DM, you okay hun? x
Fair play to the Mail. They’ve taken a break from publishing paparazzi shots of underage girls with noncey declarations that they’re ‘all grown up’, and ‘news’ of why Muslims/travellers/gays/foreigners/feminists/Jeremy Corbyn want to steal your pension/daughter and give you cancer. Just to mix things up between articles on why Raheem Sterling is spending too much (or too little) of his own money, and exclusives about what exactly Princess Diana’s ghost will be wearing at the Royal Wedding, they’ve found time to write about Alexis Sanchez.
So what angle have they taken? Perhaps a detailed tactical analysis of how the Chilean will fit into the Manchester United team alongside Romelu Lukaku, Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford and Paul Pogba (all starring in the Mail’s new Netflix show – Black Players In Cars Going To Training)? Or maybe a thoughtful piece at how his signing will impact on Jose Mourinho’s sometimes strained relationship with the Old Trafford hierarchy? Nope. The Mail, in all their Brexit-addled wisdom, went with the following journalistic slant:
Let’s just take a moment to fully absorb that headline/paragraph. ‘Alexis Sanchez is being paid more by Manchester United…’ good, strong start – people loooove banging on about much he’s being paid. This’ll do numbers for sure…‘…than it cost to rebuild his home town after a devastating earthquake…’ Whoooooaaa there Nelly! We weren’t expecting that plot twist! ‘…but the locals still love him’ They DO?! What, after he accepted a job offer for significant cash monies, despite the fact a natural disaster occurred over a decade ago? Well, they’re more forgiving than me.
By anyone’s standards – even one as carpet-skimming as that of the Mail – it’s quite the leap. It takes a special kind of imagination to conjure up a headlining connection between a footballer’s wage, and a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed people, damaged the local copper mining industry, trapped commuters in a collapsed highway tunnel, and displaced 15,000 locals. An 88-year-old pensioner was crushed under a collapsing wall in her home, but fuck yeah! Let’s use it as an angle to highlight the fact that a much sought-after sportsman is being paid a fair wedge!
No doubt there’s some level of actual research and journalistic endeavour that’s gone into the actual body of the piece – even excusing the nonsensical mention of the 2007 Tocopilla earthquake that left locals mourning and homeless – but it is completely and utterly undermined by the atrocity of a headline above it. And indeed by the masthead of the Daily Mail above that. Maybe it’s a private joke at the Mail offices – who can concoct the most ridiculous non-correlation of a leader as possible. If so, I’m in! Here’s a few off the top of my head…
‘The Mail attack celebrities they don’t like by accusing them of not paying taxes, whilst their owner has nom-dom status to avoid paying tax…but their readers don’t see the hypocrisy’
‘The Mail moan about Twitter hate mobs at the same time as printing rabble-rousing headlines like ‘ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE’ about judges doing their jobs…but people still buy it’
‘The Mail literally ran an editorial entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ in support of actual fascists and spew racist, xenophobic, fascist content every day of the week…but yet is still sold in real shops’
Ah fuck it, I’m shit at this.
