Chris Co

Right Thinking

by Chris Co

Tuesday 1st May 2012 12:18 pm

Right wing and reactionary

Daily Mail politique,

you fought the ‘right thinking’ mans war

jousting logic- anger was your shield.

Well you can prove anything with facts

can’t you!

Dispelling reality

you insisted the world

into blacks and white,

contemptuous of all complexity.

You pitted words against worlds,

pet theory’s against nature,

ignorance - against the tide

of mankind’s ambition.

Oh righteous indignation of a nation

Oh Lady Di taxi driver dreams!

Oh Immigrants and shirkers

benefit cheats and burkas!

The picture’s all wrong

you said. Yea, but the pieces

fit when forced.

You never understood

why life didn’t match your view.

Claimed; ‘it’s the puzzle that’s wrong’,

and for you - for all your thoughts

it was.

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Comments

Lynn Dye

Mon 7th May 2012 14:20

Hi Chris,
Only just read all this, and have to say, I very much agree with your views on right wing press brainwashing the masses. Keep writing!

Chris Co

Thu 3rd May 2012 16:45

Hi everyone- thx for reading and commenting- appreciated.

Warning- very long comment...

Where to start? lol

I guess when we write poetry, we open up a can of worms. In not writing in a detailed explicit way; the very thing that is great about poetry also creates headaches lol. The curse of valid, yet entirely different 'interpretations'. I joke, but you know what I mean.

In writing this poem I mentioned one particular newspaper and their politics as by way of implying their implied values. But it wasn't my intention for the Daily Mail to be the point of the poem. I could have just as easily hung my hat and language on the Daily Express or TalkSport radio (at least when it had right wing shock jock radio shows). I picked one paper that to me was indicative and representative of the issues I wanted to deal in. I used the Daily Mail in one line; representatively to go on to speak about people affected by the tabloid right wing press and right wing radio.

As I see it these nefarious organisations sear their misogynistic, racist, homophobic and scaremongering attacks on minorities (underhand right agenda) into the national conscience. Their overt and implied values seep down into their target audience and help to misinform a great number of people (often the least informed to begin with) and the results of this are far from pleasant.

How many times have you got into a taxi and had a conversation instigated about immigration and getting ‘them out’? How many times have you had that conversation where you know the individual concerned has been primed by the agenda of these forces? How many times has that conversation gone along where you have come to realize that the person you are speaking to; has no understanding of the difference between asylum seekers and economic migrants?

How many times have you got into a conversation with someone relating to Muslims; where the word Muslim has a negative connotation attached to it, that being either terrorism or immigrant? How many times have you spoken to, watched or listened to a debate on the welfare system or the health care system and heard working class people in effect mouthing right wing policies? Polices that in no way shape or form would be representative of their socio-economic interests? How many times have you heard welfare blamed for the cause of all woes?

Just to give you some figures on the latter, something that I hope to afford reasoned comment to;

The cost of welfare fraud to the UK is 1.6 billion pounds- fact. Pretty high until you consider that that tax fraud cost the UK economy 14 billion pounds- another fact. Tax avoidance (perfectly legal- though immoral) costs the UK economy an estimated 90 billion pounds. The only figure there that is an estimate is the last one; the other two are government figures.

So given the above, why does the Daily mail, The Daily Express, TalkSport etc...Why have the focused almost exclusively on welfare costs over and above the much more significant tax fraud or the issue of tax avoidance? More importantly, why is it that the welfare story is pretty much the only one of those three stories they cover? Back to the conversation at the bus stop, the talk with the mechanic on getting your car mot, the taxi ride home, the chat in the pub etc...guess what we hear? Do we hear about tax fraud? Do we hear about tax avoidance? or do we hear about welfare cheats?

When it comes to the pensions debate, do we hear about public pensions in a positive light in these very same types of conversation? My experience is- no. Same goes for NHS and cutbacks. Everything in my experience is coloured in the same pissy light. The agenda of these organisations has seemingly coloured everything.

It has become an expectation to hear many fellow working class people mouthing right wing, narrow minded politics. These papers sell themselves to the working class and once they're read or listened to; they seep into peoples minds and misinform in the way Fox News does in the US.

I feel sorry for the person in this poem and everyone out there who has this mantra.
I despise their viewpoints on the world, viewpoints that are ludicrously simplistic (almost child-like) skewed and warped beyond all reality.

BUT!

I can at least have respect for honest right wing views (this next bit is important) presented in a GENUINE way for adults. But there is nothing honest about the way these organisations peddle their agenda. They do not say what they are and they deliberately dumb-down and write what Aristotle would call 'the noble lie'. That is to say; they are quite prepared to misrepresent reality with shocking propaghanda.
They are quite willing to use anecdotes and a whole host of logical fallacies, such as ad hominem, non sequiturs etc anything to get the job done...to sell ring wing policy to their target audience. This is why these papers are mocked so disparagingly by the genuine right, center and left.

Sorry for waffling so much.

I can see how putting up the picture of Richard LittleJohn helped to aid the interpretation of this poem being solely about the Daily Mail. If you think/take the 'you' mentioned in the poem as either the Daily Mail or Richard Littlejohn rather than a 3rd person influenced by the tabloid right; this is an entirely valid way to interpret the poem...just not my intention.

P.S

Although no paper can be said to be lacking bias (not even an honest historian or translator can strictly be said to be lacking bias). We have to be very careful of not affording moral equivalence where it is not warranted. The centrist or papers of the left are bias, bias in the same way other broadsheets of the right are bias. But they do have much higher standards of journalistic practice than the papers we are talking about here. They are not treated with derision across the board in private quarters by the left and the right the way these papers are. Few other media organisations cause the very real and worrying social problems that these papers do.

All my opinion of course.

I think we have all met the person in this poem- agree or not about the source of their views.

If you got to the end of this agree or not with my politics- well done and thx for reading the poem.

Best Chris

M.C. Newberry

Thu 3rd May 2012 15:08

It is my view that the popular press might be
summed up (political leanings aside) as...
Rudely reprehensible,
Impolitely indispensable.

Yvonne Brunton

Wed 2nd May 2012 22:34

Oho, vitriolic indeed! But is any paper unbiased? Since the Mail is so popular It is preaching to(or subliminally persuading) a captive audience. Should this actually be allowed?
Is one of the reasons for your outpourings, Chris, linked to the fact that, as a poet, you know/feel the power of words far more sensitively than your average Mail reader.
We are surrounded by subliminal propaganda which I do not think is a very moral or ethical approach to the dissemination of information.

Laura Taylor

Wed 2nd May 2012 15:58

Just weighing in to agree 100% with Chris (even though he doesn't ask or need it!). It's a right wing arsewipe of a rag, and I am constantly surprised at what it gets away with.

Erm, MCN - SEXISM?! Sometimes I read your comments in complete bemusement.

M.C. Newberry

Wed 2nd May 2012 15:50

And it's not even owned by the Murdoch empire!
It is not possible to be human and not have
prejudices. That's just about as likely as being elevated to sainthood.
You choose this opportunity to express your own
strongly held views to the world. Newspapers
do similar: sometimes leading, sometimes
following, but always mindful of the larger
picture, no doubt because they are a product
dependent on sales - and the market: the millions of people "out there" who dictate those. No one has to buy the Daily Mail but
millions do. There, then, in vast numbers, is
surely the real "foe".
As for the myth-laden "working class"...how quickly we hear accusations of "selling out" if any aspire to improve their lot.
""Scab" is one of the less appetising choices
from the lexicon of hate and envy that permeate
the "left", ignorant that a scab is nature's
protection of a wound.
Yours is a forceful view sourced from your own
reasons but attacking ONE newspaper is like
attacking water: it merely slips around and
adjusts to its level again for others to find
and refresh themselves...however fetid and brackish the water is thought to be by abstainers

Chris Co

Tue 1st May 2012 17:23

I can only speak for myself M.C, not any one else, so I'll do that. I despise the Daily Mail, because it is a filthy rag of a newspaper that presents bigoted, racist, homophobic, narrow minded opinions as though they were facts.

It colours in a horrible fetid, pissy light so many issues, from imigration and Europe to the healthcare and welfare systems. It does that whilst like the Daily Express having an unhealthy mawkish appetite for Lady Diana...our true queen of hearts (sic).

Like shock-jock radio talksport, it along with one or two other rag newspapers informs (kindly via its propaganda) so many of our most ill informed citizens. It does so by pretending to be a friend to the working class man in the street, despite the fact that it is a run by right wing news interests with about as much in common with the working class as an episode of Dallas set on the fucking moon.

We could talk about the number and type of disgusting stories (stories is about the right word) it peddles. Stephen Gately's death? We could talk about the hate crimes and prejudice that are caused by the rag...but nope.

I'd rather just say that it has had Richard LittleJohn working for it as a columnist and on that alone stick my boot hard into it! For which I make no apology...even if it isn't the main focus of the poem.

None of the above defends any other newspaper, or any other form or forms of prejudice. If I were to write an all encompassing peace about the nature of our entire media...that would be a story or article...not a poem.

P.S

The poem is a culmination, a homogenisation of views I have personally seen and heard expressed by the very narrow minded who just happened to be influenced by such sources. But the poem itself is about ignorance personified in the dictionary definition/sense. It is about how restrictive, sad and punishing such views are upon the individual's that hold such views and the people that come into contact with them...especially loved ones.

I ask for no agreement...it's not why I write.

Best

Chris

M.C. Newberry

Tue 1st May 2012 15:55

It is interesting that the Daily Mail - with a
huge circulation - is frequently attacked and
vilified - as if its popularity was a threat.
I have given up noting the number of times it gets a mocking mention in BBC programmes like
"Have I Got News For You" and "Mock The Week".
I get another red-top so I have no particular
axe to grind - but the smug liberal offensives irk even me!
One last point - the DM is very popular with women readers so it would be easy to rebut the
criticism it gets with cries of "sexism"! The
biter bit, as it were.

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