I'm a bit late with this, but...

Editor free after Kemp 'assault'

Sometime last week, Rebekah Wade, poisonous editor of arguably the most poisonous and shittest newspaper in the whole world, The Sun, was held for assaulting her husband, Ross Kemp, but was later released without charge.

It would perhaps be rather politically incorrect of me to say that he should have returned the favour by clattering her up and down the street. Just a little.

Sod it. He should have stabbed her in the head. The world would be a much better place without her.

I have always found Rebekah Wade a curious proposition. She's educated enough to carve out a career that would have more cerebral connotations (apparently she's studied in the Sorbonne), and by all accounts she has some ability in the socialite/networking arena. It would not be unreasonable, then, to expect to see her establish herself in the broadsheet sector, seeing as she wanted to be a journalist since she was 14. Her ambition is, to understate it somewhat, substantial.

Unfortunately it is not ambition of the intellectual bent, and this is where the rot sets in all over the place. I have yet to see an intelligent newspaper that outsells shit like the red tops, and it's a deeply depressing indictment of the critical faculties of the general public. The Sun has always been the worst of this lot though, and when I read some time back that Wade was coming back on board as its editor, the gist of the Irish Times article was that no-one really expected her to effect many changes. Satan's emissary himself, Rupert Murdoch, likes the page 3 girls apparently, and her argument that this little feature alienates a potentially lucrative audience - women - fell on deaf ears.

An argument based on economic considerations rather than female solidarity. See what I mean?

Anyway, around the time she was made editor my curiosity was piqued, and I decided some monitoring of the integrity of the paper was in order. I shouldn't have bothered. It's hard to know who is more contemptible, the careerist c*#%s who form most of the papers staff, or the readership on the ground. I would argue that enforced sterilisation of the latter would be a service to the human race in general, but I'd wager that the journalists who write their rubbish have as much contempt for their readers as anyone, seeing as securing an internship at one of the red-tops is apparently a very competitive business.

I'm not berating the Sun for its base level, it's the fact that it's so damn obvious about its leanings it might as well come with a siren attached, and STILL it shifts serious units all over the UK. For shame. For shame.

I'm not sure which aspects of Wade's reporting have irked me the most. The consequences of the Name and Shame campaign, overseen by her while she worked at the News of the World, were as much the fault of the TOTAL FUCKING MORONS participating in the riots that followed as anyone, and all tabloids go batshit fucking mental when it comes to paedophilia, so I would have to say that it was the Sun's coverage of the 'War on Terror' (oh, how I cringe to even use the phrase) that literally had me gaping in disbelief.

I remember the editorial of the paper in this regard in the run-up to the US devastation occupation of Iraq. Tony Blair was Bush's obvious ally while most EU countries were still humming and hawing about whether to get involved or not. The Sun, subtle as always in its approach, 'rated' each country out of ten according to how willing they were to commit to Bush's cause - I vaguely remember France enjoying a position near the bottom of the league table) - and I stood there wondering how on earth a newspaper could get away with being so obviously biased. It was like the Belgrano 'Gotcha' headline in its blatantness. The reason that the Sun pulls it off, of course, is that its readers are incapable of higher intellectual thought processes and its well the husband beater knows it. What gets me is the influence this paper has (why? why? why?) and how she wields it.

I must say, though, I derived a smug sense of satisfaction when I saw its bleating yesterday, after the terror bill was defeated.

Incidentally, a story about paedophilia I linked to a while ago was made all the worse for the two innocent nursery workers wrongly accused of this crime, by what was nothing more than a call for a witch hunt issued by the Sun in 1999. Guess who was deputy editor of the newspaper at that time? You have three, and the first two don't count. It makes you wonder how many lives the evil vengeful witch has ruined altogether.

So there you have it. Rebekah Wade knows that there are a great many thick turnips out there, and boy is she more than happy to capitalise on it by playing to them. More than anything else though, she draws attention to the fact that ambition doesn't necessarily mean being good at your job, it just means manoeuvring yourself into a position of influence and making buckets of money. There you have it folks, the former no longer can be equated with the latter in journalism, it seems. When the history books are rewritten about the 'War on Terror' in Iraq, she will most likely be remembered as the voice of evil in all the madness. Her assassination is all that can save us now.

In a similar vein, I saw Piers Morgan, ex-editor of the Mirror, present a show on TV during the week entitled 'Most Pointless Celebrities'. How rich was that?

Note: The above piece should be accepted in the vein of humour in which it was (just about) intended.