[Closed] Stephen Fry lets rip at The Mail..

Deep down they have always had the same instinct for the lowest, most mean-spirited, hypocritical, spiteful and philistine elements of our island nation

*claps*

Now THAT is how you rant!

Golly!

Nicely finished...

His cancer scare, miracle cure stories are sickeningly anti-science and the only good thing to be said about his Mail is that no one decent or educated believes in it.

Well, I know whose side i'm on...

That's awesome. 😀

Personally I thought this was the highlight

Dacre is, all those who have had the misfortune to work for him assure me, just about as loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid, vengeful and disgusting a man as it possible to be.

Stephen - you really need to get off the fence and tell us what you really think 😀

I ? Stephen Fry

I'm not the greatest Stephen Fry fan in the world, but he has just risen significantly in my estimation.

He manages to put into words my feelings better than I ever could, bravo that man 😀

😀

Good on him. Hope it sends Dacre nuts.

10/10 rant 🙂

"He absolutely despises me and thinks I stand for everything that is wrong about Britain and I think exactly the same of him."

National Treasure.

I usually have a lot of time for Stephen Fry. I like the chap.

Now, I have a LOT MORE time for him. Well done Mr F.

And, as aside, THAT'S how to rant, STW take note! 🙂

Nice, any way of getting behind him on this one?
One of those government e-petition, asking for the daily wail to be banned in favour of an occasional fry newletter perhaps?

Any more prize snippets? I am at work so can't watch.

"Deep down they have always had the same instinct for the lowest, most mean-spirited, hypocritical, spiteful and philistine elements of our island nation" - a bit harsh, seeing as the Mail was the UK paper that supported Hitler for the longest I believe in the 1930s....oh yeah!

What was it Julie what's her name said of Stephen Fry? I'm with edlong on this one. Together with his recent comments on Russia's persecution of gays he seems to be really getting his oar stuck in of late.

[url= http://stephen-fry-me.tumblr.com/post/57805910021/the-daily-mail-and-lord-dacre-appeasing-again ]full text is here[/url]

Fry is spot on!

Daily Fail is read by idiots who can't think for themselves and are full of prejudice 🙂

I put up a thread several days ago that got ignored, possibly because people didn't notice the winky at the end, but it had a link to this:

[b]Hated By The Daily Mail Badge[/b] - Officedog
http://www.officedog.co.uk/7734.product.html

An enjoyable rant, makes me feel justified in my intense hatred for the Mail.

Is it a Daily Mail link?

Well said Mr Fry.

A suitably Fry-esque word would be 'splendid'.

The Mail is such an odious and crushingly obvious little comic that I struggle to believe anyone actually takes it seriously. But apparently some people do!

The majority of its readership probably just use it as some sort of confirmatory crutch for their odious little minded views. A sort of anti-think. I had a senior manager once who was a confirmed mail-ite. She was typical of the genre. A 'self starter' who made up for her obvious lack of real intelligence with bullying tactics. A sort of 'head down charger' who believed that a grinding and relentless approach could achieve anything.

These character traits are admirable as part of a rounded personality that also includes wit, intelligence and self-deprecation. But employed alone they typify the mail-ite.

Anyway, as long as the normal-minded among us would only ever countenance buying the Mail if we'd run out of bog roll, the we'll be fine. I'd even think twice about eating chips out of it, I like a bit of vinegar, but the bitter essence that would come oozing out of the paper would make my eyes water!

Outstanding!

nice rant mr F and a worthy target
[url= http://entertainment.ie/wtf/Watch-If-you-think-Sky-News-was-bad-with-the-royal-baby-coverage/202884.htm ]chuckles[/url]

Is it a Daily Mail link?

only ever countenance buying the Mail if we'd run out of bog roll

I wouldn't even do that.

Thanks for the link. Heart-warming and reminds me that there are famous decent people about.

That's actually quite marvelous.

[img] [/img]

I bought it once....

MrsG was in labour at the time. While she was having a nap, I wandered to the hospital shop to find a paper; it was the only thing they had. What a hate-filled, vile production full of twists of the truth and down-right lies. Their "Journalists" should hang their heads in shame that they prostitute themselves for this.

Mr Fry; chapeau!

I liked the bit about putting up an imaginary coconut then knocking it over to win a prize.

Genius.

My parents in law are well balanced, normal people. Not racist or small minded at all. I was dumbstruck when I saw that they buy the mail and asked them why; "the telly pages are good" 😀
My wife is very liberal (bit of a plastic hippie yoga type), yet I catch her ogling the mail online celeb pages all the time!

They just won't stop!

I just read the Mail column. I don't see it's point at all. A call to ban all art from Russia? Idiot.

It's just meaningless!

I don’t want to dwell on Fry’s association of the 2014 Sochi winter games with the 1936 Olympiad in Berlin: the systematic incineration of six million Jews in industrial ovens bears no comparison with the marginalisation and repression of minorities in Putin’s Russia, as shocking and deplorable as their ‘beatings, murders and humiliations’ undoubtedly are. [b]I am more puzzled that an actor of the intelligence and calibre of Stephen Fry missed a golden opportunity to highlight the fact that Hitler persecuted gays as well. The pink triangle was nowhere near as prevalent as the Jewish Star, but at least 100,000 gays were targeted for torture or castration by the Nazis, and somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 are estimated to have perished horribly in the death camps. So why they didn’t get a mention in this letter is a little mystifying[/b]

An enjoyable rant, makes me feel justified in my intense hatred for the Mail.

The majority of its readership probably just use it as some sort of confirmatory crutch for their odious little minded views

I'd even think twice about eating chips out of it, I like a bit of vinegar, but the bitter essence that would come oozing out of the paper would make my eyes water!

Well done Sir! Worthy of the great Fry himself!

My small claim is that my art tutor at college (Norfolk College Of Arts And Technology not Cambridge)had taught Stephen Fry (several years before me). All she said about him is that whilst he was there he was done for credit card fraud.

Beautiful.

Not even [i]my[/i] father will buy the Daily Mail. So god knows what kind of bigot does!

🙂

Well said SIR STEPHEN FRY, new leader of the labour party.

Now that was and is a rant, look forward to clarksons return rant.GHe is sure to get involved sooner rather than latter just to promote himself, as a c word, a clue ,cconservative.

And the great/amazing thing about this is that while the Daily Hate has apparently about 1.5m paper readership, Fry has a 6.5m twitter following.

Anything done online by the Daily Hate would be subsumed in their celebrity nakedness next to their usual 'kill the pervs' articles.

wrecker - Member
My parents in law are well balanced, normal people. Not racist or small minded at all. I was dumbstruck when I saw that they buy the mail and asked them why; "the telly pages are good"
My wife is very liberal (bit of a plastic hippie yoga type), yet I catch her ogling the mail online celeb pages all the time!

They just won't stop!

POSTED 56 MINUTES AGO #

the normal-minded among us would only ever countenance buying the Mail if we'd run out of bog roll, the we'll be fine

I got offered a free one with my purchases at WHS recently - we had plenty of bog roll at the time though.

40mpg.

You flatter me!

I did try my best, though. One of the reasons I like Stephen Fry is that he makes me feel like I should try to learn more, speak better and broaden my horizons.

He is vehemently pro-thinking. The Mail is not. That has historically been the difference between tyranny and freedom.

My mum too, who was a fairly leftie teacher back in her day. 🙂 And once came close to hitting me for suggesting that it might be ok to cross a picket line outside a bank if you really needed to lodge a cheque. 😆 And now, in her dotage, she reads the ****ing Irish Daily Mail and listens to crap daytime radio. I worry sometimes that it's ahead of us all. 😐

The Mail is a frigging horrendous paper. I wouldn't use it to my wipe my arse!

Lovely guy, well spoken, thoughtful, never a strong opinion about anything though is borderline over-cautious. He Loves nothing better then settling down with the Mail on both days of a weekend.

I know! WTF is wrong with them?
I sometimes wonder if it's a car crash reality TV style addiction.

In the place where I worked my summers at uni, me and the lead Quantity Surveyor used to steal the receptionist's copy of the mail and fill out the crossword with the names of famous Nazis...

If I dare to make a broad assumption here - many of 'our' generation find ourselves looking at our parents with bafflement at times. As a few others here have commented, they have parents who also read the DM. We don't think our older relatives are bad people, but they seem to hold views that are very different to our own. Somehow we don't think the way they do, yet they raised us. Often they put a lot of effort into ensuring we had education, literature and experiences that formed us into the fairly free-thinking people we are today.

There isn't really a point to this, but it is something that I mull over now and then. I suppose that they are products of a time and place we seek to distance ourselves from at times - as much as we are products of our times and places. They are not bad people, but they baffle the crap out of me with some of the utter guff they repeat having read it in the DM. Will my daughter look upon me in the same way?

Im guessing when the next generation of kids look on their Guardian reading parents they may well think WTF 😀

Daily Fail is read by idiots who can't think for themselves and are full of prejudice

buy the Daily Mail. So god knows what kind of bigot does!

Sometimes she does appear extremely bigoted however, I'm sure she directly quotes the DM sometimes whilst sharing her view of the (in her eyes extremely small) world with me 🙂

TooTall - good post and certainly gets you wondering.

I forgot to mention: the rest of my father-in-laws family; his siblings and mother (my uncle-in-law and grand-mother-in-law) are more like what I would perceive a Mail reader to be (and they all are).

i.e. there is some mixed-racial relationship in there. i.e. white-british uncle marrying and having kids with Thai, and also 'illegitimate child out in nigeria too. One of the British-Thai kids now married and had [grand]kids with British Ghanian .

Yet that particular branch of the original family are constantly moaning 'muslim this' 'blacks that' 'taking our jobs those'
😀 even with them present at the same family event!!!!!

[img] [/img]

Arse.

Given all of the comments about older, seemingly sensible relatives reading the mail, I wonder whether part of the paper's appeal is in giving sensibly-minded people who think that the world is a little too liberal the feeling that however right-wing their own views are, they're comfortably left of the DM.

They can indulge their inner Mosely, while still being able to stay comfortably left of a mainstream newspaper, thinking "Agreed, yes. I wouldn't have put it as strongly as that, but they do have a point."

For people looking for comfort, I'd imagine reading a paper voicing the worst of their concerns, at the same time as giving them a marker for counting themselves as comparitively liberal, is a happy place to spend a morning on the patio with a couple of cups of tea.

The idea that Stephen Fry is not entitled to voice his opinions via his celebrity status but Paul Dacre is, via his controlling position as editor, is indicative of the Mail's inner Nazi.

Awesome work, Stephen Fry. Epic rant, and every word true as well!

I also have the said older relatives who read the Mail. However, they also vote BNP, so definitely not sensible, more on the incredibly bigoted side.

steal the receptionist's copy of the mail and fill out the crossword with the names of famous Nazis...

This will be my new office sport from tomorrow. 🙂

The idea that Stephen Fry is not entitled to voice his opinions via his celebrity status but Paul Dacre is

Has that been said? Not read all of the links.

Not surprised. I can't imagine the overlap between the 6.5m of Fry's twitter followers and the 1.5m of the Mails readership is anything bigger than miniscule.

Erm... except for those that follow for the sole purpose of being outraged, which, to be fair, is probably quite a significant number.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller.

I do love when my mum starts ranting about immigrants, and I say, innocently, 'but wasn't grandad (her dad) Irish?'

Also my uncle reads the mail, his family are romany originally, I don't point this out to him, as I don't want a fight!

My parents (65yo) have always read the Mail and Express since I was a child. They are perfectly reasonable, intelligent, liberal, young outlook, left-leaning, etc, so I have never understood why.

My Mum's reasoning seems to be that it isn't a red top and it isn't a broadsheet, which is too big for her small frame to hold

It's like a classic helmet thread on here, it's not likely to chnage much.

The people who recognise how objectionable the Daily Mail is will applaud it.

But however well-reasoned Stephen Fry's attack is, it's still written by Stephen Fry, which will give the DM editorial message, supported by its readership, the allowance to deride and disparage it.

Good point. I should be following Stephen Fry on Twitter. That was truly excellent.

I don't understand why anyone is giving this letter any time at all. If it had come from any of us it would not have made news. So why is it deemed news when it's written by someone who has been on the telly? What makes his opinion any more valid, right, or wrong, then anyone else's?

I really don't get the hatred for the Mail. Sure it's bigoted and prints/publishes some pretty nasty articles, and constantly contradicts itself, but not even the actual "journalists" actually believe any of their trashy content.

It's funded by your outrage - they print something offensive, Twitter goes berserk, the DM website gets loads of hits and consequently makes money from ad revenue. Professional Trolling. The best thing you can do is to just ignore it.

Once you realise that it's all just their (admittedly bad taste) business model, then there's no need to play into their hands and rant about them, their articles or their readers.

If we all just ignored it then it would all go away.

[i]An enjoyable rant,[/i]

...makes me feel justified in my intense hatred ...

Isn't it exactly that mindset that the anti-mail brigade object to?

Could it be that it's the development of any "intense hatreds" earlier in life that leads to Mail Reading in the later stages?

joeydeacon - Member
I really don't get the hatred for the Mail.

If we all just ignored it then it would all go away.

isnt it the most read 'news' website in the country, mayeb even the world

it gets most of its hits from the celebrity gossip trash, but its the subtle rightwing brain washing that goes along with it

my mum started buying it for the free dvds but now shes suckered in

Nice rant, poor argument.
Fry is far too arrogant & pompous for my taste. I prefer people who put equal amounts of care into their message and their delivery.

Nice read though.

Their "Journalists" should hang their heads in shame that they prostitute themselves for this.

If we all just ignored it then it would all go away.

I get your point but ignorance and prejudice will not be overcome by putting your head in the sand and going lalalal till it just goes away, sadly.

I got offered a free one with my purchases at WHS recently .

Panini Swastika sticker book?

If I dare to make a broad assumption here - many of 'our' generation find ourselves looking at our parents with bafflement at times. As a few others here have commented, they have parents who also read the DM. We don't think our older relatives are bad people, but they seem to hold views that are very different to our own. Somehow we don't think the way they do, yet they raised us. Often they put a lot of effort into ensuring we had education, literature and experiences that formed us into the fairly free-thinking people we are today.

There isn't really a point to this, but it is something that I mull over now and then. I suppose that they are products of a time and place we seek to distance ourselves from at times - as much as we are products of our times and places. They are not bad people, but they baffle the crap out of me with some of the utter guff they repeat having read it in the DM. Will my daughter look upon me in the same way?

Great post sir.

I get your point but ignorance and prejudice will not be overcome by putting your head in the sand and going lalalal till it just goes away, sadly.

Yeah, but when that ignorance and prejudice is largely only present in order to gain attention, then it will soon disappear if the hits suddenly dried up. Ultimately the DM's a business, and has to keep doing what works - if the current model stopped working, then they'd be forced to change, and work out other ways of attracting visitors.

I agree that unfortunately it's pretty unlikely that this will happen in the foreseeable future.

your argument is broadly accurate of how the website works

Shock jock tactics and celebs stuff to generate hits even though a reasonable percentage much just go WTF at the articles.

Not sure it is for the paper as a large portion of society [ old it appears from this thread] are still rather conservative [ small c and possibly politically as well] so the paper would still thrive/sell.

It an easy and successful business model be it the Mail or Clarkson and your right it should not be taken seriously. problem is many of those who follow them do take them seriously [ less so for clarkson I assume]

My aunt has lived in spain for a long time. She speaks to my mum regulalry, but my mum start getting worried about her. Everytime they spoke on the phone my mum said she was asking how my mum was coping with the place being over run by imigrants, cancer rates soaring, the NHS crumbling, swans being shot by feral youth on mini motos with airguns etc.

Turns out she had starting going to some coffee shop that had inetrnational papers and she'd started reading the daily malice. My mum told her to stop.

Tomd - snap! My mum lives in Spain and reads the mail in a bar. I now preface any response to information from her with "did you read that in the daily mail".

My Mum's reasoning seems to be that it isn't a red top and it isn't a broadsheet, which is too big for her small frame to hold

You've told her that the Independent, Times and Guardian are all available in 'compact' size haven't you? 🙂

One of the best things I have done recently (which shows what a saddo I am) is to put kittenblock on my chromebook which then gets picked up on all chrome browsers I use when I log in. No more seeing Daily Hate even accidentally!