Fagburn: Attitude

Some cunt called Richard Smith has written a load of crap for Attitude.
What a wanker.

"Two years ago I started writing a blog - Fagburn.com - about how gay men are mis/represented in the media.
I started it partly because I find the subject fascinating - and thought maybe I should turn my obsession into something productive.
But Fagburn was also born out of anger - the way the press writes about gay men may have changed dramatically for the better in the last 20 years, but it's still haunted by the spectre of homophobia.
One thing that's really struck me is that the right-wing press have found themselves in this strange, new place; where they recognise they can't get away with the blatant homophobia they traded on in the past, as it alienates and appalls many readers - particularly women and young people. A similar place that David Cameron's Conservative party has found itself in, of course.
The outcry over the attack on Stephen Gately by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail - when hundreds of thousands of people, straight and gay, got mad as hell and said they weren't going to take it anymore - was a pivotal moment.
Many of the papers are now trying to appeal to two very different constituencies, pro and anti-gay, and can often read like two different newspapers.
The Daily Mail is the best/worst example of this duality. You’ll get Richard Littlejohn fuming away – again - about "the gays", but turn the page and there'll be a gushing report about the PA at G-A-Y last Saturday - usually written by Georgina Littlejohn, his daughter.
You couldn't make it up.
Much of this positive change is generational, but it also has to do with the "dumbing down" of the press. Celebrity coverage has increased massively in the last 20 years, and also tends to be fawning and uncritical - and there are a heck of a lot of gay celebs to fawn uncritically over these days. So the showbiz pages will just coo over Elton John's baby, or about what a cute couple Glee's Kurt and Blaine make.
Bless.
There are still some gay celebs who are pantomime villains, most notoriously Michael Barrymore (Boo! Hiss!) and Peter Mandelson; "Mandy" is far from a neutral nickname. Whether George Michael or Stephen Fry are described as "national treasures" or national disasters appears to be decided by weathervane.
Outing has faded away in recent years. Mainly because so many gay celebrities are out from the start - or because the public no longer gives a hoot when someone does come out. The only major exception has been Joe McElderry, who was subject to a constant barrage of snide innuendo in... The News of the World.
Politicians are a different kettle of cock. But the whispering campaigns against William Hague and Liam Fox began on the internet, and were ignored by the newspapers until it became too surreal to continue. Lib Dem minister David Laws and former BP boss, Lord Browne, weren't outed, but collapsed under the contradictions of their own closetry.
Homophobia is at its most unreconstructed when it comes from the columnists; the repeat offenders being batty Ann Widdecombe on the Express, and Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips, and that gay Uncle Tom, Andrew Pierce, in the Mail. But columnists are often employed to annoy; their success measured by how much hate mail they receive. Why else would anyone hire Julie Burchill?
Homophobia also regularly rears its hideous head on the news pages, most usually through the right-wing riffs of "political correctness", "anti-Christian discrimination" (!), and attacks on local (usually Labour) authorities, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the BBC - I really doubt if The Sun and The Mail would have got quite so agitated about the "gay bedroom scenes" in EastEnders and Torchwood if they'd been on Sky.
The Mail is also the master of manufacturing gay news through gross distortion and exaggeration. Stories such as the pre-watershed TV gay kiss ban, or aid being cut to anti-gay African countries, were corrosive fantasies of the Mail's fevered imagination.
Such fictions were regurgitated ad nauseum by other newspapers, unquestioned, unchallenged, unchecked. And, shamefully, also by some gay journalists.
I guess what I want to do with Fagburn is to encourage critical and sceptical reading of the media.
That and make jokes about cocks."

Can you believe anyone prints this toss?