If you’re me, one of the ways you know that broadcasters are getting desperate for a ‘balancing’ voice to counter a popular point of view is that large numbers of them start telephoning you. You realise they must be scraping the barrel. Never more so, of course, than when what’s sought is that elusive beast, an articulate right-winger who isn’t totally Neanderthal. I generally tell them (always good advice in a tight corner) to try Peter Hitchens or Janet Daley.
But unless (perfectly possible) I’ve missed their broadcast interventions, neither these, nor any of the rest of the small stable of stalwarts on the media right upon whom Britain has to rely for a volume of ‘balancing’ commentary out of all proportion to our numbers, has sprung to the defence of the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir.
Ms Moir last week wrote an entertainingly viperous attack on the late former-boy-band singer and openly gay celebrity Stephen Gately, ‘while his corpse’ (as Ms Moir’s innumerable critics keep protesting) ‘was still warm’. Moir’s column was slyly and nastily — but I must say expertly — done; and if it hadn’t been exceptionally well written it would have needled fewer readers and caused less offence. Moir even contrived to craft her column into an attack of civil partnerships generally, on the grounds that poor Mr Gately was in one.
The Press Complaints Commission has received a record number of complaints — thousands — and in due course will no doubt issue their judgment according to their code. I’m unversed in the PCC code and have no idea whether the Mail has breached it. I would be sorry, though, if Moir gets no support — not for an unpleasant piece of journalism, but for the right to publish it.
The gist of her column was that the sudden and perplexing death of the 32-year-old Mr Gately in Majorca (after coming back from a night’s clubbing with his partner and another man they’d met) has been treated too cosily by an adoring news and showbiz media. ‘Under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.’ Moir appears to challenge — or at least take imaginatively forward — a coroner’s verdict of death by ‘natural causes’. The death ‘strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships…’.
It should at once be said that everyone who knew Gately says he was a nice person, not druggy and not a big drinker. Moir brings to the media table no new theory about his death; and there is no reason to think his civil partnership was unhappy. The column was tendentious. It was intended to be.
So who can now be found to argue for free expression in this case? Even Moir’s own newspaper appears (at the time of writing) to have judged discretion the better part of valour, and more or less left her to the wolves. So, faute de mieux, it has fallen to me.
I have not the least hesitation in resisting calls for the effective censorship of such journalism. And to date (within a couple of days of the row breaking) I’ve done so on Sam Smith’s Sunday programme on Ireland’s Today FM; for half an hour (being shouted at by callers) on Radio 5 Live; on BBC Radio Northern Ireland; and for ITN, who even sent a broadcasting van to my remote house in the Derbyshire Peak District. Bloggers have been in touch too, and I’ve had to turn down BBC Radio Wales, and the opportunity (offered twice) to make a ‘package’ for The One Show. By the time you read this there will have been many more outlets for my perfectly unexceptionable defence of vigorous commentary after the mysterious death of a young celebrity.
I welcome them. The case against Moir is not as strong as has been suggested. Her assertions and suggestions amount, really, to three. First, that there may have been more to Gately’s death, and of a seedier nature, than meets the eye. This seems a not unnatural speculation on a matter of great public curiosity. Few, I recall, took the coroner’s verdict on the drowning of the late Robert Maxwell as the last word on the subject. For myself, I’m prepared to accept Gately’s coroner’s rather sparse judgment as the last word. Some wouldn’t.
Second, an opinion: that Gately or/and his partner were behaving disgracefully in bringing somebody home. This strikes me as the expression of a point of view that millions (not me) would share.
Finally, Moir uses the incident as a parable for the less than happy-ever-after nature of some civil partnerships. The reasoning is fatuous, but the point of view is one it would be odd to try to ban. If third parties are invited home for sex (though apparently not with Gately), it is reasonable to expect commentary on whether a partnership was ideal.
What, then, of the wave of public outrage? That is a fact. Should it not be deferred to? I say not. The outrage is real, but has been provoked at least in part by the opportunity that social networking sites now offer to get bandwagons running. Stephen Fry, among others, ‘tweeted’ to his 869,000 Twitter followers his exhortation that people make a complaint. Fair enough. But we gays should be very, very careful about using figures for the crude numbers of those claiming to have taken offence as a knock-down argument. We gays, too, say and do and advocate things that cause real offence to millions. If you want to see outrage and calls for censorship organised by the moral right rather than by pro-diversity liberals, look to America — and tremble.
This incident may be telling us more about the rising influence of social networking than it is about one silly newspaper article. Pace any amount of progressive modern commentary, the fact that offence is taken is not of itself proof that it was reasonably taken. You can look at the numbers — you should — but in the end you must always look at the complaint.
When it comes to the taking of offence, not every minority group has chosen the same path. Pro-Israel (and to a lesser extent pro-Palestine) groupings, like the disabled lobby, have tended to react fast, angrily and in an organised way to counter the publication of material they regard as offensive. The Irish, on the other hand, and to some extent British Indians, have tended to react in a more relaxed manner. I’d argue that making citizens (and journalists) nervous about voicing criticism, for fear of angry recriminations, builds up real but buried resentments against your group. We gays have a choice. I’d like us to go the Irish way: smile at the poofta jokes when they’re funny, shrug our shoulders at the insults and act grown up.
So, speaking for myself, should I die in baffling circumstances, friends and enemies alike are invited to speculate on an underlying health problem, hitherto undisclosed, caused when once I attempted to ski naked down the slopes of Mont Blanc with a bunch of gladioli stuck up my bottom. Publish this — ignore the feelings of my hordes of fans and grieving relatives. And see if I care.
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