Jan Moir on Gately Death - what next?

The public outcry to Moir's hate has been fast and fierce. Moir retaliated:

"In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones."

Heavily orchestrated? Yes Jan, we all gathered in our club house to decide how to bring you down. Newsflash: Social Networking, Tweeting, Blogs - they'll bring you down because you're talking rubbish. The general public have more power over what garbage news we're fed, so if you want to keep your job you'd better do some actual 'journalism'.

Stephen Fry was quick on the case, saying to his 800,000 or so followers: "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane."

The Times' Caitlin Moran wrote: "Jan Moir better pray she never needs another hair cut or interior design job," (love that one!)

Charlie Brooker began by tweeting: "Jan Moir manages to walk the difficult tightrope between being a bitch and a cunt."

He put his acerbic wit to brilliant use later with a full article for the Guardian Online. He described the Daily Mail beautifully: "It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo"

Satirical blogsight Dailyquail pitched in with a lovely parody: "Some might say the death and the fact that the deathee was gay are unconnected. To them, I say: 'no'. Look at the facts - he died, and he was gay. Therefore he died of gay. If a young, healthy man dies whilst suffering from a cold, obviously nobody would suggest that the cold had killed him, but with gay it's different. Medical reasons, and that. Isn't it? Yes, I think it is."

If you were one of the many complainants who contacted the Press Complaints Commission to register your disgust, you may have received an email that it will not be taken further as you are not 'Gately's family'. Without wishing to sound hurtful, I was complaining on the basis that I found it homophobic, not just because it was someone famous.

So what can you do next? You could persist with the PCC on the reasons I just gave. You can contact your local MP and ask for a Complaints Commission that makes sense. What may prove to be most effective is complain to the companies that advertise in the Mail - tensions are already running high after some adverts were withdrawn. The Daily Mail claimed this was 'normal'.

'Normal', 'natural', you'd think they'd be more careful about those words...