David Mellor writers for a tabloid that ironically calls itself 'The People'. David unironically refers to himself as 'Man of the People', despite the fact that his writing reveals him to be so grossly misanthropic that the vast majority of humanity would have a hard time identifying with the man.
Personally, I do not normally read tabloids, but I accidentally found myself flicking through a copy of The People, and came across Mr Mellor's column. I was so shocked by his language that I was unable to put the paper down.
I have never been the type to write complaining letters, but I am just so amazed to find an example of such blatant xenophobia that I have to say something.
"... Sixteen Afghans claimed political asylum. They have been let in. Are we mad or what?"
Welcome to the seedy underbelly of Britain, where xenophobic bigots like David can portray innocent people as psychotic, degenerate sex criminals. "Let's take a closer look at" David.
He spouts racist, misanthropic bile like it's his God given duty. He seems entirely obsessed with asylum seekers, which he falsely claims in print to be 'mainly bogus', without providing any data to back this claim. He also has an unhealthy concern with underage girls and their sexual activities.
"She breeds like a rabbit, knowing someone else will pick up the tab. Her nine children range from 21 to four months. They youngest is by an African."
He inarticulately manages to meld a number of concerns here, cleverly tieing in his hatred of the working class with his equal hostility towards other races.
"Amy is 12 and a slapper." He tells us, as if this is somehow news, as if his opinion of her needs to be shared. David's use of language here is stunning. Again, he's demonstrating that he really is 'one of the lads'. Because he's a 'working guy' too, in a way. It's just that he gets paid to shoot his mouth off about subjects he can never hope to understand, like someone has put the local alcoholic BNP supporter in front of a PC.
Under-age pregancy is real, and it is an issue that needs to be addressed, but not by the likes of Mellor, who seem to be under the mistaken impression that teen mothers are his enemy.
If a teenaged girl makes a choice to mother a child, it is based on the fact that she has nothing else of worth to do with her life. It is not done so that she can "live" off the system. The fact is people cannot live healthily on state benefits, but how would a wealthy upper class bigot like Mellor know this? "...It’s bloody true..." He assuers us.
"Little Amy smokes, and has some of her orifices pierced with metal." As if this (sadly in the case of the smoking) isn't a common occurance; as if these were the habits of single parent mum's exclusively? Are we supposed to be shocked by this? People have been piercing 'orifices' for thousands of years - what is he inferring here? "Her orifices are pierced with metal." Does he mean she has earrings? The accompanying picture shows that indeed, she does have earrings, and a nose stud. That's hardly shocking now is it? But no, in the eyes of someone like Mellor, it probably signifies that she's a prostitute, that she's 'asking to be hurt'. Mellor courts porn stars for Christ's sake!
If you don't like the way people live their lives, do you really believe that portraying them as degenerate "scum" will do anything to change them?
"... Pity that we can't take her down the vet's, like you would with an alley cat."
Sick. I cannot believe what goes on in this man's mind. Mellor is suggesting that this child is less than human. He is also suggesting that we employ some kind of grotesque, Nazi neutering campaign for Amy and other such "lowlifes".
"... Pity we can't take her down the vet's,.."
So given the chance, are we to assume that Mellor would take it upon himself to have the girls' pregnancy terminated, with or without Amy's consent? Imagine if Amy were Mellor's daughter?
"You've got to laugh, haven't you," says Mellor, "otherwise you'd cry." And you picture that gap-toothed smile.
Of course, I'm sure that Mellor does not find any of the stories he 'reports' amusing. He finds the people he writes about deeply offensive. They fail to conform to his right wing, white, male, wealthy, upper class view of what a human being should appear to be.
"She’s looking out for suitable council houses to knock through, in preparation for her own career of serial motherhood."
Now Mellor goes so far as to suggest that motherhood is some form of crime? I have to wonder where the man's misogyny is coming from.
It seems strange that Mellor should have so much concern for the questionable sex lives of strangers, when Mellor himself, a former minister, was obliged to resign from his position after admitting to having indulged in a variety of perverse sexual practices with a star of pornographic films (perhaps only slightly more suprising than the fact that Mellor is also a former arts columnist for The Guardian). In Mellor's eyes, women are "cheap", "lowlifes", less than human.
I would suggest that it is Mellor himself who is the "Lowlife" who would take "us for fools."
"May I share my private nightmare with you?" He asks. "It is that one-day I'll be the only bloke working, and everyone else will be living off me. And when you look at [Amy], you realise how near to reality that is becoming."
So is he, an ordinary "bloke", a "Man of the People" [who sleeps with porn stars and refers to "all" asylum seekers as "scum"], suggesting that even his readers are intent on living off of his hard earned cash? And does he actually believe that what he does is 'work', pewing out badly written, snide, playground misanthropy as if it's some kind of essential public service?
Don't get me wrong, I think it is a tragedy that Amy smokes and is pregnant at 12. She is a product of a system that offers one form of education for the rich, and an entirely (in) different, substandard one for the poor. This isn't Amy's fault, nor is it entirely her Mother's, who is almost certainly a product of that same system. A system that allows people like Mellor to air his hatred of all things working class in a paper carefully marketed to appeal to a predominantly working class readership.
I'm amazed that, in a society who's media uses sex to sell everything from pop music to toothpaste, people can be surprised when things like this happen. I'm more amazed at the way that people seem to think that all we have to do is lay the blame to solve the problem. Punishing the guilty won't stop the problem. Finding the cause of the problem and addressing it logically and carefully will.
No one wants to listen to the likes of Amy, yet anyone can read Mellor's mistanthropic bile.
What is Mellor doing to help? He is targeting victims of this system as the cause of the system's faults. Well done Mr Mellor, you really are a 'man of the people', or you would be, if we were all middle class, white, male, wealthy, bigoted and entirely ignorant of what modern life is actually like for most of us.
What is Mellor doing to help? Ultimately, in pouring scorn on subjects which essentially do not concern his life, in his own small way, he is encouraging his readership to turn against themselves. I am reminded of the behaviour of a cancer, consuming to such an extent that it ultimately kills its host, and itself in the process.
As a journalist for a national 'news' paper, even one so mind-numbingly ill-informed and sleazy as The People, Mr Mellor has a duty to his reader: rather than provide them with informed views, rather than entertain or speculate, he expects the reader to take his [hate filled, badly written, blinkered, reactionary, thoughtless, hypocritical] word as Gospel, he expects us all to hate the likes of Amy, a twelve year old child, with the intensity that he does. If Amy were a criminal, I would still question why I should feel obliged to hate her. How will hate help? How will hating her help me to understand her situation and perhaps insure that something like this doesn't happen in my family? Hate is not an answer. It is an emotional state, a harmful one, it not an intellectual state, and Mellor is not an intellectual. He is a wealthy bigot who dares to portray himself as 'one of us', whilst simaltaneously portraying the working class as "scum".
The thing that I find most offensive is the way that Mellor's hatred of the working class, of women, foreigners, immigrants and the asylum seekers he describes as "scum", is so blatant, not even thinly disguised. Even a dangerously right wing organisation like the British National Party know that they have to be cautious about their own misanthropy. Mellor simply doesn't care.
It seems clear that Mellor knows that his work is far from informed. He is part of a system that propogates the sleaze it claims to be condemning. Mellor himself has recently described tabloids as "sleazy."
The overweight, seedy-looking old bigot grins at us through gapped public schoolboy teeth, wincing like a sex criminal through a perverts spectacles. 'MAN OF THE PEOPLE' he assures us. What people exactly? British Nazis? Racists? Misogynists? Hardly a healthy cross-section of British society.
Mellor wears his misanthropic heart on his sleeve. It's so obvious I'm amazed that even a self confessed bigot can bear to read it.
If you would like to help David, he can be contacted at the following email address: daivd.mellor@mgn.co.uk
All quotes from David 'MAN OF THE PEOPLE' Mellor, The People, November 17, 2002
Rollo
posted by Rollo Kim @ Thursday, November 21, 2002
