The bitch is back

Imagine Jan Moir's frustration - a handsome young gay TV presenter wanks himself to death and she can't say what's really on her mind. Having famously blamed Stephen Gately's death on his lifestyle, rather than the congenital heart defect that actually killed him, here was the perfect opportunity for the poisonous podgester to resume her one woman crusade. But unlike the arsonists who can't resist returning to the scene of their crime, Jan managed to bite her forked tongue and let this auto-erotic escapade pass by.

The problem is, ugly sentiments like hate and malice will eventually bubble to the surface. And poor old Kate Winslet is bearing the brunt.

Today Jan published a breathtakingly cruel attack on the Oscar winning actress, simply because her marriage to director Sam Mendes has failed. There's nothing like kicking someone when they're down.

With a metaphorical deerstalker perched on her fat head, Moir sets about picking apart the ruins of Winslet's relationship. In the absence of any incriminating weapons, Jan has to resort to the age-old technique favoured by crooked cops everywhere - planting evidence.

Jan's Jessica Fletcher-instincts were first triggered when she saw Kate at the Oscars, looking "a little glum" and "clinging to Jeff Bridges" when presenting an award. She even imagines an alternative scenario where Kate and Jeff wrestle on the floor of the auditorium. It's enough to make Columbo squint.

At first, it almost seems as though Jan is genuinely sad for the once-happy couple's loss. She even describes them as the seemingly perfect couple, grounded, talented and attractive.

But like all the great detectives, she's just lulling people into a false sense of security by pretending she's on their side. Jan thinks Kate and Sam looked too alike for the marriage to work, commenting "It would take sonar imaging to fathom the daily depths of narcissism they must have experienced as they once devotedly looked into each other's eyes."

As for Kate, well, she's no better than the council mums that Jan likes to take occasional pot shots at - "How has girl-next-door Kate Winslet found herself, at the age of 34, with two divorces already on the charge sheet and two children to care for... Despite her professions of normalcy, Kate is an ultra-glam Hollywood film star... yet even she cannot keep a man, or make a marriage work."

Is it normal for someone to express quite so much glee in someone else's misery, especially when children are involved and there's no evidence of foul play on either side?

The way Jan sees it, Hollywood marriages have no chance of working. The stars live in a "gated community of celebrity life" where they develop warped sensibilities and "grow used to being the magnetic north in any social or work situation."

Kate Winslet has never presented herself as anything other than an ordinary girl from Reading who has been fortunate enough to pursue her career with some success. That's more than enough ammunition for Jan to accuse her of not having the aptitude or ability to work at her marriage. Painting in broad brushstrokes, she suggests that all famous people "grow weary, dabble in casual treachery, give in to temptation, fail to respond to any situation where they are not the centre of attention."

More specifically, Jan doesn't believe that Kate is interested in anything but herself: "don't you think that there was always something rather phoney about old bangers-and-mash Kate? Only someone who believes that she is secretly marked out for an extraordinary destiny would protest about her ordinariness so much."

As well as presenting a thorough deconstruction of La Winslet, Jan even speculates on the next likely casualty of the curse of female Oscar winners, naming 'poor Sandra Bullock' as her next target.

Sadly, just hours after Jan's article was published, the tabloids were filled with scurrilous rumours that Sandra's husband has been cheating on her with a tattoo model. This evening the UK premiere of The Blind Side was cancelled due to 'unforeseen personal reasons'.

The Mail may claim to be pro-marriage, but it seems that no-one is happier than its writers when another once-happy couple bites the dust.

Let's talk about sex. Babies.

With a heavy heart the government admitted last week that more needed to be done to stem the tide of teenage pregnancies. Without wanting to bore you with statistics, the upshot is that the numbers are falling, just not fast enough.

Back in 1998 Tony Blair's cabinet had confidently pledged to halve teenage pregnancies by 2010. Sadly, our yo-yo knickered youth had other plans, and they involved Primark maternity pants and second-hand prams.

Unsurprisingly, self-appointed moral guardians are rushing to their word processors to stick the cyber boot in, and in the process giving single parents, council estates and acne a good kicking too.

At the front of the queue, brandishing a temperance spoon and a stiff upper-lip, is Jan Moir - the crinkle-faced gay-hater. You see, when she's not busy exhuming corpses and conducting her own autopsy to determine the real cause of death, Jan likes to impose her moral viewpoint with today's youth.

Writing with grim predictability, Jan rounds up all the usual suspects - loose women, benefit cheats, poor people - and tells them all how bleak and unfulfilling their lives are. But rather than trying to think about the complexity and nuance of the issues at hand, Jan just wants to take a pop at New Labour.

She's disappointed that the number of teen pregnancies has only dropped from 46,000 to 40,000 since 1998. Although it's curious that she doesn't bother to address why the statistics were so high at the beginning of this government's time in power. Perhaps it's because that would have meant analysing the Conservatives' sex education fails.

Jan's far more concerned with what she calls "the Government's morally lax teenage pregnancy strategy" which has made "deterrent... a dirty word". Right-wing commentators are always quick to decry "the invasion of school classrooms by supposedly educational smut" - because they believe, foolishly, that if you keep schtum the problem will go away.

It's all nonsense of course, but we're talking about political agendas here, not the health and well-being of young people.

But there's still an outstanding conundrum here that needs reconciling. Given the amount of sex education that the government has introduced in the last decade or so, why aren't pregnancy rates dropping more aggressively?

As the debate currently stands, there are two schools of thought - button your lip or talk dirty 24/7. But neither of these options address the cultural issues which are really responsible for Britain having the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe.

As long as sex is associated with 'dirty words' and 'smut' the problem will never go away. Tell teenagers they shouldn't be doing something and they'll have done it three times before you've even finished articulating the thought.

Just take a look at the Netherlands, which has a much healthier attitude towards reproduction - an adult toy in every Happy Meal and topless scene in every news report. They also manage to enjoy the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in the West, as well as the lowest rates of sexually transmitted diseases among young people.

According to Jan, our problems can all be traced back to the fact that no-one is saying to young girls "Look, young lady, just don't have sex. It is not appropriate. At your age, it will have awful repercussions and it may wreck your life."

But that's precisely why the Dutch have managed to accomplish something that countless successive British governments have failed at. Because their sex education programme focuses on the repercussions, rather than attempting to define 'appropriate' behaviour.

Janet over-bites back

Sometimes, the reaction to an event is as fascinating as the event itself. Take the Daily Mail's response to its own self-perpetuated controversy for instance.

Today, in Middle England's tabloid of choice, Janet Street-Porter wrote an eloquent response to Jan Moir's grubby little one-woman attack on journalistic standards. Although best known for accent as broad as the Thames estuary and a set of teeth that could be used for cutting decorative pastry cases, the Sarf London legend has talent and integrity to spare - so quite why she chooses to write for the Mail remains a mystery.

Nonetheless, her article is a sharp riposte to Jan's ignorance, pointing out that true equality means accepting that Civil Partnerships are as diverse and varied as straight relationships. Janet also makes reference to the fact that another gay man died last week. However, unlike Stephen Gately who died of natural causes, Ian Baynham's death was indeed a consequence of his sexuality.

He was beaten and kicked to death by a group of homophobic teenagers in Trafalgar Square. As Janet points out, "the number of attacks against gay men and women in London has risen nearly 20 per cent, and in a recent survey 90 per cent of the gay men and women questioned said they had experienced homophobic insults and abuse." Sadly, Street-Porter stops short of asking where those abusers go to have their attitudes validated.

Despite commissioning this article, the Mail can't quite resist putting its own editorial spin on the whole story. Showing the kind of revisionist approach usually applied by Holocaust deniers, an article appeared in today's issue under the headline "Stephen Gately debate dominates the internet".

By calling it a 'debate' rather than an 'outcry' (their usual preferred terminology for this kind of scandal) they make it sound as though Stephen is the one being discussed, rather than Moir's sour-faced savagery. Throughout the article, carefully chosen phrases like "worldwide debate", "thousands have been moved to comment" and "an extraordinary online response" cunningly mask the true significance of the story.

Of course, Jan's disingenuous defense is also tactically replayed, particularly the opening which reads "Some people, particularly in the gay community...", suggesting that only gay people would ever be disgusted by blatant homophobia. But the final straw in this hopelessly inaccurate article is the tagged-on final line, which reads "The Press Complaints Commission has received more than 1,000 complaints..."

Would it be churlish to point out that the 1,000 complaints were lodged in the first 24 hours, and since then, the PCC has logged 21,000 complaints - an all-time record? I guess if you want fact-checking, truth or reliability, the Weekly World News is your best bet.

Time to pay our disrespects

Regular readers of this blog will know that there is little love lost between p0pvulture and the Daily Mail, a paper so filled with bile and vitriol it takes half a pack of Settlers Tums to get past page four. However, this week, it's bloated harridan Jan Moir's turn in the spotlight, giving Amanda Platell a well-earned week off.

Since Sunday's shocking news about Stephen Gately's death at the age of 33, celebrities of every shape and size have come forward to pay their respects to the mild-mannered boy-bander. Tantrum-throwing hairpiece model Elton John called Stephen "the kindest, gentlest soul", whilst silver ocelot (well, 'fox' seems a bit of a stretch) Philip Schofield said "Poor Stephen. He was a really lovely guy."

A-to-Z list tributes aside, it's clear that Stephen's bandmates have taken the news hardest, pledging to stage an overnight vigil with his body, and displaying new tattoos in honour of their fallen comrade.

With no foul play, no evidence of hard drug use, and no suicide note, the Spanish authorities quickly determined that Gately died of natural causes, affording his family sufficient closure to concentrate on their grief. But it seems that there's no smoke without ire, at least not if you're veteran columnist and homophobic hack Jan Moir.

Proving that beauty may be skin deep, but ugly runs all the way through, Moir wrote a spectacularly offensive article, originally entitled "Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death". Bizarrely, the article managed to inflame even the cast-iron sensibilities of the Mail's regular readers, and was promptly renamed "A strange, lonely and troubling death . . ." (which is a little like declaring a gun amnesty, only to swap the firearms for knives).

In a hateful piece littered with speculation, hearsay and plain ignorance, Moir posits that to label Stephen's death as 'natural' is to overlook the 'unnnatural' aspects of his life. And it doesn't take a genius to work out that, when talking about unnatural behaviour, she doesn't mean covering old Cat Stevens songs.

She's far more concerned with the fact that Gately and his husband Andrew Cowles had picked up a young Bulgarian at a nightclub and invited him back to their apartment in Mallorca. Describing these circumstances as "more than a little sleazy" this real-world Dolores Umbridge uses the situation to condemn "the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships". In her beady eyes, the activists who call for 'tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships' are wrong to suggest that they are just the same as straight marriages. And in this sense she's right, but not in the way that she thinks.

Denied full equality, many gay people have instead taken the opportunity to define the parameters of their own relationships. Rather than looking for mainstream approval, they simply do what works for them, and as long as it remains honest and consensual, what right does anyone else have to criticise them for it?

If she was looking for notoriety, Moir certainly got her wish, with hundreds of people taking to Twitter and Facebook to voice their disgust. Even more visited the Press Complaints Commission website, which crashed under the sheer weight of traffic. Advertisers Marks & Spencer and Nestle were also quick to distance themselves from the controversy, insisting that their ads be removed from the online version of the article.

Although calls have been made for Moir to be sacked, it's unlikely that any of the invertebrates at the Daily Mail will develop enough of a spine to do the right thing, so we need to find an appropriate method of counterattack.

In the truly repellent final paragraph of her article, Moir writes that an "ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see" without ever specifiying what other slimy fluid she's referring to. But I think we all have a good idea.

In 2003, gay American humorist Dan Savage decided to name the 'seeping ooze' after bigoted right wing senator Rick Santorum. The sexual neologism he created spread quickly and soon passed into common parlance, but only within the continental United States where the name had any kind of relevance.

Perhaps what's needed here is a similar kind of 'tribute'. Who agrees that Jan deserves to have that same ooze named in honour of her? After all, Americans have elevators and candy, we have lifts and sweets. We're two nations divided by a common language. Let's bring that tradition into the 21st century.