"In my article ['Yes, gays have often been the victims of prejudice. But they now risk becoming the new McCarthyites'], I expressed concern that attempting to bar a Christian GP from the government’s advisory council on drugs because of his views on homosexuality, bombarding the school curriculum with irrelevant gay references, and prosecuting Christian hoteliers for refusing to accommodate gay men in the same bedroom were examples of a frightening intolerance. "The response to this warning against an attempt by the gay lobby to silence dissent? An eruption of tweets on Twitter suggesting that I should be killed. Yes, really.
"Apologies if the hideous and obscene language shocks some readers, but examples of such tweets included: ‘Someone just kill Melanie Phillips please’; ‘your homophobic rant equals that which comes out of a dog’s rectum. Kill yourself you ****’; and ‘throw her in the Thames’.
"And emails to me included such epithets as ‘vile, poisonous, horrible old woman’, and ‘people like you should be silenced as you insight (sic) bigotry and fear. Go and suck a tail pipe, get cancer, GET RAN OVER BY A TRAIN. I hope your ******* house burns down’..."
The Daily Mail's attention-seeking nutter-in-chief, Melanie Phillips; 'The calls for me to be killed this week prove the bedrock values of our society are in grave danger'
Great stuff everyone - keep it up!
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I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I have had contact with journos who've worked on these types of papers in the past. I think they are pushing authors to write on controversial topics to 'pull' foreign readers - mostly from the right-wing in America. Look at the language used - very mid atlantic. Following on from the Jan Muir hate-fest, any marketing department worth it's salt would have pointed out the massive increase of awareness of the Mail in foreign markets, and any editor would be dumb not to insist on at least one bile filled missive every week or so. Richard Littlejohn can be relied upon to keep this humming along in the background, but now and then you need a high note. Dacre never defends himself, or puts him in a position where he has to - so as long as the attacked take umbrage, we're just paying his bonus. The Daily Mail is a superbly succesful product, and its reach is now huge - any ideas on how we try to ignore it? Incidently, M Phillips is no mad old bag - she believes none of this garbage - she's just paying the bills.
ReplyDeleteHi Julian, Sadly I think MP believes every word she writes and says - the most scary thing about her is that she seems to think that garbage, and believes she's come up with some grand all-encompassing ideology which expalins all.
ReplyDeleteA bit like Peter Hitchens...
EXPLAINS!!! Damn.
ReplyDelete