A bumpy landing

Apparently Christmas isn't just a time for wanton consumption, gluttony and liver abuse. According to Wikipedia it's also some kind of religious holiday (who knew?) when we're supposed to remember those less fortunate than ourselves.

So spare a thought for the people who'll be spending this December shivering in the cold, pressing their drippy noses at the window and gazing enviously at our plentiful feasts. People like Liz Jones, everyone's favourite professional victim and Mail columnist.

Despite pleading poverty several months ago (inspiring hundreds of old people to hand over their meagre pensions so that she could buy organic cat food) our intrepid journalist recently packed up her Vuitton luggage and headed off to Bolivia. How was she to know that while she was away, Britain would descend into wintery chaos.

The poor woman left her hotel in La Paz assuming that she had a relatively stress-free return flight ahead of her, only to find herself stranded in Schipol airport as Heathrow was all-but closed over the weekend. Displaying an ever-present flair for the dramatic, Liz describes the scene that met her in Amsterdam as being similar to that which might follow "a shipwreck or an earthquake". People were forced to change clothes in the terminal, breastfeed in public and, brace yourself, sleep "open-mouthed".

She couldn't understand the Tannoy or find her luggage, an experience that left her feeling like "the walking dead". By now, your eyes are probably blinking back hot tears, so I'll try to spare you some of the gory details of the experience which left Liz "stripped of [her] humanity". Suffice it to say, she found the airport staff unwelcoming and seemingly immune to her cries of "But all my Christmas presents are in the suitcase". It didn't help matters that her weather-appropriate boots were also packed away in her case, leaving her to tramp around a snowy airport in flip-flops.

Now, the churlish readers amongst you might chuckle at the utter lack of common sense it takes to fly back to the UK in late December wearing flimsy beach-wear. But Liz has never been over-endowed with any kind of capability for lateral thinking. Remember, she's the victim here.

And yet, even in the depths of despair, our kind-hearted correspondent was able to empathise with her fellow passengers. Having asked for information about arranging an alternative flight to the UK, Liz says "I was given a piece of paper by another mute employee; this had a phone number on it. (Anyone without a mobile – old ladies, nuns, the weak, the injured – were culled.)" Although, I'm sure that, if push came to shove, even Mother Teresa could have operated a payphone.

After a flight that involved waiting on the runway "for what seemed like the rest of my life" (if only), Liz found herself in Birmingham. It was here that Liz was able to get a lift with another passenger to heathrow. This good Samaritan's name, or the circumstances of his selfless offer? Fuck that - this is Liz's story; there's no room for bleeding-heart liberalism here.

Sadly, Heathrow was even worse than Schipol. Her car was buried under a 'mound' of snow, leaving her unable to unlock it. And the security staff were no use, even when Liz banged on the window of the closed airport and "mimed driving a car".

If you've gnawed your fingers down to the knuckles at this point, wondering whether Liz would ever get home to her hydrotherapy and macrobiotic pet sanctuary, don't worry - it gets better. Industrious to the last, our plucky heroine was able to fashion a makeshift snow shovel from a Pixie Lott CD, and finally made good her escape from the coldest Colditz of car parks.

But she doesn't blame the airport staff who were deaf to her need for unwarranted prioritisation. She understands that the reason they "stood, mute and uncomprehending, shoulders shrugging, staring into space" was because they were contemplating "the life they could have had". Nice touch.

Here's the thing. We all have bad customer experiences - times when we curse our rotten luck and wonder if things could possibly get any worse. Only to discover, moments later, that it already has. We even take to blogs, Twitter and facebook, to find a friendly ear and a sympathetic tut of understanding.

Liz's problem is that she doesn't understand the fundamental problem at the heart of her writing. Liz feels that, because her case was laden with gifts, the airport staff should have been more understanding. And although she relates the story of an elderly couple worried about missing their grandson's first Christmas, she still misses the point.

It's not that the staff don't care. It's that they can't. With tens of thousands of irritated, agitated would-be travellers descending on them, they have to adopt a degree of distance in order to get the job done. When you've heard one sob story, you've heard ten thousand of them.

At times of crisis, everyone has a horror story to share. Unfortunately, in Liz's world, hers is the only one that counts. In the end, she wasn't "stripped" of her humanity, she just discovered what it is to be part of it.

What not to wear, or read

With a haul of awards that threatens to wrench even the sturdiest mantelpiece away from the wall, Lady Gaga can rightly consider last week's appearance at the VMAs a triumph. As she hung her meat dress up in the walk-in fridge, I wonder if she took a moment to reflect back on the last 18 months.

Seemingly overnight she's gone from electronic pop novelty to the world's biggest music star, Queen of Twitter and the most popular living person on Facebook. Not bad for a woman who spends half her time looking for giant inanimate objects to balance on her head.

But you don't inspire that kind of following without ruffling a few feathers. Which is why post-feminist social commentator Camille Paglia found the popster worthy of her own specialist brand of verbosely over-analysed critique.

In a lengthy article (no-one seems to know exactly how lengthy, since most of it is tucked away behind Rupert Murdoch's infuriating paywall) Paglia attempts to deconstruct the myth of Gaga - ultimately blaming her for 'the death of sex'.

Labelling her the 'Diva of Deja Vu', Paglia tears strips off the chart-dominating 'icon of her generation' (which, given last Sunday's outfit, might have made for a very nice carpaccio). But I have to admit feeling a little disappointed with the depth of Paglia's understanding - you hardly need to sit on the board of a humanities journal to figure out that "Lady Gaga is a manufactured personality". What next? Gaga's not a real blonde? Actually, yes, that gets mentioned too.

Ultimately, Paglia's real error is in condemning Gaga for being unsexy, comparing her to "a gangly marionette or plasticised android". The content of Gaga's videos and music may be heavily sexualised, but it's rarely intended to be sexy. In the same way that it's possible to eroticise something without being erotic.

If you thought that Paglia's eviscerating attack was tough, that's nothing compared with what Liz Jones has in store for The Artist Formerly Known As Stefani Germanotta. At least that's how it probably sounded inside Liz's raven-haired head.

A couple of weeks ago she tried to follow in the footsteps of Julia Roberts' portrayal of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert. Sadly, the only thing anyone will have taken from the article is a profound sense of pity for a woman reduced to recreating a shot from the movie - sitting on a Rome bench eating sorbet with a plastic spoon.

Liz Jones is no Julia Roberts. Then again, she's no Camille Paglia either, as her latest article makes woefully clear. Feeding off the scraps that Camille Paglia obviously felt were beneath her, Liz attempts to offer new insight into "the strange exhibitionist...who steals other performers' creativity and claims it as her own". There's a definite irony here that she's clearly missed.

Ignoring the fact that art, fashion and music constantly recycle and re-appropriate ideas, Liz lists a litany of far more creative and innovative artists - Courtney Love, David Bowie, Victoria Beckham. I wish I was making that last one up, but no, apparently Victoria invented the concept of wearing a hat.

In Liz's mind (a dark, feverish maelstrom I can't even begin to imagine) Lady Gaga is more con than artist. But surely the point of any artist is to provoke discussion, debate and multiple interpretations. If so, Gaga deserves to be installed in the Louvre. And Liz Jones deserves to be slowly devoured by her beloved cats.

On the scrounge

The Daily Mail has been waging a war on benefits for years now, using broad brushstrokes to portray anyone receiving any kind of government hand-outs as worthless, lazy and ignorant. According to the Mail, innocent hard-working middle class people are toiling away so that families on council estates can buy plasma TVs and Playstations.

So it's hard to know what they were thinking by publishing Liz Jones latest self-indulgent and staggeringly ironic column. You remember Liz - she moved to Somerset and wrote a book about how all the villagers were toothless, banjo-plucking inbreeds then wondered why no-one liked her.

Liz's other main claim to fame, other than have a writing style that makes the Peppa Pig books look like Tolstoy, is the fact that she blew over half a million pounds on clothes when working as an editor with Marie Claire.

Since admitting that she was in debt last November, her articles have become a weekly confessional, allowing her to gripe about unscrupulous banks and money lenders.

A heartless pragmatist might suggest that Liz should cut her cocktail gown according to her cloth, and perhaps downsize some of the extravagances in her life - when money's tight do you really need a gardener? And perhaps a train ticket might have made more sense when traveling into London, since Liz says "The poorer you are, the more day-to-day life costs a fortune, the harder it becomes to claw your way out – last Tuesday, I didn’t have £8 for the Congestion Charge, and so I now owe Transport for London £60."

Last week, Liz wrote in You Magazine that she felt close to suicide, "I was in despair. I had no one to turn to. I won’t go into why I found myself unable to afford food, heating, petrol. I can only say I was landed with a huge project with no warning, and stupidly continued it so as not to throw a dozen or so people out of work." That's Liz, always thinking of others.

In the days that followed, Liz found her bullet-riddled mailbox (like I said, her neighbours aren't fans) filled with envelopes from concerned Mail readers. They contained touching personal notes, cheques, offers of donations, and lots of lottery tickets.

One woman wrote "I’m a 77-year-old widow on a state pension, but I’d do anything for my cat, Josh. I’ve won £50 on Premium bonds and I want you to have it, so how can I get it to you?" Another £50 came from a 56-year-old disabled woman whose husband had given up work to care for her.

Liz ends her column by saying "We’re always being told we live in a broken society. That we’re greedy. My faith in human nature has been restored." The problem is, it's the Daily Mail that invented the concept of Broken Britain. And the venal greed she refers to is the grotesque consumption that got her into this mess in the first place.

How lovely that it took the foolish generosity of idiotic pensioners to make her feel positively about her fellow man. Like the credulous fools who send their life savings to preachers and televangelists, these people can't see the awful hypocrisy that's staring them in the face.

Liz may have a renewed faith in human nature, but mine has taken a serious hit.

You're not going out looking like that

Liz Jones needs to watch a good porno. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the permanently pissy pundit is sexually frustrated - I'm sure she's found countless ways of fruitfully filling her days on the farm in Somerset. But if she's going to accuse every female pop star of turning their videos into pornography, she really needs to jog her memory about what it's supposed to look like.

It might also help, if she's going to position herself as a champion of women, that she take a slightly more positive view of her own sex. Because, on the strength of her latest article in the Mail, they're all a bunch of weak-willed, underdressed whores who spend their whole time looking to be violated.

Liz's problems (well, the ones I'm going to address today at least) began when the not-exactly-dowdy psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos submitted a report to the Home Office on violence against women. In her report, she argued that provocative pop videos shown before the watershed are exacerbating the problem: 'Children and young people today are not only exposed to increasing amounts of hypersexualised images, they are also sold the idea that they have to look "sexy" and "hot".'

Sniffing out the chance to bash a few women in the name of 'sisterhood' Liz picked up this story and ran with it. Unfortunately, along the way, she forgot to visit anywhere even remotely close to coherence.

Whereas some women like to work through their issues with a vigorous kickboxing class, Liz is more than happy sticking the knife into everyone from Madonna (like shooting a fishwife in a barrel) and Beyonce to Shakira and Girls Aloud.

Take Rihanna for example. The Barbados beauty's last album yielded a remarkable eight hit singles, including Umbrella which managed to top the UK charts for ten weeks. And yet Liz charitably describes her as "an American pop star most famous for having been beaten up by her boyfriend." In an critique so surreal that David Lynch would have trouble following its logic, Liz shares her disdain for Rihanna's new video because she dresses "in leather bondage gear... writhes on a floor [and]...sits astride a zebra." Maybe Liz's taste in porn is a little more underground than we gave her credit for.

As if further evidence of that were needed, consider the fact that when Liz sees a women lying prone it can mean only one thing - they "look as though they have been or are about to be raped."

It's all getting a bit much for the poor, demented soul. In the name of research she bravely spent 24 hours watching MTV to make sure she didn't sound out of touch (I think we can consider that a fail on all counts), commenting "My eyes hurt. My brain has lapsed into a confused coma. I felt nauseated one moment, bored out of my skull the next." Which is strange, because she could have been describing how I felt by the time I got to the end of her article.

But before pop music gets consigned to the graveyard shift, alongside the infomercials for Nads hair removal, perhaps we should consider the role of parents in all this. Sorry - there's no point. David Cameron can't even stop his "very young daughter listening to Lily Allen's music" so what hope do the rest of us have? Well, the rest of us might retain control of our iTunes account, or observe the 'parental advisory' sticker on the CD before we bought it.

Of course, it's not just the music videos that have got Liz seething with puritanical rage. MTV's other output also has a lot to answer for. There are 'reality' shows featuring "hysterical, tanned, fake-breasted imbeciles with names like Brittany" and "hip-hop's answer to Whose Line Is It Anyway?, in which a half-naked girl is leered at by sportswear-clad men who have nothing witty whatsoever to say to her". Imagine that - girls called Brittany, and young men clad in sportwear. It's like the tenth circle of hell has been discovered in Liz Jones' Freeview box.

That's why she's so busy lamenting the female stars of yesteryear: "Where are the Carole Kings, the Tracy Chapmans, even the Bjorks of today?" she asks plaintively. Perhaps if she'd spent more time researching her favourite artists and less time watching Tila Tequila's bisexual dating show, she might have noticed that Carole King recently toured Japan with major R&B stars Mary J. Blige and Fergie.

Ultimately, Liz is concerned that girls and young women are having their self-image destroyed by a barrage of negative images. This lack of positive role models is giving them an unrealistic perspective on what it takes to be successful.

Rather than tuning into MTV, perhaps impressionable young women should pick up a good magazine and embrace the unattainable world of high fashion instead. It worked for Liz - although she did famously boast that she blew half a million pounds on her shopping addiction whilst working as the Fashion Editor of Marie Claire. And all in the pursuit of looking 'sexy' and 'hot'. Dr Linda would be so disappointed.

Have you met Ms Jones?

If you've ever considered leaving behind the big city rat-race for a life of rural peace and tranquility, you may want to think twice about it, in light of writer Liz Jones' experiences. The Mail on Sunday columnist left North London for a quieter country life in Brushford, West Somerset, but it turns out not to have been her smartest move.

It seems that the culture clash between townie and yokel is alive and well in Somerset, and the locals are not too happy to have Ms Jones living in their midst. Despite the fact that, in her own words, Liz 'puts a lot back into the community' the people of Brushford have rejected her and instigated a campaign of intimidation to drive her out.

In an article entitled 'My terror over gun attack on my Exmoor home' the trembling writer tells about her horrifying ordeal - as her metal mailbox was peppered with pellets. Apparently, this act of merciless savagery has left her in fear for her life and seriously considering another relocation. But she gravely warns that "If I go, a lot of people will be put out of work. My gardener, my groom, the builders, everyone."

So why on Earth would this kind-hearted one-woman-Job-Centre be subjected to such Straw Dogs treatment? It may have something to do with her regular columns in the Mail, and the book she published called The Exmoor Files, detailing her attempts to assimilate into the community.

Some thin-skinned locals have taken exception to her regular commentary on the toothless men, the shelf-stackers with 'learning difficulties' and the propensity for in-breeding in the area. As a consequence, Liz is shocked that people could be so small minded as to reject her, just because she has turned her sneering judgements into a lucrative publishing venture.

But as Janet Street Porter cautions, Liz needs to try exercising a little humility and compassion if she wants to be part of the community. To put it bluntly, Liz ought to heed the old adage - don't shit on your own doorstep. Or your neighbours' for that matter.