As you know, I love Twitter. You get to follow just the people who interest and entertain you. Facebook is a shite site for people you’ve actually met, in my opinion. Just because I once did a course with you doesn’t mean I want to hear you bang on about little Johnny’s bowel movements. Screw little Johnny, and screw you. You were a boring offensive fuckwit then and nothing’s changed. Unless your Facebook status update currently reads ‘Goodbye cruel world’ I have no interest.
Well, that was an unexpected diversion. I only started out to say that I love Twitter. Moving swiftly on; (which I think is a split infinitive, sorry) the joy of Twitter is you can follow really clever and witty people. This makes for fun conversations. However, occasionally you stray over to the dark side.
The Sunday they launched the Sun On Sunday (SOS), was one such time. I won’t have anything to do with Murdoch or his evil empire. He embodies the corruption at the heart of politics to me. Vetting successive prime ministers (at his evil lair) before putting his media empire behind them. It was your Sun wot won it. Feck right off!
Lying and distorting every news story to his own Machiavellian ends. More annoyingly, people believing the disgusting lies they are spoon fed. The EU demanding straight bananas was a Sun story that sank into the collective subconscious before the issued a tiny little apology saying ‘oops, that was totally groundless lies.’ Does anyone remember the apology? I don’t. I read about it elsewhere. Big lie, spun and spun, tiny, un-noticed retraction.
Again with the digression. I was just saying I don’t like Murdoch, therefore would never buy his vile products. Papers, Sky, none of it. So when a freelance journalist I follow said he was getting some stick for buying the SOS I replied; ‘For shame.’
That was it.’For shame.’ then I went out to start on my allotment.
I came back and he’d replied ‘Seriously? Get to fuck’.
Ho ho. Challenge accepted.
Me ‘I think I touched a nerve there. Sun readers, huh?’
Him ‘I buy one copy to write about it and suddenly I’m a ‘Sun reader’? It touched a nerve because it’s culture war bollocks!’
There then followed about five hours of lively debate. By the end of which the lad was frothing at the mouth and apoplectic with rage. His followers got in on the act, a friend of mine jumped in and ripped him to shreds, he and his lot attacked her.
I ended up summarising my position by saying ‘Apparently buying the Sun, like kiddie porn, is OK if it’s only for “research”’.’ And ‘He’s gone off to punch some kittens in the face, but don’t worry it’s for research so it’s OK’.
By which I was showing by analogy that if something is too objectionable to own, calling it research doesn’t make owning it any less so. Given the limit of 140 characters per tweet, some ideas have to be brutally condensed.
That was possibly an analogy too far. But I enjoyed it. He did not. He blocked me (so I couldn’t tweet him, and he couldn’t see my tweets) then wrote the following. I laughed.
And Jesus came to just The Guardian readers: the Sun on Sunday and my enduring evil
I purchased a copy of the Sun on Sunday yesterday. I directly contributed to Rupert Murdoch’s army of evil robot assassins. From a tube in his volcano hideout, my €1 dropped into a vast treasure chest where he swims like Scrooge McDuck, cackling to himself while grimly masturbating over pictures of exploded Polly Toynbee heads. I am just another goon in his squad of solid grade-A bastards. I fund his emotional terrorism. I am Bin Laden in bad pyjamas.
Yes, horrified liberal readers of the blogosphere, clutch your lattes close to your chest and join me here in the shitsphere from within which I apologise for Murdoch over and over again, chanting his name like a mantra found within the Necronomicon. I am the Murdoch apologist. Stare at my grizzled visage with the fascination of a truck driver confused at how Keeley, 21 from Wandsworth is able to talk so knowledgeably about the balance of international trade. Soon Keeley will be in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet, explaining to him why Blockbusters and Blackbusters are quite different things.
I have written for The Sunday Times on a few occasions. I even wrote some things for the Money pages of The Times for a brief period when I toiled in the tedium mines at Pensions World magazine. To a certain sort of rabid, batshit mental, google-eyed Twitter trawler that makes me worse than Idi Amin playing football with the severed heads of puppies while throwing free child pornography to an audience of sweating nonces.
You think my analogies are over-the-top? One guy on Twitter yesterday actually compared me buying the Sun on Sunday to analyse what it was up to with kicking kittens or purchasing child p0rn for research. The point at which someone brings up child p0rn to make their points is the point at which they are blocked with such force that I hope I am able to physically throw them back from the keyboard.
Ed Miliband ensured that Labour peer Maurice Glasman withdrew his column from The Sun on Sunday. Why not? Who cares if Labour’s message has an outpost in the most popular newspaper in Britain? We’ll just hope that those millions just have a sudden attack of conscience and suddenly all subscribe to The Independent and buy themselves a Labour Party membership.
The phone hacking, the police corruption, the sheer unpleasantness of some of News International’s journalism is without question but the problem is a vast tranche of the population enjoy what The Sun produces and Leveson isn’t stopping that.
The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, stuck to his guns and his column appeared in the first edition of The Sun on Sunday (though not in Ireland where I was also spared the churning idiocy of Toby Young).
Numerous Christian groups and non-Christians alike lined up to criticise Sentamu. Because Jesus spoke only to those he agreed with politically. Is it not written that Jesus came only to The Guardian readers and damned Sun readers to the eternal pit? It isn’t? Well, this bible I bought from Alan Rusbridger is rubbish.
In the comments section I put ‘It sound like he has a valid point. Kitten puncher.’
Anyway, we’ve kissed and made up now. It was a fun couple of days though.
Buck.
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