Anthropax's Old Blog

A pet peeve of mine is the fine British Newspaper, The Daily Mail. The paper is aimed at (and read by) asperational lower-middle and middle-middle class people in Britain, who, although conservative, are too hard of understanding to read the more intelligent right-wing newspaper, The Telegraph. The newspaper was first published in 1896, and was popular for its use of simplified news stories and large number of pictures. During the 1930's, the paper supported Oswald Mosely and the British Union of Facists, including the infamous article Hurrah for the Blackshirts. In 1939, Lord Rothermere wrote to Hitler, saying "My Dear Fuhrer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country". The Daily Mail (also known as 'The Daily Hate') is fervently anti-asylum seekers, althought this is following historical dislike of refugees, notably Jewish people fleeing Russia during the pogroms, and also fleeing Nazi Germany. Today, The Daily Mail tends to rely upon a mixture of various articles,almostt all with large colour photographs. These range from discussions of a celebrity's dress, praising that celebrity,criticizingg that celebrity, psuedoscience (such as astrology, and discussions on Atlantis and Alien abduction), full-pagespreadss lamenting the loss of the family eating together, discussions on last nights TV and pages of adverts for cruises and property on the Costa del Sol. Although the newspaper prints a 'femail' section for female readers (note clever play on words), it is against women working. It's vilification of Asylum seekers promotes hatred of people that we should feel pity for. All in all, it seems to be read by the sort of person, who, despite living in a mock-Tudor house, and being very new money, pretends to his friends at boarding school that he is a member of the landed gentry, just because he has a small field at the back of his/her house. This hypothetical reader would perhaps have taken up shooting in order to present themselves as upper-middle class, but still uses the term 'toilet', and says 'serviette' for napkin, and 'pardon' instead of 'sorry', or 'excuse me', in order to sound more gentlemenly, or ladylike.