Liz Jones Vs Rihanna

In Defence of Liz Jones

I’ll admit I was as offended as anyone when Liz Jones claimed that clothing could invite rape. Her exact words when describing Rihanna were that “she promotes drug-taking, drinking and the sort of fashion sense on stage that surely invites rape at worst, disrespect at least. “ Ouch!

But to be fair to Liz Jones, she did elaborate, albeit under duress that “I’d been listening all day to reports about the trial of the men in Oxford who held girls captive, beat them and abused them. They preyed on the vulnerable ones.” And she’s right that women and girls who dress a certain way are likely to be treated a certain way. If I’m out late at night wearing a full length evening dress, with a clutch bag and demure make up, hair and jewellery I’m likely to be perceived very differently than if I were wearing ripped fishnets a leather mini skirt and a sequinned bra-top. 

Only stupid or evil people think that dress-style can invite rape but then Liz did refer to a very specific photograph of Rihanna that was on her mind when she wrote that stupidly offensive paragraph. And to be fair, although the way she is dressed in the picture doesn’t ‘invite rape’ it is certainly provocative and perhaps that was the point that Liz was attempting to make.

Initially when I read the article that Rihanna had responded to Liz’s article I was quite impressed. For most of us in the UK, Liz is a semi-famous figure. She almost has a cult following, be it haters or fans, who have heard of her and who read her work. It was hard to believe that a world famous musician from across the pond had even heard of Liz Jones in the first place and the fact that she’d read the article at all, let alone chose to respond was surprising to me.  

 I thought we’ll never hear the end of this because Liz Jones just loves attention and to humblebrag to the point that even a spat with a world famous person will be column fodder for years to come.

I was surprised. She actually seemed genuinely hurt, which I found strange. Surely she has to have a thicker skin than that to work in the field of confessional journalism, especially for the misogynistic Daily Mail.  At least the comments on today’s article have been mostly refreshing. Yes Liz is quite rightly criticised for her nasty and quite frankly spiteful recent article where she slates Pippa Middleton for her fashion sense but most people seemed to sympathise that Liz is getting attacked yet again. Yes she DOES bring it on herself but a good analogy that I heard recently likened it to making fun of the crazy homeless person in your neighbourhood. Let it go already. It’s not big or clever to kick people when they’re down. 

Liz Jones needs help. Criticise if you feel the need but making fun of people who have real problems is akin to starting a twitter feud with Amanda Bynes. Ugly.

The Daily Mail - Opinions and political agenda are not news

I thought newspapers we supposed to report the NEWS not their opinions?

But it seems the Daily Mail has taken things a stage further by using a headline to:

·         Have a hissy fit

·         Tell us what to think (their behaviour was ‘perfectly reasonable’ – well that’s cleared that up then…

·         Predict the future

The original headline was ‘Vile Product of Welfare UK’ with a large photograph of Philpott and the six children and went on to blame the benefits system for Philpott’s behaviour. Whatever your opinion on the benefits system, the headline drew furious criticism for being disrespectful to the dead children by using their deaths to further a political agenda. Let alone use the pictures of the children underneath the headline 'vile product of welfare UK'. The children were not a vile product of anything. They were children.

While abuse of the welfare system clearly played a part - clearly Philpott would not have produced 17 children if he'd had to work to provide for them nor set fire to the house if he didn't anticipate being offered a new house for free to replace it - putting your own children in mortal danger out of greed and spite is the behaviour of a psychopath regardless of your social class. Welfare abuse didn't kill those children. It was their greedy and  manipulative parents. There's a difference.

Portraying the children as nothing but fodder for click bait is disrespectful not only to the children but to the Philpotts' former friends, relatives, children's schoolteachers and friends etc. They were lied to and suffered a multiple bereavement. The least the press could do would be to show a bit more respect and not sensationalise a tragedy to sell newspapers. The 2 Philpott's and Mosely are the only ones who are responsible for this. Normal parents protect their children and put their safety and welfare above all else regardless of whether they are on benefits or not.

Mick and Mairead Philpott

The next headline was something of a self justifying hissy fit:

 This week the Mail was slated for making the perfectly reasonable point that arson killer Mick Philpott was a product of the benefits system. Today it is George Osborne's turn. Now tell us what YOU think. But, beware, the Left WILL try to hijack the result

Regardless of political beliefs I always thought a paper was there to report the news – NOT to further their own political agenda. 

Post-mortem examinations confirmed that the children died of smoke inhalation but this didn’t stop the Daily Mail from writing that Mick Philpott had been jailed for ‘burning the couple’s six children to death’.  

An absolute fabrication for no other reason than to add sick sensationalism to the article to try to get people outraged and on side and an overwhelmingly arrogant and cold-hearted lack of respect for the innocent children who died let alone for the truth. 

I can still recall a tragic story a year or two ago about a small baby who was killed by a dog. The Daily Mail reported that the paramedics had scaled a fence to reach the child’s body and had to sneak past the slavering, growling dog as it snarled at them from the corner of the yard – but the paramedics clearly stated that they didn’t even see the dog during the rescue attempt and that it was probably indoors when they attended to the baby in the yard. What purpose did that lie have other than to sensationalise an already horrific story in which a baby had died?  And of course their own agenda regarding dog attacks, click bait and subsequent advertising revenue.

The Samantha Brick ‘I’m too beautiful’ article is said to have earned the Daily mail over £35,000 in revenue from advertisers due to the traffic on the site that day. I can’t find the source for that at the time of writing but will either find it and update this post or remove the reference over the next couple of days. I’m not the Daily Mail – I like truth, accuracy and ethics.

At the time of writing – 15:00pm on Friday 05^th April 2013 the Daily Mail has over 3500 comments on the article. I have a Daily Mail account to comment on articles but I can’t be bothered to feed the trolls.

It’s hard to believe a National Institution like the Daily Mail could be so cold and ruthless. Were they always like this? 

Well the Daily Mail Proprietor, Lord Rothermere wrote in the Daily Mail in 1933: 

 "I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful distracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia. They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call "Nazi atrocities" which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny."

I wonder if my password will still work next I try to log in?

Liz Jones on This Morning - Sperm Stealing

Why Liz Jones knows all about revenge

LIZ JONES: I know all about revenge...I stalked my husband's mistress

Vicky Pryce was, of course, stupid to take points, coerced or not, on her licence for her husband, but a jail term seems excessive, given the leniency with which we treat people who commit actual violence, or steal, or abuse animals, or become bankers.

I currently have nine points on my licence and know how devastating it would be to face a driving ban. I’ve changed my mind now, of course.

Wait a minute, I’m confused. What have you changed your mind about? 

It becomes slightly clearer in the next paragraph:

But before this case, it occurred to me that – if I were ever sent another speeding fine (accompanied by a blurry photo of my face, rigid at the wheel) – I might let my assistant take the rap, wearing a long black wig. 

How are we supposed to know what you’ve changed your mind about (of course) in the first place, let alone when you don’t tell us what it even is till the next paragraph!

Perhaps it was deliberate to distract readers from your boast that you would let your assistant take the rap for your speeding fine.

I would have been speeding, you see, because I am special and important, and need to hurry everywhere. 

I’m still confused. I don’t know whether this is supposed to be funny or not. I assume it is, but I don’t get it. 

Pryce is not the biggest villain of the piece, because there by the grace of God go I, and many of us. Couldn’t she be sentenced to pick up litter instead of being confined, or be an unpaid lollipop lady?

That doesn’t even make sense! It’s There but for the grace of God go I Sort your idioms out Liz!

I wish you'd stop claiming that the things you do are done by everyone else. It doesn't justify it and it isn't true.

Huhne is to blame, almost entirely. I bet he’s the sort of man who beeps when stuck behind a woman who fails to zoom away from traffic lights the nanosecond they go green.

And I bet he flashes women in the fast lane when they won’t get out of his super-busy way. 

Wait a minute – Huhne is almost entirely to blame. I'm not really interested either way but I'd like to know what you're basing that fact upon. 

Oh. Because you bet you know what he’s like behind the wheel... 

I’m sure I read something recently about someone else who was so special and important that she had to hurry everywhere too. Was that the joke then? I’m not sure.

The toxicity of their marriage is familiar to me, too, as I’m sure it is to many.

They're not even married. They divorced 2 years ago. Have you researched for this article at all Liz?

 When a woman learns that her husband has cheated, revenge is not only tempting, it seems the only course open to us. 
Perhaps his wife’s actions in exposing the lie will make men think twice about how they break the news that they are having an affair.

 Huhne apparently broke the news of his infidelity to the mother of his three children during half-time of a World Cup football match, and then went off to the gym. 

Shocking enough, but you didn't mention this fact in the article Liz. 

Even if you had, it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that other men will now admit their affairs by candlelight (perhaps hire a Mariachi band?) to avoid making the cheated spouse angry enough to turn police informant. In any case I'm fairly sure it wasn't just the way she was told that made her angry.

I certainly wreaked mine: I emailed my husband’s mistress, telling her she was only number five in a series of similar conquests. I even went to New York, found out where she worked and waited in reception at her office for her to turn up; I hadn’t thought through what I would do when she did, but luckily never got the chance to slap her as she was away on holiday.

I continued to stalk her on Facebook for years after, though, only ceasing when I saw she had given birth to a baby who, thankfully, looked nothing like my ex-husband. 

I am ashamed of becoming a cliche of a woman scorned. But really, having read the email exchanges between Vicky Pryce and a reporter on a rival Sunday newspaper, I’m more ashamed of being a journalist.

So it was a journalist from a rival newspaper that made Liz ashamed to be a journalist. Nothing that Liz did. That's a relief then.

Pryce had wanted to get revenge on her ex-husband by selling her story, either as a book or as a spread in a newspaper, and was emailing a writer on a broadsheet about the whole licence rap thing. The journalist was using her powers of persuasion to get the story for herself.

Pryce could ‘draw a line’ under the whole affair. She would be taken away for a few days on a mini-break (‘You look like you need it’) to somewhere that could be fancy, where they could conduct the interview in peace. It could be ‘fun’.

In a few days, it would all be ‘done and dusted’. The journalist talked about the pair having ‘a relationship of trust’, and signed off with a ‘love’. 

Wow, she was good. But we have all done this, haven’t we, those of us who toil away in Fleet Street? Persuaded someone to do something to further our own career? 

Maybe everyone who ‘toils away on Fleet Street’ actually DO lie and exploit people for stories. But if they’re getting paid over £250,000 a year then I’d expect them to toil a little harder and to learn the difference between ‘There by the grace of God’ and ‘There but for the Grace of God’.

I’ve pretended to be someone’s friend to get a story, many, many times. 

Ooh, let’s talk about my plans for adoption, to get you to open up about your IVF and your own plans to adopt, as I did with someone who was then an MP.

When the writer Alexandra Tolstoy was poised to run off with a penniless Cossack, I got the story for my daily paper by promising her a weekly column, which of course never materialised.

 

You might try sounding a little less pleased with yourself Liz. Not least because you are exploiting them a second time by selling another article on the back of what you did to them the first time. Which I note you don't apologise for or justify.

 And I didn’t just do this to public figures. A young woman who had been evicted from Celebrity Big Brother did a story with me that, thanks to the heading which blamed Channel 4 for ruining her life, lost her a budding career in TV. 

It’s the little people we tread on that haunt me. The small misdemeanours that don’t land us in jail, but probably should.

I would love for Liz Jones to sit down and read one of her own articles back and try to see it from the perspective of those she writes about. Just to see if it would flick a switch in her brain and she would see how her actions and words affected others. 

As someone who considers herself the perpetually wronged victim of others cold and unfair treatment how would she feel if others had treated HER like this?

PS My friend Dawn’s beloved black cat Coco was put to sleep on Thursday, having eaten the leaves of a lily. My friend had no idea they were toxic. She sent an email telling all her friends of the loss, accompanied by a photo. 
She received the following from one woman: ‘Don’t know what I’m going to  say to the kids [who adored the cat]. 
Can I not say anything please? Means they will ask you about her every time they see you, though.’ Um, hello? It might be Mother’s Day, but the myopic selfishness behind this missive beggars belief...

I’m confused yet again. Who starts a paragraph with P.S?  Or did she mean to write RS? Did she get confused and start writing him an email?

Assuming she meant to finish the article with this paragraph - I know the story that a cat was poisoned by water lily leaves is sad and should be told to warn other cat owners – but it didn’t seem to belong right there at that particular point in the article. It looked more like the start of a whole other article.

So leaving that aside for a moment - some woman didn’t want to tell her children about the cat’s death. But then that would make them ask where the cat was when they saw the cat’s owner. And even though it’s Mother’s Day the woman (mother) is selfish and short sighted to the point that it beggars belief?

 Nope. Read it three times now and still don’t understand it.

Surprised by Liz Jones managing to slip in an attack on selfish mothers on mother’s day while telling a sad story about an animal in an article that had absolutely nothing to do with cats up until that point though.

So much so in fact that I almost didn’t notice that she neglected to give closure to the main body of the article.

Liz Jones: The highest paid female journalist in the UK.

Clearly toiling away in Fleet Street is far more lucrative than blogging in a burka.

I’m starting to think she’s doing this on purpose and laughing at us.

All the way to the bank.