Gutter slurs against Michael Jackson reveal problems of journalistic competence and that there was a campaign against Jackson

I've just about had enough of the Daily Mail.

It really thinks it can write anything it likes and there's no consequences to that.

Its position in the market is one of supposedely representing the interests of conservative middle England, but when it comes to some subjects it represents as much gutter garbage as the Sunday Sport or The Star.

The Mail's latest cracker is a staggering article about Michael Jackson.

I've never actually read an article in any newspaper in my life that's a complete fabrication, a complete heap of nonsense and lies from start to finish, until just now.

This is a rare gem at least in its inability to hide that, it really is. Congratulations to its writer, a so-called celebrity biographer named Mr. Ian Halperin. Unfortunately for Mr. Halperin, nonsense has a certain pattern, it's identifiable, it has a certain smell, it's unmistakable, and it repeats itself.

And this is what nonsense looks like, just mad insane stupid dumb nonsense.

Of course sometimes, journalists are guilty of wanting a particular story to be true, they 'find' they story they want in other little pieces of data. Just so you know that's in exactly the same way as the guy who wants to believe there are heads of C3P0-like robots and domes on the moon does. They want to see what they want to see and they want us to 'see' it too to vindicate themselves.

Sadly I don't even know if I can say for sure that it is the case here, and he hasn't just made the whole thing up whole cloth.

I feel sorry for this guy, because he just doesn't realise in what he's writing what he's writing. He just doesn't get it.

It's fascinating Halperin agrees there never was a real case about Michael Jackson and child abuse. Fascinating as Halperin begins this though by admitting, "I started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty".

So he had already come to the conclusion in that case.

But Halperin says aha, but never mind because dah dah DAHH! Jackson was really gay.

Was he ?

Around Michael and around people around Michael there will be lots of different people with all kinds of stories to tell, in exactly the same way that when people are employed in a job somewhere they are going to have a lot of stories and things they have heard about the boss.

Some of that is a kind of subordinate/working class angst and resentment, some of it is just to pass the time of day, or gossip about something at lunch and some of it is to try to make life more interesting than it is.

But I think it's important not to forget the obvious. Michael Jackson was a huge celebrity, perhaps the biggest and greatest of all time. Just like Elvis and others there's going to be a lot of people both women and gay guys who really believe they have had affairs with Michael and they were really part of his life and this just goes with the territory for anyone like that.

Just pretty convenient for Halperin then Michael Jackson can't directly defend himself now.

Ian Halperin claims he has seen a photo of Michael and an 'aspiring actor'. Is it a photo of them having sex ? Show us the photo then. If you have it publish it. Otherwise I've got a photo of me and Britney Spears. We had an affair. I'm telling you it's the truth I swear it so I do. Exclusive to my blog!

The other interesting thing is this idea of 'streams of lovers' coming and going. Funny these celebrities always have insatiable sexual appetites. It's never restrained is it ? And despite how ill Halperin claims Jackson was: i.e he couldn't sing, couldn't dance anymore, could barely talk, walk or think, was regularly collapsing, was drugged up to his eyeballs and not eating (I kind of agree with those last two based on other things I've read) yet had libido and was having plenty of sexual activity.

Needless to say I don't believe that, and we're starting to see what Mr. Halperin's article is.

As for predicting ill health, I'm no medical expert but I would imagine predicting when people are going to die due to medical reasons, even people who are quite ill is going to be difficult, yet Halperin claims he not only 'knew' Jackson was going to die, he knew when Jackson was going to die. You see to me, if anything, that raises alarm bells of a different kind and I'm wondering why (if Halperin can be believed at all) that someone was leaking him stories about Jackson going to die. This makes me concerned.

As Halperin wants to present a checklist of things I think that has to be a reasonable stigmata about the direction of the article/writer/publisher on the subject and he goes on to suggest that 'Michael Jackson was bad because he didn't pay for some hospitality provided to him by some sheik'.

Who cares ? There's a story like that about every celebrity under the Sun. As someone I know said, when Michael Jackson bought those enormous £600,000+ pots (someone remind me was it Harrods?) in that terrible Bashir documentary he almost certainly didn't pay for them, just as almost no other celebrity would either.

The only interesting thing in the whole article is this:

"Sony have been in a position for more than a year where it can repossess Michael’s share of the [Beatles] catalogue. That’s always been Sony’s dream scenario, full ownership.
‘But they don’t want to do it as they’re afraid of a backlash from his fans. Their nightmare is an organised 'boycott Sony' movement worldwide, which could prove hugely costly.'"

This statement I think is somewhere around the truth, and we know that because Michael talked about this himself in a fascinating interview with Jesse Jackson back in 2005. And I believe this is the key to a lot of this stuff and this negative publicity which is fed out to the press in a very specific and deliberate way, and we know Michael complained heavily about a conspiracy against him, which has almost been forgotten since his tragic death.

Apparently Halperin seems actually unaware that this is an area that would account for that negative publicity and the things in his own article. Like I say sometimes we make the story we want in our mind for our own reasons because we want it to be true and we miss the big picture.

Some people, like Halperin will undoubtedly say 'well you're only saying that because you want to believe the best about Michael, and Michael was only talking about a conspiracy because he was just trying to blame something for his own difficulties'

Was he ?

Again this is another one of those cases where you can't have it both ways. Halperin just said in his article at the begining, he just said:

"I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money."

I don't know about you, but if those allegations are false, then it makes me wonder about the others and it makes me wonder why Halperin doesn't see that as a serious problem in his article.

No one wishes to be rude, but I think Mr Ian Halperin has demonstrated himself to be not a credible journalist and if not an all out fraud which I think remains a real possibility, a sad desperate opportunist, juvenile flibbertigibbet, gutter tabloid hack, a tool and an actually after reading what I have, frankly something of a moron. Somehow by accident he's actually managed to publish one paragraph of truth amongst a sea of very well-trodden, prototypical, formulaic, dribbling tabloid gossip, slurs and attributions (that are not celebrity specific) which actually explains the rest of his article, yet seems completely unaware of the fact.

There you go.

And the Daily Mail have demonstrated themselves yet again as a vehicle for all of the above.

Although I do enjoy some opinion in the Mail, I have thought for some time that the Mail has actually not served conservative England properly at a number of times. There's a gap in the tabloid market for something more serious, and if people ever start making real newspapers the Mail is in trouble, and I'm sorry to say that as someone who has more or less supported it implicitly. Unfortunately it's shameless opportunism, its ability to leave things out that are politically inconvenient and its showbiz stuff gone so extreme is just making it look like it's begging for readers, and its affecting the thin but vitally important bit of credibility of everything else it publishes.

I'm sure we will quote the Mail here in the future partly out of convenience, and sometimes they do have some good headlines and opinion but we deserve real newspapers as well and the Mail has demonstrated it's simply not up to the description of a real newspaper.

The incredible Michael Jackson

Thriller - Music Video

When I first wrote about this it hadn't sunk in at all. It started to a bit the next day when everywhere I went was playing Michael's songs. It's just so incredibly devastating.

Thriller is one of my all time favourites.

Michael Jackson Dies

I was completely shocked to learn in the last few hours the news that Michael Jackson died. Apparently of a heart attack.

I was huge fan of Michael Jackson as a child and he's a huge influence. Of course we don't know what's happened exactly or what's led up to this, but I kept hearing stories over the last couple of weeks about this postponed tour of Michael Jackson and that he was not eating, was terrified of putting on weight and that he was working with Lou Ferrigno of Incredible Hulk fame to try to get his nutrition and physical self on track. Apparently, I'm just learning these eating difficulties originated 15 years earlier when allegations against him started, and I didn't know until I started reading about this, Jackson had at various times been taking a cocktail of different prescription drugs, although it's not clear if he was still taking any.

It's too early to say obviously, but I think it's kind of interesting and ironic that outlets like ABC News suggest that stress may have been a factor in this. And I just wonder where ABC think that stress came from ? I'd say it's come largely from the media itself.

As well as being a phenomenal legend in entertainment, Michael Jackson also seemed to do some things that were only going to raise an eyebrow or two. Even a hint of anything unusual to do with children is quite enough for any normal person to be aghast. And being aghast is absolutely a perfectly correct reaction, but at the same time it doesn't mean at all that anything actually sinister was ever going on. And from what I've read about this it seems there never was actually any real proof that anything sinister ever was going on, rather Jackson just simply wanted to be like a child.

I have heard it suggested some time ago on Michael Collins Piper's radio show that Michael Jackson may have been set up at some point with what would become allegations against him to extort money out of him perhaps by distorting the above into other allegations which he would have been very vulnerable to, and there certainly seems to be some case in that direction. And we know as well later on he had some financial difficulties.

The BBC in their coverage interviewed Uri Geller, who they describe as a 'close friend', but as I understand it Jackson stopped being friends with Geller some time ago and saw him as a problem and hanger on and someone who betrayed him and he blamed Geller for the dreadful Martin Bashir documentary that led to a court case against Jackson.

Later he was fully acquitted of any wrongdoing and I'm not surprised, if you really were a child abuser why on Earth would you go on worldwide TV and flaunt it around ? It seems more likely it was because Jackson's intentions were entirely innocent of that, albeit highly unusual and perhaps not healthy in other ways, that he did present himself the way he did in that film.

It's a very very bad thing when a huge personality, icon, performer, 'eccentric' and individual leaves this world, especially when the media has had a hand in attacking them as an individual and as an eccentric , trying to bring them down somehow, reveling in publishing negative headlines about them and treating them as a sideshow.

But it also shows that media don't always win these wars with the public.

BBC News interviewed Rob Levine, executive editor of Billboard Magazine who said that he doubted that the likes of Michael Jackson will ever be seen again. Another guest they had on, who's name I didn't catch, suggested that it was the end of an era, the end of the eighties and the music industry that was, the time of mass global stars was over, and that the music industry today is fragmenting, falling apart, and so diverse that it is extremely unlikely you will ever have a global hyper star in the way Jackson was. I don't know about you but I find this pretty scary, and I'm sorry to say I think there's some truth in it.

As I'm writing this I'm watching BBC News with a clip of Michael next to that guy who presents Big Brother. I mean this is not super stardom when people like Michael Jackson are rubbing shoulders with people like that, this is trying to adapt to a world that's changed and dropped these super celebrities in it.

I think the same thing applies to Madonna as well who managed to effectively dissolve a lot of her super star status by moving to the UK and marrying that guy she did. Yeah they still had a lot of pull in today's press, but it's a different kind of pull than they had in the eighties.

In this proletarian clamor for 'equality' led by one thread of the media for their own reasons, the nature of celebrity has changed somewhat, but this is bad news for everyone.

What do we have to look forward to in this scenario ? Boring plebs and trolls fighting for attention on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter dizzy with glee to be made 'equal' to their benign masters ? And that's as well as celebrities using those sites to try to 'communicate ' with the 'real people', almost afraid they will be stripped of anymore of their status if they don't comply with this new game.

A good job then that great artists of any kind will always just produce great work. They do it automatically and anyway and influence others.

RIP Michael.

Paul Craig Roberts on Iran

From a couple of days ago, very interesting article by Paul Craig Roberts

Sunday, 21 June 2009
Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows
by Paul Craig Roberts

"Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.

The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the Cold War claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.

Today, the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: "Where is My Vote?" The signs are intended for the western media—not for the Iranian government.

More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, "death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad." Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed Westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator, as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.

The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.

On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young Westernized residents of Tehran.

Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks.

Some observers, such as George Friedman, believe that the American destabilization plan will fail. However, many ayatollahs feel animosity toward Ahmadinejad, who assaults the ayatollahs for corruption. Many in the Iranian countryside believe that the ayatollahs have too much wealth and power. Amadinejad’s attack on corruption resonates with the Iranian countryside, but not with the ayatollahs.

Amadinejad’s campaign against corruption has brought Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri out against him. Montazeri is a rival to ruling Ayatollah Khamenei. Montazeri sees in the street protests an opportunity to challenge Khamenei for the leadership role.

So, once again, as so many times in history, the ambitions of one person might seal the fate of the Iranian state.

Khamenei knows that the elected president is an underling. If he has to sacrifice Ahmadinejad’s election in order to fend off Montazeri, he might recount the vote and elect Mousavi, thinking that will bring an end to the controversy.

Khamenei, solving his personal problem, would play into the hands of the American-Israeli assault on his country.

On the surface, the departure of Ahmadeinjad would cost Israel and the US the loss of their useful "anti-Semitic" boggy-man. But in fact it would play into the American-Israeli propaganda. The story would be that the remote, isolated, Iranian ruling Ayatollah was forced by the Iranian people to admit the falsity of the rigged election, calling into question rule by Ayatollahs who do not stand for election.

Mousavi and Ayatollah Montazeri are putting their besieged country at risk. Possibly they believe that ridding Iran of Ahmadeinjad’s extreme image would gain Iran breathing room.

If Mousavi and Montazeri succeed in their ambitions, one likely result would be a loss in Iran’s independence. The new rulers would have to continually defend Iran’s new moderate and reformist image by giving in to American demands. If the government admits to a rigged election, the legitimacy of the Iranian Revolution would be called into question, setting up Iran for more US interference in its internal affairs.

For the American neoconservatives, democratic countries are those countries that submit to America’s will, regardless of their form of government. "Democracy" is achieved by America ruling through puppet officials.

The American public might never know whether the Iranian election was legitimate or stolen. The US media serves as a propaganda device, not as a purveyor of truth. Election fraud is certainly a possibility--it happens even in America--and signs of fraud have appeared. Large numbers of votes were swiftly counted, which raises the question whether votes were counted or merely a result was announced.

The US media’s response to the election was equally rapid. Having invested heavily in demonizing Ahmadinejad, the media is unwilling to accept election results that vindicate Ahmadinejad and declared fraud in advance of evidence, despite the pre-election poll results published in the June 15 Washington Post, which found Ahmadinejad to be the projected winner.

There are many American interest groups that have a vested interest in the charge that the election was rigged. What is important to many Americans is not whether the election was fair, but whether the winner’s rhetoric is allied with their goals.

For example, those numerous Americans who believe that both presidential and congressional elections were stolen during the Karl Rove Republican years are tempted to use the Iranian election protests to shame Americans for accepting the stolen Bush elections.

Feminists take the side of the "reformer" Mousavi.

Neoconservatives damn the election for suppressing the "peace candidate" who might acquiescent to Israel’s demands to halt the development of Iranian nuclear energy.

Ideological and emotional agendas result in people distancing themselves from factual and analytical information, preferring instead information that fits with their material interests and emotional disposition.

The primacy of emotion over fact bids ill for the future. The extraordinary attention given to the Iranian election suggests that many American interests and emotions have a stake in the outcome"

Labour recieve 'brutal verdict' in elections

Guardian: "Voters delivered a brutal verdict to Labour yesterday, as the party lost control of all its remaining ­English county councils in Thursday's voting.

Staffordshire, Derbyshire and ­Nottinghamshire fell out of Labour's hands for the first time in 28 years, and Lancashire for the first time since 1989 – all to the Tories.

With 32 of the 34 local authority results declared, the Conservatives had control of 28 councils, and had won an additional 230 seats and nine more councils, including Devon and Somerset from the Liberal Democrats, and the previously hung Wiltshire and Warwickshire.

The Tories also gained overall control of a new unitary authority, Central Bedfordshire, where Labour failed to win a single seat, and grabbed the mayoralty in North Tyneside back from Labour.

Labour saw sweeping losses across the 27 shire councils and seven unitary authorities, losing a net of 268 council seats."

It's not just the Labour regime melting down

Gordon Brown's government is just in total tatters.

I remember some time ago under Blair when Labour had a particularly bad day, the BBC's Andrew Marr said you'd have to go back to the days of Michael Foot to find a time when Labour had such bad publicity. I can't even think what would be a comparison now.

Labour are in massive trouble, and Gordon Brown, who I do feel sorry for, appears to be a complete lame duck just waiting to be hung out to dry. Apparently even the Guardian are calling for Brown to resign.

However it's important to realise that the MP's expenses scandal has not only damaged politicians, it has also massively damaged the media itself.

The Guardian have been hit very hard by this and are in a very difficult, very compromised position, and they can't create an adequate explanation to their readers why they didn't break the 'story' themselves.

And the problem is the entire journalistic establishment knew all about this for ever. They just didn't care a hoot. And they didn't care a hoot because, as I've said on here a number of times now: it's not a serious issue to begin with.

It's just not important.

Now's it been made important to get rid of the government and the rest of them don't know what to do, and are starting to look even more under strain than the politicians.

If you want to get a picture of how desperate this is for them, about a week and a half ago the Guardian published an article by Andrew Rawnsley claiming this cynicism about MPs is 'bad for democracy', and what I came away from that article is that they simply don't know what to say at all about this.

In the atmosphere surrounding this they can't explain to their readers adequately why they didn't break it themselves, but at the same time it's not a serious issue to begin with.

Now on top of that because it's gone the way it has, and because it's attached the usual childish fantastic reasons why it wants to believe this is a serious issue, The Guardian is actually in a state of real cognitive dissonance on this, and it's probably why they have gone even more potty, like a cat with worms, than they normally are.

So understand what the Guardian is doing. It's jumping just like the politicians have been jumping and it's trying to rescue its own battered credibility.

Mail report controversy over BGT voting

The Mail (tucked right at the bottom of the page in the print version, underneath yet another massive article about Susan Boyle loosing her mind) report the gap between Diversity and Boyle was 4.7% (which I didn't know before) and that the wrong number was for a while put up with YouTube versions, and people were complaining Boyle's number was constantly engaged, which would have been a problem for her core audience of slightly older people presumably, assuming there was text vote that younger ones might use.

I don't know. Make of it what you will.

The Media's attack on Susan Boyle

Ok I'm sorry to do this, but I want to comment again on Susan Boyle and some of the stuff going on in the press, because it's actually gone out of control now, and it's starting to look ridiculous.

There's a considerable effort going on to manipulate this into something else from all quarters of the media which really concerns me. The level of rhetoric around this is actually frightening.

The Guardian has serious problems with Susan Boyle as we've already seen, so today let's start with Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail, assuming she actually wrote this article it's so extraordinary.

In a shocking commentary, Platell suggests that it was inevitable that this "middle-aged woman with learning difficulties" (again constantly reminded about this -j) would "unravel before our very eyes" , that she would 'break down' (really not sure what this means) and that this would create more 'freakish' spectacle. Ultimately Platell concludes, it was "wrong to take an awkward, 48-year-old virgin with a good but not great voice, (but clearly demonstrating worrying signs of stress) and thrust her on to the national stage ".

Does this sound like someone normal, someone reasonably comfortable with themselves and their life writing this ?

Platell even says that isn't it good that "David Wilson, Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University, warned in last week's Mail that Susan was too fragile to take the pressure."

Professor of Criminology ? What was Susan's crime ?

And I find it mindboggling that Platell suggests that Boyle is 'not qualified' or you have to be a certain sort of person to be allowed to perform or something and that certain sort of person will be able to deal with the stresses of fame afterward.

There's many top name celebrities who really haven't been able to deal with the rigors of incredible success either, long before Susan Boyle came along. If Amanda Platell had a memory longer than a few minutes she might like to check the Daily Mail's archives. I'd say Boyle is doing rather well.

A tiny bit of what Platell is saying about Cowell is true. No question that Cowell and his researchers knew exactly what was going on very early on, and loved what they saw and went with it. No question there's been 'presentation' shall we say. But you know something ? That's not the crime here. And as far as I can tell from what I've read, that presentation, although by no means should be seen as the entire person, seems reasonably in accord with Susan's background.

And I should say as well, if it's that crooked in the way Platell suggests, then guys, you can't help but ask the question, why not make it so crooked that she just wins ? You see that's what's missing here. That's what's conspicuous.

Of course the other thing that's very conspicuous are these pages and pages of astonishing vitriol written about this woman. Which as far as I can see, a lot of journalists want to deride Susan Boyle through various articles designed to not look like they are trying to do that, by seemingly chastising others for doing so. The mysterious: 'them', 'those people', 'them out there' are doing it. Or in particular 'we' did this to Susan or 'we' did that. I'm not aware I've done anything. Amazing. And they don't think anyone is seeing straight through it.

You see, if you really think she is pathetic, why are you writing this stuff? That would say a lot more about you than Susan Boyle. There's a clue guys to one of the big issues in this.

They want us to believe Simon Cowell is bad, for in their analysis, creating a 'freak show', which I think is a seriously unpleasant injection, and just not correct in Boyle's case. I'm just not aware of Susan Boyle being a 'freak' in a 'freak show' other than the likes of Amanda Platell wanting to tell us that.

And what Amanda Platell in the Mail, Tanya Gold, Joan Smith et al in The Guardian and others like them don't seem to understand is Simon Cowell's not putting a gun to your head making you repeatedly write this shit over and over. And folks I'm not defending Cowell who's clearly a very slippery and shadowy character.

He's not making you tell us again, and again and again and again, how she 'should' suddenly be defined at the outset by her alleged learning difficulties. And then you tell us she is 'cracking up', 'breaking down' and we are failing our 'duty of care' then you repeat stuff about 'hairy angel', 'spinster', 'vulnerable', 'insecure', 'wanting to fit in' (which I don't agree with) and the that whole thing has been a 'freak show after all' and all about humiliation, is akin to 'bear bating', and presumably she's the freak either way even if the creation of the freak show is not her fault. Platell tells us the dream has become a nightmare. Apparently she can't win.

I just find this extraordinary. It's so utterly vile, so difficult to disguise as anything other than bitter poisonous vitriol it really makes we wonder about those writing this stuff, apparently trying to feel better about themselves at Susan Boyle's expense.

And what's fascinating is Platell is effectively asking us to believe Susan Boyle doesn't exist, but guess what folks ? Platell starts her article by telling us how Diversity (with that name to boot) does.

You see this is what's wrong guys. You can't have it both ways.

Part of Platell and the others must also really think Simon Cowell is wonderful, as his evil machinations have created such an easy target for them to bash. Platell and her ilk thinks it's safe territory and won't reflect on them, and because everyone is doing it in the media that makes it ok.

Wrong. Everyone isn't doing it. Everyone isn't calling Susan Boyle every name under the Sun and thinking that behavior is normal. Same way everyone isn't saying how terrible the MP's expenses scandal is either. I'm not. And Platell who I who I once used to like, should be very careful of copying others, you may just fall off a cliff and embarrass yourself.

You claim that Susan Boyle was humiliated. Funny. I see it the other way round. I see journalists humiliating themselves over this in trying to tell us this stuff. You claim Boyle 'didn't know what she was doing'. Funny. I see it the other way round and you don't know what you're doing or you just wouldn't be doing it.

What Platell doesn't get, she really doesn't get, is who's being manipulated here. She just can't get it. They all think they are powerful and telling the 'truth'.

What happened with Susan Boyle was a phenomenal thing, perhaps one of the greatest pieces of entertainment media in a very long time. It was brilliant and astounding and an amazing global success, with a wonderful message to it. I just wonder if that message became a little bit dangerous, and later down the line there was an attempt to reel it back in at least as far as this show goes, with dubious headlines being leaked out about Boyle, and a new atmosphere that would be fed to the press. And I just don't think a lot of people in the media understand this.

The level of this everywhere from the Guardian to the Mail is what's really bizarre, and maybe it's because Boyle represents a complete rejection of most of these journalist's lives, and she makes them very uncomfortable. This is then spun maliciously into a list of flaws about Boyle, which we are now suddenly 'supposed' to see her through, despite her incredible achievements on that show.

I very much doubt Amanda Platell, Tanya Gold and Joan Smith are ever going to hold themselves up to that criteria, and would see it as 'completely unacceptable' and an outrageous 'moral abomination' yet they are quite happy to hold Susan Boyle to it.

I said this at the time. People like Boyle are not well liked because they are a bit quirky or whatever, I actually think they are seen as slightly threatening.

There is a strength in her image and meekness, and it's symbolic. And that initial performance that captured the imagination of the world reminds everybody that the world is a complex place rather than a world of brainless stereotypes. A little bit of that may be ok, but in the end it's not liked. Power wants a world of brainless stereotypes, and from any angle Susan Boyle doesn't represent one of their 'cool' ones.

And that's why she was punished in the final. And everything she stands for, her background, her Britishness, her independence and incredible popularity can all be trumped with a 'modern' meaningless nothing word like 'diversity' as a far more suitable message to everyone.

There is a mistake people make, especially people in the alternative news. Not everything the media does is bad. Sometimes light breaks through, but it typically doesn't break through for very long, and may indeed break through for other reasons that we can all easily be too cynical and circumspect about later on, but it breaks through nonetheless.

And in the end, the Simon Cowells of this world don't decide whether people have talent or have a special gift or not. Their talent, their gifts, their personality and their soul stand up all by themselves.

The things that are underhand, cynical, and outright twisted about all this are that Susan Boyle didn't win Britain's Got Talent and that the British media have been so easily manipulated into attacking her, and exposed as ridiculous, insecure bitter cretins in doing so.