The Near-Total Derangement of The Daily Mail
The Daily Mail has a long history of seeking to distinguish its readers from those with a developed prefrontal cortex. This should come as no surprise to any seasoned Twitter user, who, in the course of any given week, will typically note #TheDailyMail trending at around 9am, just as the country is waking up to the fresh bouts of lunacy that dominate its front pages. From ‘Crush The Saboteurs’ to ‘Enemies of The People’ to that 1934 vintage ‘Hurrah For The Blackshirts’, the paper is less a source of reliable news and more a palimpsest of near-total derangement.
Take this column from the unquenchable hell-mouth of Peter Hitchens, for example, in which the scientific efficacy of closing down pubs is countered with the water-tight logic that the coronavirus simply does not like it up ’em. Whilst it’s tempting to imagine Hitchens foaming at the mouth and being strapped to a gurney by a team of nurses, the reality is that this peculiar blend of warped anti-enlightenment thinking and jingoistic schoolboy patriotism is increasingly becoming the currency by which the country measures itself.
When the horrors of Italy were first reported it was relayed to us in post-apocalyptic tones. Yet when the wave of death reached our shores, the right-wing press pivoted to unbridled patriotism. We bashed pots and pans on our doorsteps under a strangely militant duress. We cheered on Captain Tom’s birthday whilst Red Arrows soared overhead. We summoned the Blitz Spirit against an invisible enemy, as though the virus would somehow recede like the invading arrows in the opening credits of Dad’s Army. Whilst other countries cautiously emerge from the lockdown, the right-wing press is busy fighting a civil war against a slew of phantom enemies — a few years ago it was the doctors who were the Enemies of The People, this time around it’s the turn of that most cowardly profession of all — the teachers.
‘Let Our Teachers Be Heroes’ proclaims today’s front cover, presumably willing the nation’s educators to channel some of the sacrificial heroism of the remote-working London journalist. ‘The great consolation of this COVID crisis has been Britons bonding together in a spirit of compassion and generosity,’ it continues, ‘So what a crashing disappointment that the teaching unions refuse to join the common cause, instead playing petty politics.’ The Daily Mail appears to be viewing reality from the reverse end of a pair of binoculars, with major societal threats vanished to minuscule proportion and non-starting arguments blown up to an epic scale. In the world of The Mail, fringe positions that would get deleted in a 4chan discussion are front and centre stage. It is impossible to read the cover story out loud without mimicking the intonation of a school-shooter’s final YouTube video. Are you willing to die for this so-called ‘cause’ you apparently believe in? Well, are you?
Out of sheer unabated sadism I went to my local Tesco and bought a copy. First time in my life. There it sits on my dining table. In page after stultifying page, The Daily Mail casts off the anchor to reality and sets a course directly for the sea-bed. So, in the interests of journalism and posterity, here are four of the most deranging tales pulled from today’s edition:
How much hate went into typing that headline? You have to imagine the writer slamming his nose and fists against the keyboard until his hands are just a bloody stump, like the fire extinguisher scene from Irréversible but meted out onto a Macbook Pro. Absolutely wild.
Derangement Rating: 5 /5
Is this… is this what dementia feels like? In the upside-down world of The Daily Mail, professions are now stratified on a continuum of Godliness, with Nurses at the top (angels) and teachers at the bottom (greedy, zealous, damned.) Presumably, somewhere in all this, a swinging jawless puppet of Margaret Thatcher is creaking into life with a morbid see-sawing laugh as Peter Hitches is dribbling into his bib, eyes ablaze like the kid from The Shining.
Derangement Rating: 3/5
At this point you physically long to lobotomised. Boris, weeks after vowing to rid the country of unskilled workers, turns up on his doorstep for the omnipresent weekly clap. Just keep clapping, clap more, clap until you can’t hear your own thoughts, that’s it… clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap shhhh all better now.
Derangement Rating: 3/5
Because what says ‘I am a fawning spineless sycophant who enjoys nothing more than the earthy, robust taste of shoe-leather’ than collecting photographs of Royal Children? Nope, nothing.
Derangement Rating: 5/5
Let’s hope that if there is a silver-lining to be found here, it’s that we collectively move past the era of thinly-disguised wartime rhetoric and into a world where sanity prevails over scandal, and key workers are rewarded with safety and pay increases rather than weekly rounds of applause. If not, future historians will look back at papers like these and wonder how we let it all go so badly wrong.
