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Daily Mail Article o' the Day: A Headsick and Rage Spin-Off

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

04:48 / 27.09.07

It occurred to me that I post to the Headsick and Rage thread every day that I look at the Daily Mail.

Today's article is slightly more 'haha' than 'argh!' An author of diet books moans that people that have done her diets in the past are now fat and happy. Damn them!

Last month, as I was driving through Gloucestershire, I decided on an impulse to call one of my favourite - and most successful - slimmers. Eight years ago, Caroline won a national slimming award for a truly remarkable transformation. Through sheer determination and unhappiness, she lost 111/2st, turning from a slovenly fat woman to a lithe and attractive blonde. ...

"I've changed a bit," she said brightly and as I drove down the leafy, tree-lined road to her house, I reflected warmly on the positive changes that Caroline's new body and confidence had no doubt brought her. Caroline opened the door - and for a few horrible seconds I thought I had come to the wrong house. Then I realised with a jolt that the bloated creature in front of me was the same slim, happy and confident girl who had looked such a knockout just a few years before. She looked truly awful, dressed in mansized tracksuit bottoms (which I am sure belonged to her boyfriend) and a great big floppy jumper which failed to conceal her sagging breasts and stomach... As we chatted over tea, she told me that she had found a new partner who 'doesn't mind the way I look'... At 34, Caroline had become yet another of my failures.

06:44 / 27.09.07

Feminism's rape fallacy.

A particularly nasty piece of Daily Mail dickhead's advocacy with a rank comment section, that somehow ended up on The Guardian's website. Must be a mistake or something.

To suggest any comparable behaviour in the field of rape is considered outrageous. Yet, why shouldn't women be encouraged to think twice before visiting footballers' hotel rooms late at night? Why shouldn't they be advised that to get themselves into a drunken stupor in the company of a frisky male could carry risks? Whatever the polite classes may feel, a large proportion of the population continues to see sense in such admonitions.

Or something.

Ex

07:01 / 27.09.07

Wow, I'm a 'class' now. Who knew 'not being an enormous tool' was a 'class' thing.

09:20 / 27.09.07

frisky? WTF?

Closed for Business Time

09:21 / 27.09.07

At least the 5 most recommmended comments all (except maybe for the last by "sarka") take him and presumably the rest of the commenters to task for their despicable logic and misogynist ranting. Jeeeeeeeebus.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

09:53 / 27.09.07

Geez. I know I gave up reading comment is free for a reason. It always seems to provoke a large dose of rage, and intense feelings of respect combined with pity for those brave souls with the patience to get on there and argue for sanity.

10:26 / 27.09.07

frisky? WTF?

Oh, you know Quantum...like a harmless puppy!

Pffft!

Closed for Business Time

10:31 / 27.09.07

What really pisses me off about the whole of CiF and other similar media "innovations" is that you'll rarely if ever see the author of a piece engage with the comments people post, least of all to defend themselves. So much for interactive media and public engagement in media production.

Janean Patience

10:37 / 27.09.07

They're paid to produce the original piece and, I imagine, not paid for anything after. Perhaps they don't believe that comment is free and as professionals they'd rather get money for it.

Closed for Business Time

10:47 / 27.09.07

That sounds likely. And sad.

10:47 / 27.09.07

Perhaps they don't believe that comment is free and as professionals they'd rather get money for it.

Let's calculate the sum owed to Barbelithlers. Let's get paid.

Janean Patience

11:00 / 27.09.07

If your employer said, "Hey, I've got a great new way for you to enhance our online content and you won't be paid for it," would you be keen to take part? I know a couple of journalists who've been told they're now writing blogs on top of their normal duties for no extra cash. When you're paid for your words, you value them.

Though Charlie Brooker once added a comment to point out he hadn't called Doom the first shoot-'em-up. A point of pride.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

11:07 / 27.09.07

My issue I think would be more with the Guardian paying someone to write the sort of nonsense which started that discussion in the first place. And I really can't imagine the resulting thread would be any more pleasant if the journalist in question hung around to respond.

Closed for Business Time

11:09 / 27.09.07

I was referring more to the fact that media owners won't pay writers to engage. But even so, I think they could at least acknowledge the debate by participating in it at some stage, paid or not. Wouldn't have to be much - this bloke, all he'd have to say is "I'S WRONG! I APOLOGISE! I'LL SHUT UP FROM NOW ON!". Would take him all of 30 seconds, about the time he'd spend scratching his balls while he was writing that piece of offensive shit.

Mysterious Transfer Student

12:19 / 27.09.07

Further to the CiF wonderment, please to enjoy the comments following this piece today about endemic attacks on Pakistani taxi drivers in Worcester, a positive bingo card of BNP-apologist drivel.

(1) White drivers have it just as bad!
(2) They don't make any effort to integrate/refuse to pick up white passengers/won't shine your shoes and call you sir!
(3) Parts of Area X are no-go areas for whites!
(4) It's still better than living in Lahore!
(5) My anecdotal evidence is better than yours!
(5a) These statistics are misleading!

Shall we modify the thread summary to include CiF, since it is such lush, fertile terrain for headsick?

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

12:41 / 27.09.07

The thread seens to have gone that way doesn't it? With regards to the thread starters responsibility or not to contribute beyond what they've been paid for, I've been thinking that if someone has written a decent, well thought out piece, then really they've done their job and it's fine if they don't want to contribute when that essentially constitutes working for free. But on the other hand, if all one has really done is string together a load of mysogynist, blame the victim cliches, guaranteed to make any sane person angry, then really if one doesn't hang around and contribute more all one can really say is that one has managed to get a job as a professional troll. Which I suppose some might regard as nice work if they can get it.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

12:55 / 27.09.07

I think the problem then lies with the editors, who decide that the stringing-together of misogynist and moronic cliches is a decent well-thought-out piece that deserves to be paid for.

The writers are lazy idiots, true, but the people who give the assignments, approve what is printed/posted and pay the writers should be given a proportional amount of wrath. There's no shortage of assholes out there, and if somebody manages to berate Columnist X into becoming a better person, the jerkwad editor will merely turn to Columnist Y.

So perhaps in terms of choosing battles, convincing the management that the person in charge of CiF needs to be sacked may be better than trying to refute a specific column.

Mind you, if the CiF is fuelling great outrage and sprawling pages of flamewars, that = pageviews = cash for the paper, so maybe rampant jackassery is exactly what management views as good.

13:36 / 27.09.07

Yep. Sad, but true. "Controversy" pays.

14:21 / 27.09.07

They're paid to produce the original piece and, I imagine, not paid for anything after. Perhaps they don't believe that comment is free and as professionals they'd rather get money for it.

I would have thought any bright journalist at the level of writing comment pieces for the Guardian would be best off considering themselves a one-man brand - if you're looking for the big payout it's all about establishing your own little personality cult. Responding to bloggy newspaper setups like the Guardian's is cheap, quick exposure, which, as long as you're not making a proper bellend of yourself, could quickly lead to your own regular column, newsnight, question time, the holy grail etc. Not responding to well thought-out criticism just makes you look stupid and cowardly.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:04 / 27.09.07

Comment is Free functions on a popularity payment model, I believe - if your entry is selected as a pick of the day/week, you get paid. As such, theoretically, answering the comments _may_ increase the likelihood of monetary reward, but it probably isn't a safe enough bet to make it a financial plan - David Batty, I believe, answered some comments, but didn't exactly cover himself in glory while doing so. I've certainly seen the odd football writer accetping correection or debating a point.

In general, however, there is a recognition, I imagine, that you don't piss away your good ideas on CiF if you can palce them anywhere else, and that if you do you can expect a lot of insane, drooling bumgunge from halfwits. With that in mind, returning as a dog to its vomit to one's Comment is Free post is probably not a popular way to spend one's afternoon - cruelly asserting as it does that your audience does not admire you and is not made up of discerning, intelligent aesthetes - it's a crowd of idiots who think you're a wanker.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

04:27 / 28.09.07

What if women had invented more stuff? Well, then hilarity would ensue of course!

05:52 / 28.09.07

'Hypatia's heritage' by Margaret Alic is a good starter on earlier generations of women inventors - summary, and 'Women of ideas' by Dale Spender is a bumper tome of all kinds of pre-20th century achievements of women if you can get hold of a copy. Spender's book also provides an excellent account and examples of the ways in which women's work however important to society has in many fields been excluded from 'canon' and hence lost to the subsequent generation, in previous centuries.

07:47 / 28.09.07

Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Coco Chanel...

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:55 / 28.09.07

Actually, on this very day in 1865, Elizabeth Garrett became the first qualified female doctor licensed to practice in Britain, the Society of Apthecaries having failed specifically to exclude women from taking its examinations - a loophole it closed immediately afterwards, of course.

09:16 / 28.09.07

Was she an inventor too?

09:47 / 28.09.07

My post above might need a bit of explanation: I thought I would mention those books because I thought until I went to university and encountered those books and others that there really hadn't been inventors who were women in previous centuries.

Those works helped me understand that there have always been women doing intellectual labour and inventing and making major contributions to culture, but that the systematic devaluing of women's contributions had erased them from the general historical record. Perhaps other people on this board had a more effective education from childhood, and such references are redundant: it was several years ago now that I did my undergrad degree.

Obviously the writers of the article linked to by Our Lady above didn't have a better education.

On another point, who is it who is deciding to publish and pay for these articles that reinforce unhelpful stereotypes and horrible gender norms? Anyone know what's going on in their minds? What are they intending, do you think?

10:04 / 28.09.07

It looks to me like a standard tabloid tactic of taking entries from a B3ta or Something Awful competition and slapping them into an article uncredited.So it's sexist and lazy. A woman would have made more effort because a recent study revealed that they use the north-western part of their brain (the Rhinocaucus) more often, the part that controls how much work and research you put into a newspaper article.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:04 / 28.09.07

She was an innovator within the system of medical science, specifically, Quants, much as Florence Nightingale was in the application of statistical analysis to mortality tracking or Chanel was to the little black dress - she was instrumental in the opening of the medical, as opposed to nursing, fields becoming available for study. Also Britain's first female mayor, for that matter. Which I think tallies with Plutology's:

Those works helped me understand that there have always been women doing intellectual labour and inventing and making major contributions to culture, but that the systematic devaluing of women's contributions had erased them from the general historical record.

Garrett's case is interesting, specifically, because she was botha challenger and an unwilling agent of exclusion - she tended to join entities which had not at foundation imagined that they would need to exclude women, and who after her joining took steps to do so - but her influence was ultimately to make it obvious that these closures were being done from privilege and spite rather than to protect the public, and they were the sooner dismantled for her actions, I believe.

13:28 / 28.09.07

Isn't human history full of white-male inventors, scientists, artists and writers purely because it wasn't until recently that females began attending school or be expected to study rather than simply produce children? IIRC there's a cracking book by Virginia Woolf on the subject of Shakespeare having an equally talented sister.

14:07 / 28.09.07

No - my point above is that despite all the disadvantages, white women and women of colour have been inventors, innovators and intellectuals throughout human history. It's their disappearance from the record kept through formal schooling that accounts for this idea that they did not exist in previous centuries.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:11 / 28.09.07

It's a section of "A Room of One's Own", I think, but yes. It has been historically difficult for women to get access to education, status, free time, being listened to, independence, wealth and all the other things that tend to make it easier to develop and to become known for inventions, or indeed for many other achievements which were for a long time the jealously guarded preserve of European manhood. Those who have persisted - and, as apt plutology says, sniffing around in history reveals a number of souls who have successfully swum uphill, although of course world-changing innovations in unglamorous areas are less likely to be feted than exciting ones - have often had to strive harder and make considerable sacrifices to do so - not least Hypatia, who by the common account was subjected to mob violence and then murdered.

17:59 / 03.10.07

Yet, why shouldn't women be encouraged to think twice before visiting footballers' hotel rooms late at night? Why shouldn't they be advised that to get themselves into a drunken stupor in the company of a frisky male could carry risks?

Can someone please explain to me what is wrong with the suggestions in this paragraph? (I refer to this paragraph only, and not the rest of the article, and nor to the comments after it.)

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

18:15 / 03.10.07

Yet, why shouldn't women be encouraged to think twice before visiting footballers' hotel rooms late at night? Why shouldn't they be advised that to get themselves into a drunken stupor in the company of a frisky male could carry risks?

Can someone please explain to me what is wrong with the suggestions in this paragraph? (I refer to this paragraph only, and not the rest of the article, and nor to the comments after it.)

Assuming you're not just trolling for the sheer joy of it:

1. Women should be able to visit whoever the hell they want, wherever the hell they want, 24 hours a day. Telling them they should "think twice first" is assigning blame to a victim.
A quick corollary: (a) terrorists exist. (b) terrorists sometimes blow up planes. (c) people who get blown up by terrorists on planes "should have thought twice" before flying. Does that make any sense?

2. Rape isn't "frisky."

3. Women should be able to drink whatever the hell they want, wherever the hell they want, in the company of whoever the hell they want, 24 hours a day with no "I told you so" for anything but consequent eventual liver damage.

A quick corollary: (a) space rocks exist. (b) space rocks sometimes fall to earth. (c) these falling space rocks blow shit up. (d) anyone building a house "should be advised" that a space rock might blow their house up one day, and if one does they deserve no sympathy at all. Does that make any sense?

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:25 / 03.10.07

Geez, I sorta hope someone who'll field this better than me is already typing out a response right now, but well it's all about how society (by which I mean the male dominated society basically dominated by shitheads) looks differently at men and women isn't it? There's always some jerk, usually male who's ready to shout about how women are prone to behaving in dreadfully ways and how basically they contributed to their own misfortune by being female and not being home dressed from head to toe, without an inch of flesh showing by 1900hrs isn't there?

On the other hand if I as a male go out and get stinking drunk and separated from my friends, and then get badly beaten and mugged on the way home by some random guys I got talking to on a street corner at 3am, well nobody shouts at me that it's more or less my fault, do they? Anyone should be able to get drunk if they want to do so without expecting some bastard to take advantage of their state and abuse them in any way, regardless of gender and the exact nature of the abuse. To argue that women should have more of a responsibility no to act in a manner which might be somewhat foolish but is usually bloody good fun, and that if they do and something bad happen well, it might be kinda their own fault is just bollocks really.

And yet somehow as soon as we're talking about women getting sexually abused these morons seem to come crawling out of the woodwork to tell them how silly they've been. It's basically despicable.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:46 / 03.10.07

On reflection, I think I should qualify my use of the word foolish here in case it sounds judgemental- it's not intended to be in any way. In my estimation we all do things which are technically foolish, most of us every day, and I reckon life would be pretty bloody dull if we didn't.

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