Posh knickers and Misogyny

Latest in the seemingly endless barrel-scraping attacks that the right-wing press are throwing at Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats is this story (by the legendary Jan Moir) about the wives of the leaders. In it, she criticises Clegg's wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (whom she annoyingly keeps referring to as 'Mrs Clegg' as though repeatedly saying "How dare she not take her husband's name!") for going shopping for underwear at Rigby and Peller, a rather expensive lingerie shop, claiming that perhaps the Cleggs are not as close to ordinary plebs like you and I as they pretend to be. 

The article gets my goat on several points. Let's dissect each of them. Firstly, Nick Clegg has never hidden his public school education, has never tried to go about identifying himself as being an ordinary bloke - that's just how he comes across, and that's because he's probably slightly less stage-managed and more genuine than David Cameron. His wife also works as a lawyer, and typically they don't get paid minimum wage - so when she buys clothes I'd personally be very fucking surprised if she bought her underwear at Primark. The socialist in me doesn't like to see people pissing money away on expensive food, or clothes, or cars, but I hate hypocrisy even more. The Daily Mail shouts "Look! See? They're posh and have nothing to do with the likes of YOU!" whilst at the same time trying to get us to vote for an Etonian and his shadow cabinet of Etonians, who arguably have even less to do with the likes of us, and are openly declaring their plans to cut inheritance tax for their closest chums.

Secondly, I take issue with the notion that Miriam is somehow doing something wrong by staying at work and not accompanying her husband on the campaign circuit like some appendage. It smacks feminism in the face squarely with it's patriarchal suggestion that a woman's place is BY HER HUSBAND'S SIDE no matter what, even if it means giving up her own very lucrative job to do so. Miriam has very wisely said "Screw that - that's your job, Nick, and this is mine" as any woman should be able to do without fear of mockery or ridicule.  This line of reasoning extends to a kind of slightly disapproving frown that she wields too much influence over her husband by 'encouraging' him to take a day off from his important campaigning to spend a day off with his children who have been stuck in Spain for the last week or so. I'm sorry, Jan, but 'encouraged'? You don't think that maybe, just maybe, Nick might have been missing his boys and might just have a) needed some time out, and b) wanted to see them again and spend some time with them? You think he needs to be 'encouraged' to do this? Do you even know any human beings, Jan? Or have you been too long enclosed in the misogynistic bubble of the Daily Mail, where men caring for their children is seen as weakness, and should be done by the little subservient women? Moir sums up this anti-feminist mindset when she says, "For don't you feel that the wives could do a little more to help their floundering husbands in this yo-yo election?" No, Jan. I don't. Because that's their job, not their wives'. I also don't approve of the way she tries to hilariously insinuate that Miriam's dominance over her husband extends to beating him up if he doesn't empty the dishwasher. Seriously, read the piece, it's in there, I kid you not.

Thirdly, as mentioned earlier, and still on a feminist rant, this appallingly facetious mentioning of Miriam as 'Mrs Clegg'. She has clearly decided not to take her husband's name, in a move I applaud wholeheartedly, and yet Moir uses it as a stick to hit her with. It's like she's being all sniffy and saying "Well, you might have chosen to try to be all feminist and clever, but I'm still going to call you Mrs Clegg, because you're a nuaghty little woman who should have done the right thing and being utterly subjugated by your husband. So there." 

Another corker from Moir, and another black mark against the Mail in what surely must be a record fortnight for black marks against them. 

Murdoch Shapes The Election Even More

Last night's election debate was lots of fun, Cameron and Brown clearly both learned a lot of tricks from Nick Clegg. Watching it, and keeping one eye on the Channel 4 poll tracker, was also very informative and backed up what I was thinking; namely that Clegg was having his star moments, but Brown was definitely controlling the debate far more powerfully; he was making the points that the other two were having to answer, and rarely vice versa. Cameron meanwhile was again very light on actual details of policies - when pressed by Nick Clegg to give a figure for the Tory's proposed cap on immigration, he consistently avoided answering - but big on rhetoric, and the whole 'vote for change'. Cameron appears to be trying to win an election on shallow soundbites, and people just aren't convinced. The Channel 4 poll ended with Clegg hovering at about 50%, Brown on around 30% and Cameron languishing at the bottom with only 17%. 

But then Sky's polls came up, and Sky News started telling everyone that Cameron had won the debate. The polls were somehow showing Cameron in the lead. What the fuck? Were they even watching the same debate I was watching? Because I'm pretty sure that Cameron had his arse handed to him on a plate for most of the time, only having a real moment when he stopped Brown in his tracks over the leaflets (although the Tories accusing any other party of using appalling scaremongering made my hypocrisy meter explode). Other than that, Cameron floundered, failed to answer questions until, getting visibly annoyed and trapped by Brown's insistence that he tell people what he was planning to do with free eye tests and prescriptions for the elderly, he snapped and made up on the spot that they were going to keep them. Nobody watching that could possibly see anything other than a desperate ad lib on Cameron's part. How then were the polls so different?

Well, to be fair the Yougov polls are often referred to by Private Eye as the Anyresultyouwantguv polls, and if they were paid for by Murdoch because, y'know, Sky being his channel and all...

Let's also cover the facts of the production of Sky's coverage; Nick Clegg, noted last week for his down the lens eye contact, was consistently denied as much camera time for his eye contact as David Cameron, I noticed. Cam was allowed moment after moment to stare pleadingly down the lens, whilst Clegg was viewed from the sides, from the back, and occasionally from the front, when he was directing his attention elsewhere. The questions were also selected by Sky News, so you have to ask whether any questions got filtered out that might have made Cam look even worse than he did. The pundits afterwards seemed hell-bent on painting Cameron as the king of the debate, which made me think that either they have no idea how people actually win a debate, or they are deliberately fabricating it in order to make the sluggish minds of the majority of viewers question what they had just witnessed. Lets face it, the press do tend to view themselves as the gatekeepers of information, and this election is starting to highlight just how seriously they take that role. From the Sky News bods frothing about Cameron's 'victory' after a dismal performance, to the Daily Mail's apoplectic attacks on Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, to James Murdoch and Rebecca Wade storming the Independant's offices because the naughty Indie dared suggest that Murdoch was trying to influence the vote with his mighty army of right-wing media outlets, we've seen the press' masters role in events highlighted dramatically, possibly more dramatically than ever before. People need to know this. People need to see what goes on here. They need to be made aware that they are being played for fools by the likes of Murdoch and Dacre. The Mail's vitriolic attack on Clegg alienated some of its readers, showing that you can, indeed, go too far.

The big question is, though, will this fake reality that is being projected by Murdoch et al affect voters? Will people do as they are being told and go back to voting Tory again in the haze of media bullshit? Or are enough people seeing the vague shapes of the manipulators moving behind that haze, and not liking it? We'll see in a fortnight, I guess.