Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Fuckwittery that even outdoes Pearson and Phillips

It takes something truly inept, ill-thought-out, ignorant and badly written to be a more stupid observation on the Shannon Matthews case than the likes of Alison Pearson and Mad Mel have already vomited up. But take a bow, Fergus Shanahan from the Sun. See if you can follow this impeccable logic.

Shannon must not be allowed home

Not 'given the choice'. Not 'allowed to make her own mind up'. She must 'not be allowed home'. We must deprive her of that option. And the reason?

HOW can Shannon Matthews go back to the hell that she has had to call home?

Because it's, er, her home? But do go on Fergus.

Let’s start with mum Karen. At 32 she has already had seven children by five different fathers. She sees nothing odd in it.

So we should just take her kids off her?

Before vanishing, Shannon wrote a note and put it on her bedroom wall saying she wanted to go and live with her own father, Leon Rose, ten miles away in Huddersfield.
That does suggest she was unhappy, whatever Karen and Craig say.

Children are sometimes unhappy, Fergus. Should we remove all children who are unhappy from their parents and take them into care?

The truth is that we don’t know the truth.

Except you think you do.

But it does look as if not all was sweetness and light for Shannon behind her own front door.

So we should stop her from coming home because life wasn't perfect? I've got news for you Fergus, you clearly had a lovely sparkling childhood, but not everyone's as lucky as that.

One mum, five fathers and seven kids is a recipe for chaos, not happy families.

But... it's her family. And her decision. Isn't it?

I think she deserves a new home and a fresh start away from these tensions.

Well you know best, Fergus. Tell you what, let's do away with social services and just let you impose your half-baked assertions on the general public's sensitive family issues, without ever stopping to ask the children what they actually want.

Sometimes I read things and think: Did they really get paid for that? When I read that, I thought: Did someone really write that? Did a human being type away at a computer and write those words, in that order, and think it was good? Or was it just generated by a secret Sun random-bollocks-computer in a Wapping basement that churns out twaddle and puts a 'Fergus Shanahan' byline on it? If it's the latter, then I can understand. If there really is a Fergus Shanahan, and he's a paid journalist, then the world's gone fucking mad.

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Related posts:

1. Pearson: the counterpunch
2. I agree with Melanie Phillips
3. Shannon Matthews: The intrusion continues
4. Telegraph ‘linked with rise in fuckwittery’
5. You mustn’t take Melanie Phillips’s word for it