I read The Sun.
There, I said it.
Before the more discerning (snobbish) reader closes the blog and vows never to read my musings again, bear with me… I mean, of course, it’s not my primary source of news, but I often describe it as the tabloid pudding after my broadsheet main course.
The entertaining thing for me is to see how The Sun will take a story, twist it in a way that it becomes an effective bait for the uneducated, then you can sit back and imagine the ‘HELL IN A HANDCART’ response it’s likely to get from some. It’s sort of unpleasant, but in a nice way – not nasty like The Daily Mail. Russell Brand got it spot on.
It’s evidenced perfectly with this story. A piece of Police advice mentions that pubs may wish to discourage the wearing of Football shirts in order to prevent its clientèle from engaging in violence. It’s misplaced concern at worst, yet The Sun puts its own special spin on the story to engage wind-up mode… “ENGLAND shirts could be BANNED at pubs” screams the story’s top line, selected words capitalised to enhance its anti-PC tone.
Next comes the quote from the victim (attributed to nobody because, let’s face it, the journalist has made it up) which increases the sense of outrage and injustice: ‘But one patriotic fan said yesterday: “We often hear of a loss of pride in Britain, now cops want to ban the England shirt. It’s like saying anyone who wears one is a yob.”‘
So, simple Police guidance has now been twisted into the boys in blue aiming to BAN the England shirt! It cranks up. We can imagine the level of indignation the typical moron is currently feeling… only, in these days of social media, we don’t just imagine their reaction. And thus begins an online movement fuelled by the most retarded game of Chinese Whispers of all time.
Before we know it, despite The Sun’s story carrying no suggestion that the Police advisory comes as a result of protestations from those of other nationalities and creeds, the cries of outrage reach these frankly desperate proportions:
(Click image for full size)
Needless to say, the poster of that particular garbage is no longer my Facebook friend.
Tom Parker. 