Undertones
A natural level of homophobia
October 19, 2009 4 comments
Charlie Brooker has already done a brilliant job on the Jan Moir fiasco, in addition to which I would point out only a curious syntactical turd floating in Moir’s thick puddle of evil:
As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.
What Moir meant, presumably, is that Stephen Gately was a “gay rights champion”. What she wrote, however, was that she herself was a gay rights champion. (“As a gay rights champion, I…”) It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, isn’t it, readers?
It would be unfair, however, not to remark upon what Moir subsequently said in her own defence:
In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.
In this, I must leap gallantly to Jan Moir’s filthy right hand: she is of course completely right. Her article did not have homophobic and bigoted “undertones”; it was explicitly homophobic and bigoted. Indeed, quite in the manner of how, in her blood-flecked dribble, “the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see”, the inky ooze of her viscous gay-hating bile has seeped out for all to see in the pages of the Daily Mail.
Of course, this is an aberration for the Daily Mail only in that it normally seeks to keep its immanent homophobia and bigotry precisely at the level of nod-wink insinuations, or “undertones”. In the context of that newspaper, Moir’s journalistic crime is merely one of insufficient art.
That last excerpt of hers stood out to me in a different way, and suggested an analogy:
“In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated gathering of flames I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article had flash-paper for walls and was built on a foundation of gunpowder.”
Point being (and yes I realize not quite made*) is that an “internet campaign” can, on the one hand, comprise an army of operatives unleashed by a well-timed tweet from the undertone-scrutinizer Stephen Fry; it’s equally plausible, though, that this “internet campaign” more adequately resembles the kind of mob scene that would result from wandering into the Gately funeral, loudly musing on the seepage of the ooze of certain different and dangerous lifestyles.
*Lesson learned, with devastating results for my theory that I had plenty of time for a quick blog comment before the Zolpidem really started kicking in.
I see we are pretty much of one mind on this. I still think the Bulgarian angle is under-explored, though: if Moir hopes to escape the charge of homophobia, then her oozing bile could only have been, erm, stirred up by the dangerous, dark appetite of consorting with Bulgarians. Unless she’s going after clubbing, but that just seems too incredible.
I can’t work out whether it was Fry or Brooker who called their own personal army to arms, or whether their effort was orchestrated in any way whatsoever.
In any case I find it quite distressing that Moir can be so unapologetic. It makes it far worse that she sees herself a victim after pouring such an irresponsible cup of poison into the ears of the daft and impressionable Mail readership.
WELL ANYWAY, like any storm on the internet this has blown over in minutes. I only found out about it when 800 complaints had already been logged and so felt it would be too passe to write another one, despite experiencing genuine ervulsion at some of Moir’s statements. I suspect many more felt a similar way. When I watch comic relief i never feel like donating anything when they’ve already broken the world record for donations at nine pm. I never want to listen to a band that everyone already likes. People are like this, aren’t they?
I don’t suppose for a second that Moir was right about people not reading her article before complaining. It doesn’t take long to read, it’s been heavily quoted and there aren’t any difficult words in it. Also wherever you see her article referenced it some words appear in grey letters as a link. It happens in your articles too, Steven. I wish i knew how to do it, it’s very natty. The modern asterisk.
She must have been quite pissed off though, since a few years ago her article would have taken people’s dial-up too long to bother reading. So her surprise is understandable. Far more people read her article online than would have generally, and they weren’t the kind of people to let her words wash over them without raising any questions.
She ought to have been surprised at how many people really read her article, not how many didn’t really read it.
SP: ‘Of course, this is an aberration for the Daily Mail only in that it normally seeks to keep its immanent homophobia and bigotry precisely at the level of nod-wink insinuations, or “undertones”. In the context of that newspaper, Moir’s journalistic crime is merely one of insufficient art.’
Hence the artificial horror of Daily Mail readers at the swaggering hatred exhibited by Richard Littlejohn, whose bile is more suited to the semi-fascist Sun. Daily Mail readers like their bigotry with a bit more class and subtlety. Less grunting and more articulate. In short, Melanie Phillips.