Newspaper gossip about snotty daughter of snotty father:
JK Rowling has hit back at the daughter of ex-Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell after she branded a group of women’s rights campaigners “ugly”.
JKR didn’t hit back. She replied or responded or disputed, which is not the same as punching. I do wish UK journalism would stop using this metaphor, because it’s highly tendentious, aka damaging. Journalism should be accurate above all, and it’s not accurate to label verbal disagreements as physical violence.
A clip from the podcast shows Campbell and a guest calling the For Women Scotland members “freaks” and repeatedly branding them “ugly” while also criticising their hair and clothes. She said they were “not aspirational in any way” and [she] “didn’t want to be in a room with them”.
And along with not using metaphors of physical violence in reporting verbal disagreement, journalism should provide the relevant facts. Saying “a guest” when you mean a man who pretends to be a woman is a stark failure (or refusal) to provide all the relevant facts. That guy who took such pleasure in calling women UGLEEEE is not just some guest, he’s a man cosplaying a woman. That’s an important part of this repulsive story.
Campbell’s views were also echoed by her father, who was one of the architects of New Labour. On his and Rory Stewart’s The Rest is Politics podcast, he complained that the Supreme Court ruling did not give “clarity” and also moaned about the images of “lots of women popping champagne corks, pictures of JK Rowling smoking a celebratory cigar”.
Uppity. There’s no other word for it. Women have become so uppity it’s all men can do to get their insults into the media.
He also suggested the toxic nature of the debate was one sided, ignoring the abuse dished out by trans activists. For Women Scotland have challenged Campbell and Stewart to invite them on their podcast, but said on Saturday they were “still waiting” for them to “take up the offer and tell us we are are ‘toxic’ for the crime of being happy.”
I hope we can make it hot for them. Take up the offer, dudes. You’re so clever, you’re bound to emerge smelling like roses.
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