20 March – 22 April 2005

            Scottish Media Monitor

So the pope is deid! It sparked a media spectacle of breast-beating, stomach-churning, media-fawning obsequiousness not seen since Mrs Thatcher found Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin in a Hackney library. Reliably swinging her burning handbag up the aisle, Mrs Katie Grant, an Ovalteenie in a Bacardi Breezer world, wailed in The Scotsman: “…The simplicity of that small, cypress wood coffin lying open to the elements under the forbidding, overbearing front façade of St Peter’s would have melted a heart of stone, it is easy to get carried away”. A naughty Alan Taylor in The Sunday Herald saw it differently: “Instead of the whole shebang being shrouded in mystery it should be televised as a reality show… with the candidates seen in situ, as real human beings, cooking meals for one another while slurping wine, wandering around in their undies, their foibles open to all and sundry. Registered Catholics could digest their views on contraception, abortion and divorce, and vote accordingly; a puff of black smoke announcing the exit from the Sistine Chapel of each of the rejected candidates. Eventually, only one Cardinal would remain and he would emerge blinking into the sunshine of St Peter’s Square to be quizzed over his ordeal by Davina McCall. Is Pope Idol too obvious a title?” After watching impatient Hearts fans chastised in media reports for not observing a minute’s silence before their match with Celtic, I retched into the remote control’s sofa pocket. The outcome was as predictable as a minute’s silence after chucking-out time at the Dog and Duck! There was mayhem! The one-minute had to be cut to a channel-hopping 20 seconds. Similar protests at the fixture between Dundee and Hibernian attracted fewer reports. At the match in Glasgow at Hampden Park, there were five arrests. But what if those arrested were protesting at the human rights abuses of the Catholic Church? Unlikely, I know. Politically incorrect knuckle-scrapping Union Jack wavers will do what they always do at matches: Bring the male species into disrepute, but for one brief moment I felt myself standing in solidarity with the bleak and hopeless world of sectarian hate. Paul Stokes severed the join in Scotland on Sunday: “The creation of new hate crimes appears to be a mini-industry in Scotland. Did you know we have a Working Group on Hate Crime which is advising the Scottish Executive? It wants the current legislation, which is only a couple of years old, expanded so that we can’t ‘hate’ gay, transgender or disabled people either. But what if they hate each other? Given that we already have laws to deal with discrimination against minority groups and laws to protect our persons, it is difficult to escape the view that the ‘hate crime’ industry is less interested in protecting its chosen groups than it is in finding hatred wherever it can”. Are they? A ‘hate crime’ is crime motivated by malice or spite towards a particular group, usually involving assault and vandalism, not to the sort of ‘thoughtcrime’ Stokes refers. ‘Hate crimes are, for example, graffiti messages scrawled on the door of a mosque; designed to spread a message amongst this community to be afraid. If it can be proved that these actions were part of a wider intent, then punishment can be extended under laws referring to ‘statutory aggravation’. In Scotland, queers don’t have the protection of ‘hate crime’ legislation. The law refers only to racial or religious groups. Uefa had requested that a minute’s silence be observed before a whole week’s Champions’ League and UEFA Cup matches. Lars-Christer Olsson, Uefa’s chief executive insisted the pope commanded enormous respect and demanded his work be properly recognised, clearly considering the middle of a Scottish football match a good place to start. Amidst nonsensical outbursts that old man Karol ‘was a saint’ that had ‘died for our sins’ our supposedly impartial media unfurled such sycophantic headlines as “He’s with the Lord now” (The Metro). It looked like “the world” - albeit one just a wee bit over-represented by the citizens of Poland and the world’s media – had flocked to Rome before the priests had a chance to fight over the red slippers! Through the frosted glass of media manipulation and censorship it was a lovely service. And he was a lovely man. Out of ‘respect’ we were reduced to the occasional aside over his ‘moral conservatism’. Mrs Katie Grant explained in The Scotsman: “Where outsiders, and even some in our own church, saw authoritarianism, many of us saw certainty, and although he did not try to make life easy for us – no movement on birth control and no moral loopholes to slide through – we were left with on ever-riding impression, which was that John Paul searched harder and more openly than almost any previous pope, not for popularity or for respect, but for truth”. Business tycoon Sir Tom ‘Kwik-Fit’ Farmer, Papal Knight and sponsor of Brian Souter’s ‘Keep the Clause’ opinion poll in the The Sunday Mail added: “While you may not agree with everything the Pope said, you could be sure that he would do as he said and he believed what he said. He was someone you could really look up to”. Ron Ferguson was one preacher man who was having none of it in The Herald. His column started off with a string of apologies and excuses that entailed reminding us of his glowing tribute to the pope in The Herald, (“I expressed my admiration for the integrity and spiritual stature of John Paul”) and his “genuine admiration and affection for Catholicism…” which led him to describe Karol Wojtyla as “one of the champions of the free world”. Getting down to business, Ferguson finally registered his unease at the “uncritical adulation which has bordered on the idolatrous” and reminded us of the plain daft scenario of a church that tells its priests they can’t marry, yet welcomes married, Anglican priests who have left their church in opposition to the ordination of women. The day before the funeral, Ferguson’s real anguish was thinly disguised: “How will tomorrow’s funeral tributes sound to an African woman dying of Aids, knowing that her church has banned the use of condoms to prevent the spread of the HIV virus? What will be the feelings of devoted Catholic single-sex couples, who not only plead in vain for a Christian blessing, but are described as ‘evil’? Or how about the mother of one of Chile’s ‘disappeared’, knowing that the Vatican secretly lobbied for General Pinochet’s release from Britain? There is a contradiction at the heart of the legend which is John Paul II… And it is impossible to parody the giving of a papal knighthood to Rupert Murdoch, that Dark Knight of the soul who produces ‘family values’ newspapers like The Sun.” Cardinal Ratzinger, the man now in charge is God’s rottweiler; a 78-year-old former member of the Hitler Youth who believes homosexuality is a ‘tendency towards moral evil’. He has already castigated the elected Spanish government for introducing gay marriage. I’m sure Spanish premier José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero carries the Church’s alliances with dictator Franco clear in his head as he turns Spain into a secular country and strips the church of its privileges. What government will do the same for Scotland? Not Labour, Conservative or SNP, I’m sure!

The TES Scotland (The Times Education Supplement) said it all really, splashed over the front page: “BISHOP SLAPPED DOWN OVER GAYS”. (Of course, the Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Devine should have been slapped a long time ago). He heads the Catholic Education Commission and said gay staff should be barred from schools and face obstacles to promotion. Trouble is, if I’m to believe the gay priests who have spoken to me, if that ever came about, it would be the end of the Catholic Church as we know it! ‘Miss’ Devine, at her best when the subject of homosexuality is doing the rounds, was last seen eagerly gathering signatories to a petition to help Cardinal Winning ‘Keep the Clause’ after the Scottish Executive announced it would repeal Section 28, the law that banned local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Thomas Donnelly had a brainwave in The Herald’s Letters to the Editor when he wrote: “It is now time to ask questions about openly Roman Catholic teachers in non-denominational schools. It seems to me that their Roman Catholic ethos makes it impossible for them to treat openly gay teachers and students fairly and without discrimination. As a result, in line with the bishop’s philosophy, I feel that openly Roman Catholic teachers should have no place in the anti-discriminatory ethos of non-denominational schools. Perhaps we could swap the openly gay teachers in Roman Catholic schools for the openly Roman Catholic teachers in non-denominational schools”.

One of the last bastions of licensed homophobia, The Scottish Daily Mail exposed: “Rights for gay crofters”. This has to be one of the biggest pieces of non-news since Jade Goody was evicted from the Big Brother house. “Gay crofters are to be recognised in law for the first time, ministers announced yesterday”. What they meant was that co-habiting couples of any sex were now so dominant in society that to ignore their legal right to inherit would seriously threaten the existence of crofters. It was nonetheless, in the twisted world of The Mail, a “controversial move” but more importantly, one that helped boost a dwindling rural population. Patrick Krause, chief executive of the Scottish Crofting Foundation was used to justify The Mail’s homophobia, saying: “I don’t really know where the Executive is coming from on this one. I suppose it is updating the law. I certainly don’t know if we will see a Gay Crofters’ Association springing up in the Highlands any time soon’.” (Stupid oik!)

Whenever you stop over in a hotel, (the Marriott is a good example), the first thing to do is grab the Gideon Bible, usually stuffed in a drawer in a bedside cabinet, and rip out offending pages in Leviticus. These days, I tend to just drop it in the bin. It was refreshing to read that students – albeit out of consideration for a string of other faiths – have taken action and “banned” Bibles – some 6,000 of them – from halls of residence at Stirling University. A motion to have them removed was passed 15-1 at a student council meeting with seven abstentions. ITV’s Reporting Scotland ‘balanced’ the story with former – was the current one all for the idea? - Rev John Munro of Kinross Parish Church who spoke in tongues, spouting passages from The Daily Mail: “I think there’s an agenda here, seemingly politically correct. But there’s actually a hostility towards faith by those who have none…” Alan Massie, columnist in The Scottish Daily Mail was miffed. “Scotland and the United Kingdom may still be nominally Christian countries but the young students of Stirling disapprove of any manifestation of this fact”. Well, hardly! They just felt the library was the best place for storing books! Massie wasn’t having any of it. “Now I am quite sure that if some Islamic charity arranged that copies of the Koran were placed in every student’s room, there would have been no such protest. It would have been unthinkable”. In his piece entitled: “Why it’s time to stand up for Jesus”, he ranted: “On page 75 of The Scottish Book of Common Prayer, approved by the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland in 1929 and reprinted in 1986, you can find a prayer ‘for the Conversion of the Mohammedans’ (as we used to call Muslims) ‘and all who know not Christ. Extend thy mercy, we beseech thee,’ it runs, ‘to the nations of the world that still walk in darkness. Enlighten the Muslims with the knowledge of thy truth…’ I don’t suppose this prayer is often offered in churches today. It would doubtless be thought politically incorrect, offensive to immigrants in our multi-cultural society and possibly even dangerous. Yet there it is, in the Prayer Book, evidence of the confidence of our Christian churches only two or three generations ago”. Yes, and evidence of the same mindset that had Little Black Sambo shining his master’s shoes. And remind me, how long did it take us to peel the golliwog off the side of jam-jars? Students were forced to buckle after “a storm of protest” (The Daily Record) from religionists and offered all religions to submit their holy works.

When the Scottish Media Monitor began nearly ten years ago I remember the paedesteria that mushroomed around the massacre of schoolchildren by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane. One leisure centre staff told the press he wanted patrols in swimming pool changing areas. It’s no laughing matter now. The Scottish Sun reported: “LEISURE STAFF TO LOOK FOR PERVS”, like it was an everyday occurrence. They “revealed… leisure centre staff are to be trained – to look out for paedophiles… People seen hanging around near kids or approaching young ones they don’t know will be confronted by staff about their behaviour… Those without an innocent explanation for their activities will be reported to cops”. The Leisurewatch initiative is being rolled out across Midlothian. A police spokesman was quoted: “The scheme is designed to protect children and vulnerable adults”. Given the aggressive nature of kids to manipulate these situations, at least he got that right!

The Sunday Mail’s story of former PC Delwyn Williams hasn’t quite gone away. (Scottish Media Monitor, March 2005). Neither, it seemed have some dated clichés of gay life not seen since the Tory press of the eighties used them to garnish outrageous lies over porn mags for kids in school libraries! ‘Reporter’ Jane Hamilton, still living in a world where gay men ‘haunted’ basement bars and upstairs function rooms on Wednesday nights, reported on the “astonishing double life” of “a policeman caught moonlighting in a gay sauna…”, adding: “Bosses at the sauna, a popular haunt for older members of Edinburgh’s gay community, claimed Williams was their tea-boy…” And you’re a tea-bag, Jane!

One last thing before I go… COME ON THE GREENS! Yup! It’s election time once again when everybody pours out to vote Labour. Come on Scotland; use your imagination! Failing that, there is always the Liberal Democrats, I suppose. But whatever you do. DON’T LET IN THE TORIES! Nothing wrong with a bit of free enterprise, but not with the sort of morally conservative baggage trumpeted by the likes of Gerald Warner, John MacLeod or Mrs Grant! USE YOUR GAY VOTE ON MAY 5th!

E-mail: garry@scottishmediamonitor.com

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CUT IT OUT…

‘Outed’ gay columnist John MacLeod in The Scottish Daily Mail: “There is not a single MSP with the guts to take on the gay lobby…”

Oh, and that’s not all… (John MacLeod; The Scottish Daily Mail): “For 40 years, an arrogant, Left-leaning, tuned-in, right-on intellectual aristocracy has embedded itself in power throughout Britain. Its members are marked by complacency and naïve Europeanism, a clucking café society with no time for orthodox Christianity or hard world, common thrift or social decency, sexual restraint or family values, rural realities or private enterprise, voluntary endeavour or the monarchy – or even the best and most decent things of their own country”.

Old Mother (Joan) Burnie, The Daily Record’s agony aunt: “If I had my way, the age of consent would be hiked up to 18 and boys – yes boys – would be tied into chastity Y-fronts at the first sign of a pimple”.