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Moir responds to Gately column critics
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 23 October 2009
Mail columnist Jan Moir has responded to all the outrage about her piece last week about the death of Stephen Gately. As with her original apology, she says her piece – or at least its homophobic undertones – were simply misunderstood, while once again accusing pressure groups of orchestrating a campaign against her which, she says, explains the sheer scale of the formal complaints made about the piece.
Which is something of a compliment to the albeit unnamed ‘pressure groups’ – the idea that they would be capable of orchestrating and delivering some sort of campaign in the space of a few hours. What really happened was an unorchestrated outpouring of anger from an informal network of people, aided by Twitter and Facebook, and possibly the fact there’s a sizable part of the population conditioned to despise the Daily Mail by default.
In her new piece, she adds: “As the torrent of abuse continued, most of it anonymous, I also had thousands of supportive emails from readers and well-wishers, many of whom described themselves as ‘the silent majority’. The outcry was not as one-sided as many imagine. Their view, and mine, was that it was perfectly reasonable of me to comment upon the manner of Stephen Gately’s death, even if there are those who think that his celebrity and sexuality make him untouchable. Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe? If so, that is deeply troubling”.
The fact all that she misses at least three points is pretty obvious, so I won’t mention it. So instead I’ll answer the question Moir asks half way through her column. She writes: “I accept that many people – on Twitter and elsewhere – were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can’t help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?” Yes Jan, the latter. Get ye to journalism school, they’ll tell you about communications.
