Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Swayze’s on the way, so let’s get the boot in quickly

Another soon-to-be-six-feet-under celeb; another chance for the Mail to get their sniping in before they're even underground. There's no time to wait in the 24-hour world of news - well there is if you're compassionate, considerate or give a shit about the feelings of other human beings, but I don't think those things apply to this particular tossrag of a newspaper.

I was sickened when the Hate slagged off Carol Barnes after she'd had a stroke and was close to death; I was stunned, but not surprised, when Alison Pearson and Tim 'Worst Journalist in the World' Rawstorne tore into Fiona McKeown for being a grieving mother who wasn't middle-class enough; I was left numb when they put the boot into Michael Todd before his corpse had even been formally identified.

And now Patrick Swayze. He's got cancer, so let's tell him how to live his life. Not a preachy "I'm a mother and therefore I'm superior to everyone else in the entire bloody world for the fact that I managed to squeeze a kid out of my vagina" female columnist this time, but a showbiz numpty called Barry Wigmore. Are these people even real, or are they just generic bylines for wire copy wanked around with by the Mail subs? Either way, whoever wrote this shower of shite should be flayed alive and dipped in lemon juice.

Puffing on a cigarette is not the most sensible thing to do when you're battling cancer.

Why not, I say. I gave up the fags seven years ago now, and I've never regretted it - life is much better, cleaner, cheaper and healthier. But do you know what, if I had only a short time to live I think I'd probably get back on the tabs as soon as possible. Give myself a little treat. Cigarettes and tequila. And maybe LSD. Every day. Sod palliative care, I'd want to get fucked.

I used to work in a cancer ward and I'd see them coming down the stairs with their drips, sometimes in wheelchairs, to pop outside and have a lovely smoke. It wasn't really frowned upon. Sure, a doctor can tell you not to, but it's your body and you're allowed to do what you want with it. If you're dying, why not? Bill Hicks took the tabs up again when he found out he had pancreatic cancer; why shouldn't Swayze?

But if, as reports suggest, Patrick Swayze has only a few weeks to live, he may think it makes little difference.

Well he may well do that, you showbiz-writing nitwit.

The once-athletic star of Dirty Dancing, Ghost, and action films such as Point Break looked gaunt as he dragged on a cigarette while waiting for his private plane.

I think he just looks pissed off that there's some bastard with a camera taking pictures of him. If he really is seriously ill, shouldn't he be allowed some privacy? Wasn't the Mail one of those newspapers who claimed they wouldn't use long-lens pap shots after the Queen of Hearts' death? This grainy image of Swayze could only be that.

He had just completed a session of chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer at Stanford University Medical Centre in California.

Yes, just the time to point a camera at him. So considerate.

His thinning hair was hidden beneath a baseball cap.

Not all chemotherapy makes your hair fall out, and not straight away if it does. But as ever, I bow to the superior medical knowledge of Dr Barry Wigmore.

The 55-year-old star is in pain, but is still fighting and is determined to beat the pancreatic cancer that has ravaged his body, says his 81-year-old mother.

Nice to invade her privacy as well at a time like this.

Heartbroken Patsy Swayze, a former Hollywood dance choreographer who encouraged her son to enter showbusiness, said: "Patrick doesn't deserve to get this. He's got such a big heart.

Doesn't deserve to be in the Mail, anyway.

"He's been such a good and generous and thoughtful person. It breaks my heart to know he's suffering. But he bears it and is determined to beat this."
She told America's National Enquirer magazine: "He's hanging in there and getting the best treatment he can."

Well there we are. The Daily Mail, that bastion of journalistic integrity, is lifting quotes from the National Enquirer.

Swayze has been a 60-a-day smoker for years, and research shows that smokers are twice as likely to get pancreatic cancer as non-smokers.

But pancreatic cancer isn't necessarily caused by smoking.

Rhita McNair, a close friend of Swayze and his wife of 32 years, Lisa Niemi, said that like the long-running Marlborough Man cowboy cigarette ads, Swayze kept smoking even as he enjoyed the fresh air during horseback rides on his 17,000-acre ranch near Las Vegas.

What kind of illiterate toss is that? It's 'Marlboro' for one thing - did we run it through the spellchecker and change it because we thought the computer was cleverer than us? Is that what we did, Barry? - but the sentence structure is just fucking dreadful.

Just a dressed-up caption to justify some long-lens pap pics, a spurious 'angle' to a non-existent story. So someone with cancer is smoking; so fucking what? So he got on a plane, so what? Does anyone really care about this shit?

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