Main Offender

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is this article from The Independent.

Let me first make it absolutely clear that I agree with Matthew Norman's point; Frankie Boyle is an exhibitionist bully. But while I'm with Norman on what he's trying to say, I object to the way he's saying it. There are basically 3 things that made me question this article:

1. The phrase 'horrendously disabled' to describe Katie Price's son Harvey. 'Horrendously'? Really? Surely that should be 'severely disabled.' The sub-editor should probably have asked Norman if he was sure he was happy with that phrase. 'Horrendously' implies fear and terror and horror. What a lovely way to describe disability. It implies that there's something bad about disability. And when you're trying to take a moral standpoint against offending the disabled, 'horrendously disabled' is the kind of phrase I'd avoid.

2. Remember in a recent blog I was talking about the hyperbole and ridiculous generalisations used by journalists? Well obviously Matthew Norman doesn't read my blog, the idiot. Because he writes: 'The inability to see distinctions that are obvious to others seems a classic trait of the dry drunk.' Yeah, if you asked me to name one thing that all ex-alcoholics have in common, without even having to think about it I'd respond, 'well, obviously it's their inability to see distinctions that are obvious to others.' What? That's not a 'classic trait' of sober alcoholics. Why does Matthew Norman have to try to ascribe a derogatory trait to an entire group of people? Because he's a journalist, and that's the classic trait of all journalists.

3. Finally, Norman describes Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham as 'an arrogant eighth wit with the sensibilities of the proprietor of an 18th-century Bavarian travelling freak show, and the judgement of a retarded water melon with disturbing Oedipal issues.' I know that what he's trying to do here is give Abraham a taste of his own medicine, seeing if he sees it as 'absurdist satire', the phrase he used to justify Boyle's joke. But in doing so, Norman falls from the moral highground upon which he was teetering. If I were to consider words to avoid in an article defending the disabled, 'retarded' would be pretty high on the list.

I will leave you with the song by The Hives which this blog is named after, enjoy!