Tabloid bullshit of the month award: October 2011

Finally, it turns up. Wobbling like a drunkard and with a face like like an angry basset hound, it's the 5cc tabliod bullshit of the month award for October 2011. And, er, me, who's had a stinking ear infection that buggered up my balance and made me sad and weak.  Sad and weak.  That's no mood to write a bullshit award in, so I never did.

I'm feeling a bit better now, despite the muffled hearing in one ear, so here it is, a bullshit award in a month positively awash with complete and utter rubbish.

FAILED ASYLUM SEEKER ALLOWED TO STAY BECAUSE...YOUR MUM!

One of the things that's difficult about writing about the tabloids (which I occasionally do now) is keeping up with the pretence that they're actually acting in good faith, and the 'mistakes' that turn up in articles are the result of laziness, poor judgement or incompetence; they're never, ever deliberate.  I fail miserably at that from time to time, as you may have noticed.

There's a good example of an *ahem* 'mistake' in yesterday's Mail. 'Failed asylum seeker who has dodged deportation for a decade told he can stay... because he goes to the GYM', it says, shouting the last word inexplicably. I might start trying that in real life. 'Good morning EVERYONE! How was your WEEKEND? Did you get up to anything NICE?'

Crime is the disease...the Daily Express is not the cure

Fury as a potential criminal arrested

A couple of posts ago, I wrote a smart-alecky series of jibes at the 'you can't even defend yourselves in your own home' tabloid right winger types who all seem to operate under the misconception that they'd be really, really badass and totally wouldn't noisily do a poo in their pyjamas and cry if anyone smashed their way into their house in the night.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award: September 2011

It's that time of the month again. No, not that time of the month, stop looking for werewolves.

It's time for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award. Yee-hah! Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!

It had been a slow month for most of September, until the government released a bunch of immigration stats that predictably got the tabloids in a lather. Tabloid immigration fiddling is so 'meh' by this point in the life of the bullshit awards though, so for the longest time the front runner was Jo Willey for her nonsense in the Express, suggested by a lovely reader.

Don't worry, she must be in the running at some point. I've read her column.

Then - hoo-boy! The Mail on Sunday and it's sister paper came a knockin' with a brand spanking new Winterval style myth to thrill us all with tales of the end of Western civilisation at the hands of evil Political Correctness Gone Mad, and with the BBC as the culprits!

Never mind Nicholas Cage, John Travolta and Keanu Reeves as vampires - what about this guy?

There's a bit of a meme going around the internet at the moment because some old photos and a painting have surfaced of people who look a little bit like some celebrities so they must be vampires or something.  Here they are:

Vampires? Via

Vampire? Via

The Mail joins the Brigade

Except, no it doesn't.

It's been a good week, this week, for the Mail forgetting itself and calling for the things it hates in its ridiculously ill thought out panics.

Earlier in the week, the papers were up in arms about the scandal of cage fighting children. Except the children involved were doing something far less scary than 'cage fighting'.  'Where was their headgear?' asked the knee-jerkers, without being aware that the kids were taking part in a bout where punching and kicking were disallowed, punishable by disqualification.*

Won't somebody think of the cage fighting children?

JUDO CHOP! Lyoto Machida executing
the sort of move that today's 'cage fighting
kids' weren't allowed to.

This morning, sitting with a barely surpressed scowl on the East London Line to work, I looked up from my phone and caught a flash of the Metro in the hands of the person sitting opposite me.  The headline yelled something about CAGE FIGHTING KIDS alongside a picture of two boys fighting in a cage.  "Meh," I thought, a split second after being shocked at the lack of gloves and headgear. "Bet they weren't allowed to hit each other and were just wrestling."