Post by naymissus on Jul 30, 2010 5:53:47 GMT
Now, the DM is not in the literary style of a Milton, a Shakespeare, a Gibbons or a McCauley nor would we expect it to be so.
It is a daily newspaper and like all newspapers its function is to inform, entertain and to express a political opinion.
And the style of its English is admirably suited to those purposes. Plain, easy to read, and attention-holding, its style is a paradigm for newspapers of today.
I am invariably impressed at how easily it condenses news and makes it very readable indeed.
Surely in years to come the English of the DM will be held up as an example of written communication at its best, where the language used ,with its absence of floridity and curlicues conveys exactly what the communicator wish to say with an absence of affectation, without attempting to impress with false erudition.
That, of course is why it is so popular with the educated middle classes of Britain; they can read what is happening easily and quickly and then get on with more important things
And it is precisely because it is popular with the educated middle classes that it is hated by the half-educated or dishonest left. (The honest educated left recognise the newspaper as a powerful means of communicating with the educated middle classes and seek to emulate it in communicating with their readership; the Daily Herald, that old Labour newspaper that became the Sun was so close to the DM in style that it could have had the same editor; the Morning Star is an unashamed copier of its style).
Next time you see someone berating the DM just check to see if they have any style.
In most cases you will see that they are the very distillation of the dullard, the compleat simpletons hardly capable of stringing more than two sentences together without confusing or contradicting themselves, and oddly (or at least it appears odd until you realise quite how stupid they are), most of them profess not to read such an awful newspaper, which really begs the question but in their typically vacuous fashion that question has eluded them, never actually occcured to them
Indeed slagging off the DM has become a shorthand for ‘I am of the left. Dim, with a dash of the dullard about me, that I like to unwittingly advertise by criticising the DM. You see I hate Britain, I hate the educated British middle class, and I can express my misanthropy toward everything British without actually expressing it by shouting about the DM’
It is a badge of bravado for the boorishly bovine, a precise indicator of indolence of intellect, moronic mindlessness, wankish witlessness, or disreputable dishonesty (or all)
Now do these truncated, dishonest intellects have any justification in their criticisms?
Yes of course they do!
The DM sometimes gets its facts wrong.
All newspapers sometimes get their facts wrong.
As you read this (or don’t read it} daily newspapers are preparing tomorrow’s edition. To do that they have to access news fast, with no time for investigation into whether they might be mistaken, whether the news that they have garnered might not be quite true; that is not the stuff of daily newspapers – they get the news, fast, and out, and if they are wrong then there are plenty of other newspapers who will happily point out their errors, and , of course, we have the radio and the Sunday newspapers to provide in-depth analysis of the news; indeed the daily newspapers have their own corrective mechanism in that they employ journalists to analyse and dissect the news one week or more after it has passed from the headlines
So yes, some of the criticism that the DM gets the news wrong is correct, just as the Guardian or any other newsppaer gets the facts wrong occasionally
Now let us look at the quality of the Journalist that the DM employs.
The list of distinguished serious journos and journalists that write entertainingly in a deliberately provocative way is really quite amazing, and should silence the intellectual incompetents that wear their bovine badges of bravado on their blazers.
Here are just a few that have contributed to the DM
Military Analyses
Max Hastings
Corelli Barnett
Richard Dannet
Martin Gilbert
Len Deighton
Christopher Hibbert
Alexander Clifford
John Keegan …. And many More
Political Analyses
Roy Hattersley
Mragret Thatcher
Blair
Brown
Major
Straw
Blunkett
Simon Heffer
Peter Hitchen
Julie Burchill
Richard Littlejohn
Deek Ingram
Melanie Philips
John Junor
Bernard Levin
Quentin Letts .. and many many others
General
Tom Utley
Ralph Izzard
David English
Keith waterhouse
George Orwell
Christopher Hitchens…. And many others
So the next time you see comments such as ‘that rag the Daily mail’ allow yourself a wry smile as a giant of the newspaper industry, a newspaper of the highest quality with outstanding writers and contributors, is assailed by some poncy intellectual pygmy struggling to express himself who nevertheless considers that expressing his graceless distaste for the DM is the summit of sophisticated satirical opprobium
It is a daily newspaper and like all newspapers its function is to inform, entertain and to express a political opinion.
And the style of its English is admirably suited to those purposes. Plain, easy to read, and attention-holding, its style is a paradigm for newspapers of today.
I am invariably impressed at how easily it condenses news and makes it very readable indeed.
Surely in years to come the English of the DM will be held up as an example of written communication at its best, where the language used ,with its absence of floridity and curlicues conveys exactly what the communicator wish to say with an absence of affectation, without attempting to impress with false erudition.
That, of course is why it is so popular with the educated middle classes of Britain; they can read what is happening easily and quickly and then get on with more important things
And it is precisely because it is popular with the educated middle classes that it is hated by the half-educated or dishonest left. (The honest educated left recognise the newspaper as a powerful means of communicating with the educated middle classes and seek to emulate it in communicating with their readership; the Daily Herald, that old Labour newspaper that became the Sun was so close to the DM in style that it could have had the same editor; the Morning Star is an unashamed copier of its style).
Next time you see someone berating the DM just check to see if they have any style.
In most cases you will see that they are the very distillation of the dullard, the compleat simpletons hardly capable of stringing more than two sentences together without confusing or contradicting themselves, and oddly (or at least it appears odd until you realise quite how stupid they are), most of them profess not to read such an awful newspaper, which really begs the question but in their typically vacuous fashion that question has eluded them, never actually occcured to them
Indeed slagging off the DM has become a shorthand for ‘I am of the left. Dim, with a dash of the dullard about me, that I like to unwittingly advertise by criticising the DM. You see I hate Britain, I hate the educated British middle class, and I can express my misanthropy toward everything British without actually expressing it by shouting about the DM’
It is a badge of bravado for the boorishly bovine, a precise indicator of indolence of intellect, moronic mindlessness, wankish witlessness, or disreputable dishonesty (or all)
Now do these truncated, dishonest intellects have any justification in their criticisms?
Yes of course they do!
The DM sometimes gets its facts wrong.
All newspapers sometimes get their facts wrong.
As you read this (or don’t read it} daily newspapers are preparing tomorrow’s edition. To do that they have to access news fast, with no time for investigation into whether they might be mistaken, whether the news that they have garnered might not be quite true; that is not the stuff of daily newspapers – they get the news, fast, and out, and if they are wrong then there are plenty of other newspapers who will happily point out their errors, and , of course, we have the radio and the Sunday newspapers to provide in-depth analysis of the news; indeed the daily newspapers have their own corrective mechanism in that they employ journalists to analyse and dissect the news one week or more after it has passed from the headlines
So yes, some of the criticism that the DM gets the news wrong is correct, just as the Guardian or any other newsppaer gets the facts wrong occasionally
Now let us look at the quality of the Journalist that the DM employs.
The list of distinguished serious journos and journalists that write entertainingly in a deliberately provocative way is really quite amazing, and should silence the intellectual incompetents that wear their bovine badges of bravado on their blazers.
Here are just a few that have contributed to the DM
Military Analyses
Max Hastings
Corelli Barnett
Richard Dannet
Martin Gilbert
Len Deighton
Christopher Hibbert
Alexander Clifford
John Keegan …. And many More
Political Analyses
Roy Hattersley
Mragret Thatcher
Blair
Brown
Major
Straw
Blunkett
Simon Heffer
Peter Hitchen
Julie Burchill
Richard Littlejohn
Deek Ingram
Melanie Philips
John Junor
Bernard Levin
Quentin Letts .. and many many others
General
Tom Utley
Ralph Izzard
David English
Keith waterhouse
George Orwell
Christopher Hitchens…. And many others
So the next time you see comments such as ‘that rag the Daily mail’ allow yourself a wry smile as a giant of the newspaper industry, a newspaper of the highest quality with outstanding writers and contributors, is assailed by some poncy intellectual pygmy struggling to express himself who nevertheless considers that expressing his graceless distaste for the DM is the summit of sophisticated satirical opprobium
