surely it is because it is 'liberal' issues, identity politics, race, gender, they nearly alway have the biggest import, then again I wonder if folk know that 2200 people signed a pledge to oppose the proposed abolition of DLA after the welfare site, benefits and work did a call out, that is unprecedented for such an issue.
btw, i am not demeaning the actions of people who challenged this article, well, maybe priorities...
Well, sort of. There's a point there, but it's hidden.
I added my tuppence to the complaints over this article. (For the record, I happen to have read it in the paper edition before hearing of the 'campaign'. I make it my business to read a wide selection of papers). I do believe in freedom of speech, (which Moir has, and which she exercised) but I also have freedom of speech, and I used it to challenge Moir's views.
The reason I challenged Moir's views is that I think her article crossed a line into inciting hatred and encouraging discrimination. (Not, incidentally, specifically because she "smeared a dead boy band singer", but because she used his death to make a wider attack on gay people). I think I was right to do so, and I was heartened that many others did also.
I have also challenged articles and reports which tell lies about strikes, which smear the working class, and which misreport on a variety of issues. I think I am right to do that also. (eg: I challenged a Nick Robinson report on the Lindsey refinery, I have challenged the BBC over the Gaza appeal, I have challenged the Telegraph over the Postal dispute and so on...this goes right back to challenging the BBC over Orgreave). It is therefore simplistic to imply that because someone complains about the Moir piece, they have their priorities wrong. It is one 'campaign'.
However, and here's the point lurking, it is true that this is an issue that is far more media-friendly that the Nick Robinson fabrication about the Lindsey dispute. The liberal media - the Guardian, for example - is much more comfortable backing this issue than it is backing class issues.
So, while there is a campaign model here which may give us hope that modern communication methods can be used effectively, that has to be tempered with the reality that there is still a civil society which has to be negotiated and which still has a consensus (a Common Sense, in the Gramscian jargon) that class issues are "old fashioned", "chippy" and so on. In other words, the middle class still enforces an information bottle neck.
However, if asked if I think it is good that I live in a society in which now more than
22, 000 have complained about homophobia in a Daily Mail article ("more complaints in a single weekend than it has had in the past five years"), then I do.
