Mail [doesn't] apologise to gay man; glosses over a century of homophobia

The Daily Mail redeemed itself for 100 years of homophobia tonight by saying sorry to a gay.

The unprecedented apology excuses the newspaper's estimated 17 million cases of gay bashing since since its birth to proud same sex parents Lords Alfred 'Alfie Sparkles' Northcliffe and Harold 'Hazmatazz' Rothermere in 1896, but leaves it open to accusations of political correctness gone mad and pandering to minorities.

An insider said: 'It's political correctness gone mad. When will the Daily Mail stop pandering to minorities?'

Author of the 'Ephraim Hardcastle' gossip column Peter McKay apologised to openly Tory blogger Iain Dale after calling him 'overtly gay' and implying that he was attempting to organise some sort of fruity disco sausage fest by inviting readers of gay newspaper PinkNews to attend a parliamentary selection meeting:

Overtly gay Tory blogger Iain Dale has reached the final stage of parliamentary selection for Bracknell, telling PinkNews: "I hope any PinkNews readers who live in Bracknell will come to the open primary on October 17 to select their new candidate. You don't even have to be a Conservative to attend."

Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?

Dale responded by complaining to the Press Complaints Commission, and McKay* attempted to placate the angry gay with the following:

I must say I'm quite surprised at the furore created by the piece in my
column yesterday. As regular readers will be aware the EH section is meant to be a lighthearted gossip piece and is certainly not meant to be taken
seriously.

However I understand that perspectives on these things are different for
different people and realise that though no offence was intended, you did indeed find the piece offensive.

I'm certainly happy to offer my fullest apologies for any offence caused
and reflect that I may have made an error of judgement on this occasion.

Of course I'll happily through a few bobbies in the direction of your
nominated charity and hope that all is now fine and dandy.

The offending section of the Hardcastle column has now been removed [update: it's now been reinstated]. Sources say the sincerely self-justifying apology completely makes up for such previous cases of homophobia as the Mail's campaign against gay child-snatching, Melanie Phillips's 'homosexuality is to blame for social breakdown' article, and Richard Littlejohn's entire back catalogue.

A barrel-chested heterosexual spokesman said: 'Thank goodness no high-profile Conservative bloggers have highlighted our rampant homophobia before. We've learned a valuable lesson today: generic bigotry goes unnoticed but gays cause a stink when we single them out. Oh well, at least all is fine and dandy now.'

++ Stop press ++

A clearly contrite Peter McKay follows up his apology with this in today's 'Hardcastle' column:

Tory blogger Iain Dale complains about an item here yesterday...I have nothing against Dale. Nor am I homophobic. But if he wants to become an MP, surely he'll have to become a little less sensitive. Incidentally, the Tories are having their first gay pride event at their Manchester conference next week. They'll promote a new 'gay-friendly' logo, Conservative Pride. Isn't life grand?

Update

* The apology was a hoax. Peter McKay has confirmed that he is unrepentant for being a homophobic cretin and that the apology was not penned by him.

A spokesman said: 'We would never apologise to a poof. We might catch queer by proxy somehow.'

The Dawning of a Dark Four Years for America

Barack Obama came under fire from one British newspaper today for being a 'soft' leader, not being Abraham Lincoln and for lying about being black.

Unable to fathom the ridiculous hysteria sweeping the globe on the 'historic' inauguration day of America's first black president, both 'Mad' Melanie Phillips and 'Yokel' Robin Page questioned everyone's sanity in succombing to 'Obamania'. While Mel 'The Malevolent' asked: 'Has everyone lost their marbles?', Page was left wondering whether it was in fact he that had gone insane, asking: 'Am I going round the bend?', to which several readers answered: 'Yes'.

Conceding that it was sort of cute that black Americans felt vindicated by the appointment of an African-American to the highest office in the country, Mel 'The Merciless' reminded mindlessly enamoured readers that Obama would almost certainly fail to live up to the stratospherically high expectations that people have of him. Describing him as 'a fantasy figure of hope', Phillips derided Obama's naive belief in 'the replacement of military action in defence of his nation by talking, negotiation and compromise', suggesting that such silliness would only encourage scary baddies like the Iranians to increase attacks on innocent targets like Israel.

Going on to apparently contradict herself, 'Malignant' Mel added that Obama's entire 'career has been solidly embedded in an ultra-radical tradition which believes in revolution from the grass-roots up', just like communists do. But, she said, it remained to be seen what Barack Hussein Obama's term in office might bring; 'He may indeed be constrained not just by current difficulties but by events not yet forseen. He may change his mind about a lot of things as a result [and be] hampered by inexperience and naivety'.

Meanwhile, Tory bumpkin Robin Page silenced critics who claim he doesn't deserve a place to vent his unbalanced, unresearched, woefully ignorant views on the third highest circulating national newspaper's website, by insightfully pointing out that 'Barrack [sic]...had a white mother and a black father so he's brown' not black. Sources agreed that Page's interpretation was entirely correct because that's how genetics work.

Lambasting Obama's 'politcally correct' black label as 'all-ridiculous' [sic], Page went on to compare what he calls 'obarmyness' with the popularity of John Fitzgerald Kennedy - 'a liar, a spiv and a serial womaniser'. Page did, however, manage to express a degree of hope for Obama's presidency, and admitted he would be 'interested' to see Britain's first black Prime Minister before inexplicably saying 'as long as he doesn't turn out to Robert Mugabe', possibly because black leaders are usually power-mad, murderous tyrants.

Peter McKay, who cemented his reputation as a pioneering, forward-looking journalist when he described the events of August's Democratic Convention in the past tense before it had even happened, warned that Obama's fondness for quoting Abraham Lincoln put him 'in danger of overdoing it'.

McKay reminded readers that 'From the moment he began running for the presidency Obama set out to hijack Abe's legend' by doing things like taking a train to his inauguration - just like Lincoln did. Obama's shameless aping of the 16th President belies his own shortcomings, however, and McKay mocks the new President's connection with ordinary people. Unlike him, Lincoln 'was his own man' - 'He practised humility as well as mentioning the need for it. When asked about his humble start in life, he didn't make a meal of it or write books about it'.

Similarly, Obama's invocation of past Presidents and use of quotations reveals his much publicised weakness for rhetoric and oration. 'When [Lincoln] wrote the Gettysburg Address...he didn't lean on the work of predecessors or advertising jargon soundbites', McKay jeered.

David Jones rounded off the newspaper's unimpressed coverage of the day's uninteresting events, ridiculing the 'unbridled hysteria that has been building throughout Washington DC since the weekend'. Scoffing at Obama's attendance at 'yet another choreographed and hyped-up pre-inauguration event', Jones appropriated his colleague Mad Mel's ironic description of the inauguration as 'the second coming' before commenting that being part of the two million strong crowd watching in awe as Obama was sworn in, made you want 'to weep for them' rather than feel witness to history in the making.

The hard-to-please journalist added that 'eyebrows had been raised' at the £30m cost of the inauguration ceremony and subsequent events during a time of global economic difficulty. Insiders agreed that the day should really just have consisted of a small buffet with a bring-your-own booze policy and that Obama and vice-president Biden would have been better advised to make use of public transport instead of wasting money on bullet-proof limousines.

Daily Mail readers appeared to agree with the negative opinion presented by the columnists, expressing pessimism that Obama has the apples to deliver, probably because he is a brown leftie with a suspicious middle name:

Mail Outdoes Itself with Coverage of Convention Yet to Come

Our sister newspaper, The Daily Mail, has long been a bastion of truthful journalism and incisive alliances. Their outlook, like The Quail's, is progressive and forward thinking.

So much so in fact, that last night Peter McKay, who is providing balanced and thought-provoking coverage of the Democratic Convention in Denver, a state in the mid-western region of the former British colony of Virginia, was uniquely able to deliver a report on an event that had not yet come to pass. It is thought McKay had employed the so-called 'McFly' technique of journalism, whereby one travels briefly into the future with the selfless intention of finding the very latest breaking news. The technique unfortunately renders the intrepid traveller completely impotent due to the high levels of radioactivity produced by 'time-bending', but such is the sacrifice that the Mail's groundbreaking reporter was willing to make.

Astoundingly, at 2.16 on the morning of the 29th of August, an article appeared on the Daily Mail's online internet hypertext site describing Barack Obama's official acceptance speech of the Democratic candidacy, over an hour before Obama was due to actually make the speech. Biased left-wing publications like the Guardian and the Independent were left trailing behind McKay's brilliantly timed piece as they had to wait for the event to actually take place, in yet another example of lazy liberal journalism.

McKay described the future scene as Obama disparaged popular Republican president George W. Bush and his extremely successful eight years in office, saying 'On November 4th we must stand up and say: 'Eight is Enough.' Although, reportedly, the speech was received warmly by the 75,000 strong crowd in Denver, Obama's rhetorical style still lags somewhat behind Republican rival John McCain's, who yesterday delivered a startlingly eloquent interview to Time journalists James Carney and Michael Scherer aboard his chartered aeroplane, dubbed 'The McCain Plane'.