Am I being a sanctimonious nobber re: Daily Mail?

[Undertone]

OK - so I know I shouldn't have but I read Liz Jones' latest piece of trash in the Mail on Sunday website today. I won't link, but to paraphrase: she feels entitled to use the emergency services (a&e, fire brigade) for trivial reasons (removing an earring, a stuck kitten) because she 'pays her taxes' and goes private for most things anyway. The piece ended on a note saying she admired Stephen Fry's bravery - NOT for talking about his suicide attempt but for the fact that he tried to do it with pills. I know - WTF?!

Anyway - she's a sadly limited woman used as a troll to drive DM traffic. But something in me snapped today.

Casual acceptance of the bigoted, chauvinistic, entitled and sometimes downright dangerous opinions she and other DM columnists get published is toxic. Yes there are lots of people that protest, and the DM editors rub their scaly hands with glee at all the attention it gains them, but outside of the Twitter and outraged lefty bubble there are millions of people who read it and go "oh - that's a published opinion. Must be legit." And by tiny increments flawed, lazy and insular patterns of thought become ever more embedded.

Anyway - (I AM getting to the point) I don't have many friends on Facebook - quite a tight group really - and I posted a status about how I'd had it with the DM and the next time somebody admitted to reading it I would challenge them about it (meaning, really, someone in a pub or at work).

So who should bloody pop up and comment on this status but one of my good female friends (she and I are going on hol together in a few weeks, just the 2 of us) saying "I am a DM reader and proud - sorry!"

A bit of context - I love her to pieces and I have known her for about 13 years now. She and I have clashed on issues before (she doesn't believe in feminism, and thinks it is unfair to men - I have had to start avoiding the subject with her now because she doesn't accept my beliefs and won't let it go when an argument has run its course).

I want to challenge her about it, I want to explain to her why (from an outsider POV as a non-DM reader) I find it such an offensive newspaper and feel so strongly about it. It would be best if I just picked up the phone to her now and had a discussion - but is that weird? I mean - posting a flippant FB remark and then someone ringing you up to argue about it? Should I send her an email?

Crucially I want to explain myself without insulting her so that the holiday isn't awkward. But it was a surprise that she reads the DM and I do unfortunately think a bit less of her. This is what I am worried will come out in a spat.

Help - AIBU to challenge her? Maybe she missed all the terrible stories I've seen Can you help me with some links to send her?

Why on earth are you going on holiday with a woman who 'doesn't believe in feminism'? Why waste your life interacting with anyone so totally fucking thick?

She mocks your views - why on earth are you accommodating hers? Tell her to fuck off and then find yourself some more intelligent friends who don't post drivel on Facebook OR read the Daily Mail.

Fair enough undertone, but the 'professionallly offended' are so last year ( & as dull as ditch water )

Yettish - she's wonderful, intelligent (v good degree and v witty) and this is just something we disagree on. Like someone said earlier maybe she just hasn't seen the light yet. Not my job to nag her.

Lol @ trying to discredit the daily mail by quoting the guardian, its just as idiotic but from the other side of the fence. Quite frankly anybody who gets their opinions from a political propagandist rag is a bit of an eejit, but going round saying you will 'challenge' people for daring to express their freedom by reading their crap rag of choice does make you a sanctimonious knobber.

I think YABU for trying to influence what others read. I like the Mail Online app. I read it to pass the time and I don't over think it. I know it's nonsense, she probably does too.

I'm afraid I would find a FB status like yours goady and yes, sanctimonious, and I wonder why you seem so intent on arguing with this woman. Calling/emailing her to challenge her views is a little over the top. Let it go.

indeed loSiento

LoSiento - did you read the Guardian article? Didn't you have an issue with the Daily Mail using a Nazi slogan from the concentration camps? If not - then... well there's not much I can say there, really. It just so happened that the story was reported in the Guardian. Unless you are disputing the facts, there is no reason to think the Guardian brand had any bearing on interpreting that story. Jeez. FWIW I don't really read the Guardian, either.

FantasticMax - well you use the app and through that are driving advertising revenue for the DM, and they use that revenue to fund the salaries of the journalists that write their most extreme views. If you're cool with that, then I guess you're cool with how these people think, and are happy to financially support their careers. You cannot selectively support some bits of the DM and not others.

I guess it's down to whether you would challenge a racist or a sexual attacker on a bus or whether you would put your headphones in and ignore them. I do not feel comfortable letting this stuff be treated with compacency.

I've never 'met' anyone who comments to Mail Online
I do

I like to know my enemy
aha! whilst I was not going to go as far as enemy, I was going for " I like to know what I am up against" but then I realised that I am totally unashamed of reading it because I do know who I am (so far removed from any stereotype of a daily mail reader you can imagine -pretty sure I am not the only one either- I defy you to describe me in 4 words and be right )

Further more, they use that revenue to fund the salaries of the journalists that write their most extreme views. If you're cool with that, then I guess you're cool with how these people think, and are happy to financially support their careers. You cannot selectively support some bits of the DM and not others. I do not necessarily support anything I read in the DM, as others and myself have said before, reading it does not mean you

1. believe every word
2. share the journalists opinion

but there is one thing I support though, It is freedom of expression, Therefore, we will have to agree to disagree

The advertisers don't give a shit if you agree warmly or shout at the screen in fury, so long as you visit the page and see the adverts.

So the editor will commission hugely contentious/controversial pieces so they will get lots of visits. Easy maths.

So a lot of us refuse to add to the hit count and therefore to the advertising revenue and therefore to the justification for printing.

I'd like to think nobody at the DM believes what they print: it isn't like they need to.

"Help - AIBU to challenge her?"

YABU. You don't seem to be able to get over the fact that other people disagree with your views and that they can still be nice people. Have you ever analysed why it is the second most popular newspaper in the country and why it is the favourite of the middle classes and why that causes you such a problem?

When she says
"I am a DM reader and proud - sorry!"
a sentiment with which millions would agree, have you ever thought that maybe she is right and you are wrong?

She doesn't dislike you because you don't read the Daily Mail.
She thinks that you are entitled to your views and that she is entitled to hers.

Ha, I couldn't help but notice upthread someone had commented that left-wingers' beliefs "smacked of Carthyism or Nazism.."

The Daily Mail actually praised the fledgling Nazi regime in 1933.

Daily Heil, more like.

I'm still laughing at Liz Jones being the enemy of the left - & there was me thinking it was the EDL.

HorryIsUpduffed , I just checked my mobile DM app and there no advertising whatsoever, just saying.

They will still use your access to give view counts to calculate advertising revenue.

Claig - just because millions of people read it doesn't make racism, homophobia or misogyny any more acceptable. If you think it does, then that proves exactly why I'm so wound up about this. If people use its popularity as 'proof' of the validity of its opinions, then people aren't thinking for themselves.

Defend your newspaper all you like. It won't change the content of what has been printed in it.

Navada - i have explained before this is not about left/right.

But the millions who read it don't do so because they think it is racist, homophobic and mysoginist. They read it because they think that on the whole it makes sense.

Your friend isn't a racist, homophobic mysoginist and nor are the other millions of readers.

Probably an arse backwards way of looking at things, and very simplistic but surely if millions of people think the same way and they form a majority then isn't that what the moral standard of the country is.

I am not saying it is right or that you shouldn't campaign if you think something is wrong, but there has to be a point where you have to live with the majority. (I think I have just contradicted my own beliefs here. Doh but I know where I am coming from)

'Millions of people think the same way...' now that is depressing. Time to watch the to cheer myself up.

Ninja squirrel. I don't necessarily agree with them lol

I just think that if one element of a publication you read is toxic like that, then you wouldn't want to associate with it at all? Otherwise it's being complicit.

I really don't want to be belligerent, but sometimes i get muddled and don't explain myself well, and hence all this toing and froing.

""I am a DM reader and proud - sorry!"
a sentiment with which millions would agree"

"surely if millions of people think the same way and they form a majority then isn't that what the moral standard of the country is."

Can I invoke Godwin's Law or has someone beaten me to it?

Just because millions believe something, (or are brainwashed into believing something) it doesn't make it right. Bigotry, racism and xenophobia - these are all peddled by the DM. If millions buy into that, are they automatically 'right' because they're the majority?

madre dio

come on!!!!! really

They don't see it as bigotry, racism and xenophobia. You do, but they don't. Maybe you are wrong and they are right.

Have you read Melanie Phillips's articles of how she changed her views in poitics over time? She used to be a left winger who wrote for the Observer and a very good one she was there too. Now she is even better.

YY losiento, indeed

claig Google some of their headlines. Or just read the paper for a week. It's pretty black and white.

A quick google threw up these lovely sexist gems. Do you really think I'm wrong and they're NOT sexist??

www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/daily-mail-headlines-women-ridiculous_n_2192332.html