Mail Thatcher Outrage Hypocrisy

Nobody who has looked at Mail Online today can be in any doubt that the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre is outraged. They’re outraged every day of the week, of course, but today there is a special sort of outrage, directed at those who are being insufficiently reverent to the memory of Margaret Thatcher. The why-oh-why brigade is in froth overdrive.

And you know who’s going to be first to get it in the neck: “Public anger at BBC bias: Viewers hit out at lengthy coverage of poll tax and miners' strike after Baroness Thatcher's death”. This magnificent slice of investigative journalism extended to trawling half a dozen Twitter feeds and digging out four comments from the website of Themselves Personally Now.

So it’s down to the usual standard, then. And, as the man said, there’s more: “The flames of hatred: 30 years of loathing for Baroness Thatcher explodes in celebrations of her death. Will funeral now be targeted?” was next. Actually, it’s 34 years since Mrs T first arrived in Downing Street, but the Mail is better at talking sums than the messy business of doing them.

Yes, that’ll be more school fees sprayed up the wall. And then came the pundits, typified by Stephen “Miserable Git” Glover, with “Weaned on the Beeb's hatred, no wonder the young rejoice at her death”. Yes, the hated BBC were disliked by Mrs T so much that she, er, was always ready to subject herself to the inquisition of Robin Day. Or appear with Frostie when he was at the Corporation.

And, don’t you know it, you wait ages for a pundit to make a complete prat of themselves, and then two come at once. Here’s Dominic Sandbrook, another Dacre dissembler: “Maggie did more for the workers than her Leftie critics ever did”. Yes Dom, she so loved the workers that she made another two million of them jobless. As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point.

So anyone speaking ill of Mrs T’s memory is Not A Good Thing. Like, oh I dunno, how about this article: “The one agonising battle even she could not win: How the cruel dimming of her awesome mental powers tested the great love between her and Denis to the limit”. Strewth, this is intrusive and gratuitous stuff, poring over her frailty and deterioration in later years.

And then it bangs on about her and Denis not getting on. We don’t need to know any of this, especially at a time when family and friends are in mourning. So will the Mail be going after this insensitive intrusion? Sadly not. Because the offending article is from their own website. Yes, the Mail, while demanding deference from others, is not averse to forgetting it when the occasion suits.

Thus another slice of disgusting Dacre hypocrisy. No change there, then.