Once again, the malign influence of our free and fearless press has come to bear on one of its favourite hate figures, singer Lily Allen. Except this time papers like the Mail and Sun, which have relentlessly demonised Ms Allen, especially when she committed the heinous crime of showing compassion towards refugees, did not need to set their attack dogs on her: their readership was already conditioned to undertake the assault for them.
Lily Allen
Ms Allen revealed that she had suffered from PTSD after suffering a still birth. And that was when the abuse began: there were suggestions the still birth was caused by drug dependency - most likely because the member of the brains trust making the comments read it in the paper, so it had to be true. That she had also admitted to having issues around post-natal depression and bipolar disorder just fired up the mob even more.
As the BBC has told, “Her Twitter account has now been taken over by a friend to try to stop the abuse … The trolls accused her of being to blame for the death of her baby and suggested she had mental health issues … It started when the 31-year-old singer tried to highlight the prejudice shown towards immigrants … But, when mostly anonymous trolls started abusing her things started to get nasty”. The keyboard warrior massive again.
That's what I bladdy think of some bladdy singer bladdy taking the bladdy piss out of me, youse bastard Pommie drongoes!
The Beeb’s report also mentions “Lily regularly posts about controversial subjects and it's not the first time she's faced abuse on Twitter … She spoke out about the Calais migrant crisis last year, apologising for what she deemed to be a lack of action on the part of the UK government” before the inevitable news that “Lily … has now announced she's taking a break from Twitter”. The misogynist, sexist and even racist abuse was too much.
Where might these anonymous beings of less than total courage have got their inspiration for their attacks on Ms Allen? We do not need to look too far: the Murdoch Sun has used any excuse to attack her, ever since she took the piss out of Rupert Murdoch. Don Rupioni is nothing if not a vindictive SOB, and the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker are all too ready to attack anyone, especially if it will get KRM to throw them a biscuit.
Why can't I f***ing put the boot in to some singer, c***? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay
Also guilty as charged are the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery at the Daily Mail, all keen as mustard to denounce anyone showing compassion for people who are not white. The Vagina Monologue’s hatred of Ms Allen was such that Glenda Cattia Maxima Jan Moir was instructed to pen a hatchet job on her. Anyone not prepared to keep their distance from refugees is not the Daily Mail’s kind of person.
So what are the Mail and Sun saying about this disgraceful attack on Ms Allen? Nothing. Not a sausage. Zero. Zip. Nil. Nada. Bugger all. After a suitable pause to let the bully boys do the hard lifting for them, they will score some cheap column inches by saying “Singer targeted by Vile Trolls”, say it’s all the fault of that Social Media that their readers should not trust, and snigger into their upmarket designer snackettes at a job well done.
This targeting of Lily Allen is a direct result of yet more bad behaviour from at least two tabloid papers who knew full well what they were at when they targeted her, and what the result would be. Say sorry, Tony Gallagher and Paul Dacre. You are utter filth.
Good for you Tim. Stick it to them.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a very nice experience when a pregnancy goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt can trigger very unpleasant physical and mental issues and some can cope better than others.
Tim, I don't want to be controversial but there was a tweet that Lily put up about elderly folks in a home and referring to them as vegetables.
Whilst I notice there is a lot of anger and outrage over it I see no attempts to explain any of it.
I can only assume that the reference in its descriptive form (accurate to a point) was something that is on many minds today. It is the reckless abandonment of the elderly when nobody wants to look after them.
Maybe we can learn a lot from some other cultures who are very communal in their family environments and care and responsibility is a priority.
Obviously it isn't as simple as this and other social elements need to fall in line to make it possible.
When people are having to work into their late 60's they just don't have the time.
Anonymous, I think that part of the point of this piece is that the press will victimise someone for disagreeing with them and then when the keyboard warriors inevitably attack said person the press will valiantly leap to their defence. You can bet your bottom dollar on the 'Singer targeted by vile trolls' line appearing almost verbatim as a Sun story any day now.
ReplyDeleteI bet all these conservative twats call themselves "pro-life" as well.
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
The tragedy of Lily Allen is, sadly, merely another example - and not even the worst - of mainstream media corruption. Not that its perpetrators could give a shit about any of it. They're far too busy protecting their mortgage payments at the cost of decency.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why most Joe Citizens are delighted at the sight of Trump and "journalists" and "presenters" knocking the bejaysus out of each other. Small compensation, and not destined to last long, but sheer comedy gold nevertheless. Sooner or later loony Donald will realise he has to do a deal with them if he wants to stay in the same line of business as they, which is owning and running the USA for their profit.
The same thing applies to the Banana Monarchy (without bananas) that is Britain. That makes tragic figures like Lily Allen expendable. Or fodder for "news" profits. Not that the people who buy that muck could give a shit either. That's the kind of country we have become, and people don't like it when you hold a mirror up to them.
Anonymous, wasn't she replacing "immigrant" or "Muslim" with "pensioner" to make a point? And isn't it at least a bit likely that the situation kicked off because someone who could see the point chose not to?
ReplyDeletePaul, no she wasn't. It's a very sad situation that her baby died and terrible that she was given grief over it. However, the only thing Lily Allen cares about is Lily Allen getting in the media. If the Calais jungle gets her into the papers good, if immigrants do, good.If something else comes along to advance her profile, they will be forgotten as she jumps on another bandwagon. To make her out as some sort of fearless advocate of the oppressed is being rather naive.
ReplyDelete@Ann Kelly, what would you like to see Lily Allen use her profile and platform for? Or aren't celebrities allowed to voice concerns about people with less privilege?
ReplyDeleteStrange. I just found a couple of the tweets in question. The one about pensioners skipping the queue at the dictor's and the GIF of Jimmy Savile with the hashtag extremepensioners. As far as I can see her intent - to highlight the way you shouldn't generalise from extreme cases - couldn't be clearer.
ReplyDelete