi could deal with Stoke City's tactics on a cold night, Hansen displayed much the same triteness when he commented tonight at half-time on the Arsenal Ipswich game that "continentals", as much as they bring to the game, also brought diving along with them, as if cheating and underhand tactics had only properly permeated the game once foreign chaps had infiltrated the leagues. Alan Shearer meanwhile seems to be inflicted on the nation simply to make Hansen and Gary Lineker look better by comparison, his banal, obvious insights on the game constantly refrained by the "brilliant", "incredible" or "awesome" play he's asked to comment upon. There's hardly a shortage of decent football analysers out there, as the briefest trawl of any of the former broadsheets' sports pages will attest, it's the getting out of the silly constraint that seems to have grown up that new presenters and commentators must have played the game, even if it means putting on air numerous ex-pros that can barely string two coherent sentences together, Chris "pelanty" Waddle being a case in point. In that sense we could yet come to cheer Gray being put out of his misery.

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1/25/2011 10:45:00 pm | |

Thursday, March 29, 2007 

The world was a mess but at least her hair was covered.

If there is one thing the British media can't be accused of, it's being predictable. You'd think that the fact that the 15 sailors being paraded on television is a potential breach of the Geneva convention would be enough, along with the fact that Faye Turney, who was predictably picked on, was given an obviously false statement to read, while a letter containing strange turns of phrase was presented that was intended to further cause humiliation and worry to her family. No, apparently the biggest insult is that she was "forced" to wear a headscarf:




There's this reactionary, ridiculous pile of crap from the Sun as well:

Then there is the personal degradation of making Faye wear a headscarf. As a woman excelling in a man’s world, she will be furious to have been belittled.

Oh, the inhumanity!

All of which only underlines the complete ignorance of Iran in general. All post-pubescent women, including foreigners in Iran are required, or if you prefer, forced, to wear the hijab, hence why female journalists wear headscarves in their reports. It was unlikely those holding Turney were going to make an exception for her, especially when the footage was broadcast on one of the most conservative satellite stations. If anything Turney actually got off lightly - her head-covering was loose, something that Ahmadinejad has tried to crackdown on.

The Scum's Tom Newton Dunn continues:

But worst of all, they have exploited the terror of Faye’s daughter Molly and her mum’s deep feelings for her.

Which the Sun clearly cannot be accused of doing themselves. For the simple reason that she's a woman, Turney has been the one sailor who's been focused on. The Sun has printed details about her family and her nickname, emphasising that she's a mother with a young daughter. Her family had asked the media to kindly stick their mock concern where the sun doesn't shine, which only encouraged them to dig even deeper. Anne Perkins develops this further. Who can blame the Iranians for doing the exact same thing when the tabloid media in this country is only too happy to play with emotions in such a way?

Parading captured troops in public is a war crime. Britain would never do it.

No, our brave boys would never do something so dastardly. They'd close ranks and suffer collective amnesia instead.

We could additionally argue all day and all night about whether the sailors were in Iraqi or Iranian waters. It doesn't matter. Even if a breach had taken place, the issue could have been easily resolved without the Iranians taking the sailors captive. The manner of their capture suggests that this was planned in advance, either as a response to the looming tightening of sanctions over Iran's nuclear program or to try to use them as a bargaining chip to free the five Iranians seized by the Americans in Irbil.

The criticism on the Daily Mail's front page is similarly disingenuous. Just what else do they suggest should be done? The diplomatic avenue is the only avenue, even when everyone's favourite gung-ho writer of shitty espionage fiction suggests that the appearance of the sailors helps because it gives "our troops clues where they are", as if we're going to storm a raid without the Iranians noticing the infringing of their airspace. As the Guardian leader argues, this whole incident has only helped to show how difficult it is to trust Tehran. They now have to find a way to free the soldiers without losing further face, and at the moment seem to be floundering, making excuses for not releasing Turney as promised. Tehran is of course not only playing for the international community, but for its own population, who for the moment due to the extended Iranian new year holiday are reported to be largely ignorant of the current situation. The liberal opposition in Iran can only be strengthened by the eventual release of the hostages, showing the revolutionary guard, closely aligned to the hard-line taken by Ahmadinejad, as weak. This might be one of the few pluses to come out of a regrettable and thoroughly avoidable crisis.

P.S. The Sun continues to reprint the lies of Ian Huntley today, without bothering to mention that Carr's evidence at the trial makes clear that she did not know that Huntley was responsible for the murders until he himself gave his side of the story. His entire "confession" tape is tainted by the fact that he still refuses to own up to how he murdered the two girls in cold blood -- he repeats his wholly unbelievable and laughable story that he gave in court, that one of the girls died after falling in the bath, while he unintentionally smothered the other by accident, trying to keep her quiet. The Sun's behaviour in bringing all this back up purely in an attempt to smear Carr is indefensible - it would rather believe and print the lies of a murderer than accept that Carr's acquittal was sound.

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3/29/2007 07:55:00 pm | |

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