Madame G

Recently, pop star Stephen Gately died on holiday with his partner in Mallorca. The post-mortem found the cause of death was pulmonary oedema, and the coroner ruled he died of natural causes. He was 33 years of age.

If you don't know who Stephen Gately was and are still reading he was a member of Boyzone, a 1990's Irish boyband who were popular around the same time as The Spice Girls and Take That. In 1999, after hearing that someone was due to sell a story to the tabloid press about his sexuality, Gately decided to pre-empt the press and come out, albeit reluctantly. He didn't think it was anyone else's business who he chose to sleep with, and I am inclined to agree. Boyzone went their separate ways and though some members went on to have solo success, Gately mainly stayed out of the spotlight. He entered into a civil partnership with his long-term boyfriend in 2006 and kept himself to himself.

Although the news of his death at such a young age was pretty shocking, the press reaction has for the most part pretty measured. The ghoulish glee at exposing a celebrity's tawdry private life as is often the case in celebrity deaths such as those of Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger was predominantly absent from the coverage, not least because it seemed there was nothing over which to gloat.

That was, until today.

The British newspaper The Daily Mail is a dispicable rag of hate-filled half-truths at the best of times, but today they surpassed themselves. Somehow one of their journalists, one Jan Moir, has managed to take the sad death of this young man in relatively rare but not unheard-of circumstances and turn it into something sordid. If you wish to read the unexpurgated version of her strange musings and illogical conclusions, you can see the full article here. However, here are a few gems from the content of her article.

( After the jump, witness someone leaping so far to conclusions, I'm extremely surprised she didn't fall down the gorge and smash her face in )

For reasons best known to my brain, I managed to get myself into a stew about the bullying nature of celebrity gossip after reading that Perez Hilton allegedly got twatted over the head by someone in the Black Eyed Peas' entourage. Instead of calling the cops, he tweeted about it, asking someone else to call the cops for him, and at the same time hyping up his own publicity. The man makes my blood boil. He's an archetypal bully. Some people in the public eye invite the attention of celebrity gossip columnists like him, but others don't. And the simple fact that those others would prefer to keep themselves to themselves outside of work [because yes, no matter how public being a singer or an actor is, it's still a job] and only deal with the press in the course of their job seems to infuriate people like Hilton. I would say that gossip columnists and bloggers cross the line, but for them there seems to be no line. And given these relatively private people with a public job do not give anything away about their private lives, these gossips instead speculate and on occasion out-and-out make shit up, taunting like pre-pubescent girls trying to make the quiet girl in class cry.

The one thing that pisses me off most about Perez's coverage is the way that he tries to bully people that he thinks should be gay [I choose my words carefully as it seems he mostly, from what I can tell, bases his speculation on who he would like to fuck rather than any forensic process of deduction] into coming out. And that's a really difficult thing to defend yourself against, for want of a better word. I mean, it shouldn't be a bad thing to be gay, but if you're not you might not want people speculating as such. But if you speak out and say you're not then you run the risk of a). either getting the "methinks girlfrien' doth protest too much" reaction or b). getting branded as a homophobe.

At the end of the day, what the hell does it matter which gender someone is attracted to sexually? Particularly someone who has never tried to do anything other than their job and doesn't court the paparazzi and the celebrity commentators. Am I being really stupidly naive here? Does someone being gay, straight or something in between have a material effect on their ability to sing, act or whatever else they choose to do for a living? Not really. So why is it necessary to try to insinuate anything about the private life of someone who doesn't seek your attention, be it saying they're gay, dating someone they may have had dinner with once or something else equally fanciful. Because if you don't know, why say you do?

I'm going to stop now, because whilst I have it really clear in my head why this makes me mad beyond reason, it also apparently makes me angry beyond sense and I get the feeling I'm not making myself clear. So instead, on to happier things.

Some publicity shots are out of for the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland. If I could take my ideal holiday, it would be inside this man's mind. I mean seriously, how amazing and fantastical are these?