Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Let’s all laugh at the shiteness of the Express front page

It's becoming all too easy to mock the Express as a shoddy crock of shit without any style, class or journalistic integrity.

Easy, yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. The great thing about open goals is that they count just as much as ordinary ones (unless you're Ronnie Rosenthal). So have a look at this fucking disgraceful dog's breakfast of a front-page splash:

Look at that and tell me that's not shit. Go on, I dare you. I double dare you. You can't tell me with a straight face that that's not the worst newspaper page you've ever seen in your entire life - unless you're planning to offer me another Express front to take the crown.

The Express has become a whining old lady in the Co-op moaning about prices of things. Butter, eggs, even mince! Even fucking mince is up in price! Would you believe it? Not meat, not beef, no no: mince. Just mince. Take a cow and cut it up; fine. Put it through a mincer; whoa nelly! It's tripled in price!

And thank fuck for the pile of toast handily used to illustrate the story. Otherwise the average man in the street wouldn't have a fucking clue what bread and butter, combined in a handy one-stop-shop foodstuff, would really look like! Thank goodness that the Express saw the need to demonstrate what they really meant when they spoke about bread and butter.

"Hmm, I like the front page, there's some shit about Diana obviously and a load of old bollocks about us being 10p cheaper than the Mail and 10 times better, which no-one in the world really believes - not even us, let's fucking face it - but I don't know if our readers will know anything about bread and butter."
"Yes, bread and butter is a tough concept to grasp; it's not as if it's a common phrase really, particularly not one which is used, for example, to describe something that's everyday in nature. It's certainly not something that our readers will be familiar with, unless we make it abundantly obvious what it looks like. We really might have to try and make ourselves crystal-clear about what we mean when we're talking about bread and butter."
"Yes, how about a handy plate of toast to let people know what we're talking about?"
"Absolutely. Maybe some cheese, eggs and mince - especially the mince - if you've got room."

In a lot of ways I suppose the Express would appeal to my nan, if she weren't six feet under - the moaning about prices, the complaints about foreigners, the constant harping on about Muslims and how they're going to get us, the love of Diana - except I can quite confidently tell you that she would never, ever, ever have bought the Express, no matter if it was 10p less or not. She always bought the Mail, come hell or high water - even when it cheated her out of £25,000 on its fucked-up bingo (I think it was called 'Roulette' to try and sound a bit more upmarket than those dirty redtops, to continue the social Veblenism) game back in the 1980s. The Express will never, ever win by trying to be a cheapskate Mail - because no matter what you think of the Mail, and I happen to think it's the most disgracefully poisonous stain on the British press in history, at least it does what it does well.

One curiosity - the foreign property offer. If your readers are so strapped they can't afford mince, eggs, cheese and bread and butter (now there's a healthy snack if ever I've heard of one - a cheesy mince omelette sandwich) then how the hell are they going to be able to have a bolthole in Croatia? Or... are they actively encouraging migration?

Horrors!

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