The Daily Mail: The Measured Assessment

Warning: Features deviance, ugliness and plain old blasphemy

Pro:

The Daily Mail gives us "Binge Britain 1904: The rogues' gallery that shows war on booze is nothing new"*:

Angry, bewildered and shame-faced these Edwardian drunks stare into the lens of the police camera.

They were 'habitual drunkards' whose offences included being caught while in charge of a horse, carriage and even a steam engine.

Issued a century ago, the drunks were given the equivalent of modern-day Asbos in that they were banned from being served in pubs because of their past behaviour.

Information was compiled by the Watch Committee of the City of Birmingham, which was set up by the police to enforce the Licensing Act of 1902.

The act was passed in an attempt to deal with public drunks, giving police the power to apprehend those found drunk in any public place and unable to take care of themselves.

I recommend the article, featuring lots of photos from the "rogues' gallery", to fans of ugliness, the bizarre, and takíng delight in the misfortune that others brought upon themselves. Features Mick Jagger's grandma, a woodchopper and prostitute.

Con:

Dan and Dan take a Dylanesque look at Daily Mail front page headlines:




P.S.:

How lame is it to simply repost stuff previously featured by other bloggers? Pretty lame. Ah, time constraints! But, believe it or not, I'm actually in the process of reading an academic paper to blog about it for your reading pleasure (though it appears it is not as interesting as I thought it would be, so don't expect too much). Hope to get it out during the four-day near-complete shutdown of Germany that started today. "Near-complete shutdown"? Well, though the ban on dancing and football will be lifted come midnight and there ought to be a thirteen-hour period tomorrow during which it should be possible to buy food, there also seems to be a law that anything resembling a library must be closed for the full four days. Blessed are the udder-exploiting companies, for they will expand. Blessed are the gluttons for they will do likewise. Fucked are the eggheads for they will sit bookless in the ever-expanding shadows of the obese. Thank you, messiah butterboy!

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*Given the British tabloids' approach to the use of the return key, I find it somewhat ironic that it was Englishmen who tried to teach me the unconditional rule that "a paragraph has more than one sentence".