Top rated comments

Not sure if I should be pleased or sad about having a 'top rated' comment on the Daily Mail site...

Two places to the top!
Three days left!

Matt

Dare to suggest torture is unjustifiable on the Daily Mail...

Imagine you were to believe that torture is always wrong. I wonder what Mail readers would think of that? Lets have a quick look at a clip of a comments section for this article:

Oh, they'll try and shout you down. Who'd guess?

Matt.

political compasses

For the sake of balance I also took this political compass test. It measures pragmatism as well as left-right...

Between Tony Benn and 'Red' Ken Livingstone apparently. Full results here if you care to look.

I'm not sure the Mail has turned me towards it's world view yet, still got four days to try!

No Sleep 'Til Brooklands: The Olivers/Mohammeds are coming!

As I've mentioned - Also been done here, slightly different numbers, but you know, depends what you count! Head over there, and check it out.

No Sleep 'Til Brooklands: The Olivers/Mohammeds are coming!: "Is it that time of year again already? Every year, a list of the most popular names given to newborn babies in England and Wales is publishe..."

Pervwatch courtesy of Daily Mail

Today I am going to focus first on the pervy stories that the Mail runs on a daily basis. I'll then have a quick look at anti-Muslim sentiments expressed in certain articles and finish with a cheeky look at the inclusion of anti-PC statements in an article about Inter-planetary space travel.

Perv Watch 2010:

First in our review of stuff from the Mail over the last couple of days, and following on from the pieces on both Miss Momsen and Sexygleegate is this interesting juxtaposition of paedo-story and titillating schoolgirl story:

It's the two stories so close together, it almost says "what a dirty paedo, but if schoolgirls insist on wearing skirts..." Although to be fair I didn't read too far in to it, you know what it's like after 27 days of reading only the Mail, you tend to get jaded.

Also Note the story about Jon Snow and his "Zimbabwe-born wife" (you know what those liberals are like - they marry foreign women. Probably to get her a visa.)

Next the lecherous writers turn their attention to the 'news' of some bloke out of a band's thirteen year old daughter.  I've taken a few screengrabs, I've probably directed too many links to the Mail recently.

Here we go:

First, she's wearing a "grown up dress" and has "endless long legs" and "looks more like a 16-year-old than a girl barely in to her teens". Nice, and certainly not ogling a child.

Next, "Ava looked stunning". Which isn't pervy at all. And...

Ooh, she's "as tall as her actress mother". Nice, Daily Mail, nice.

The more observant among you will have also noticed the sideline stories which include no fewer than five stories objectifying women. This leads us nicely to this story about why Western women convert to Islam in which the author asks:

 "How, I wondered, could women be drawn to a religion which I felt had kept me in such a lowly, submissive place? How could their experiences of Islam be so very different to mine?" 

You'd think that Mail readers would be keen to get involved with Islam when it's described in this way:


"I grew up in Germany in a not very religious Protestant family. I drank and I partied, but I realised that we need to behave well now so we have a good after-life. We are responsible for our own actions."


And the converts used to do all the things that the Mail 'hates':

"She says: ‘I would go out and get drunk with friends, wear tight and revealing clothing and date boys."


And...

"For some converts, Islam represents a celebration of old-fashioned family values.

‘Some are drawn to the sense of belonging and of community — values which have eroded in the West,’ says Haifaa Jawad, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, who has studied the white conversion phenomenon.

‘Many people, from all walks of life, mourn the loss in today’s society of traditional respect for the elderly and for women, for example. These are values which are enshrined in the Koran, which Muslims have to live by,’ adds Brice"

Community! respect for the elderly! Values! But perhaps I am ahead of myself...

"It is values like these which drew Camilla Leyland, 32, a yoga teacher who lives in Cornwall, to Islam. A single mother to daughter, Inaya, two, she converted in her mid-20s for ‘intellectual and feminist reasons’.

She explains: ‘I know people will be surprised to hear the words “feminism” and “Islam” in the same breath, but in fact, the teachings of the Koran give equality to women, and at the time the religion was born, the teachings went against the grain of a misogynistic society."

Ah! They're feminists, as well as Muslims! I'm not really sure where they were going with that casual bit of Islamophobia. And then we had this story, which I think is definitely untrue.

"Mohammed is now the most popular name for baby boys ahead of Jack and Harry". The article tells us that this is only true if you massage the figures and add all the different spellings of "Mohammed" together. 

That totals 7,549. Remember that. Next the "Top 10 other boys' names". Here the numbers (not included in the graphic) are, in order: 7364; 7090; 6143; 5536; 5526; 5520; 5409; 5247; 4544; 4444. The highest ranking 'Mohammed is no. 16 at 3300. 

The Mail's argument is that if you add the spellings of Mohammed together that totals more than any name in the 'top 10'. However with just a quick look at the statistics (you can find the ONS .xls file here) it can be seen that by adding together all the spellings of "Oliver" you reach a total of 8,280 by my calculations (731 more than combining all of the 'Mohammeds'). And 'Jack' in all it's spellings gives us 7275 babies - 7547 if you also include 'Jackson' or 7558 you also include 'Jacky'. 

You can prove anything with statistics, and, if you're the Daily Mail, it helps if you can prove something that holds up your Islam-hating viewpoint. I posted something to this effect on the Daily Mail website but their pre-moderated comments stopped that appearing. 

A final P.S to this - these statistics only cover England and Wales.

Lastly for today I give you this screenshot from a story about a discussion regarding a space mission to Mars (I think that the 'project' is merely a discussion between rich people at the moment).

Congratulations to the Mail for the shoe-horning in of anti-PC ideas into a theoretical discussion about Space flight, and extra points for getting in how great things were in the past as opposed to now. You know, before all this "'elf and safety" malarkey. And when you could force the poor to work in dangerous factories and chimneys and mines, and they were grateful just to hear about the king and doff their hats at passing gentry. BECAUSE THEY KNEW THEIR PLACE.

Political opinions: more left than before

Throat: Sore

Days left: 4!!!!

Matt

Primly Stable: "Strict rules"

Primly Stable: "Strict rules". Well written deconstruction of Daily Mail's creation of outrage where the BBC is concerned.

Turns out pointing out the flaws in the Daily Mail is close to a full time job... before I started this month I thought that their idiocy was an occasional thing. Turns out I was wrong.

P.s. You should definitely head over to Primly Stable, it's very good.

Priorities?

I'm not sure, but I think that the Mail may have their 'World News' priorities all wrong. How long has this Cholera outbreak been going on? This is the first I've heard about it, and it certainly wasn't on the front page (as of 8am this morning).

That one story may well be the only actual bit of 'news' on the entire page.

Matt

EDIT 2: As of 1600 today the Haiti story had been relegated to over halfway down the page. You've got to go looking for it. Time permitting I'll return to some of these stories in the coming days.

[Edit: change of 't' to 'T' in the word 'This]