Jörg Haider

Jörg Haider, Governor of the Austrian province of Carinthia (or “Austrian populist far-right leader Jörg Haider” as the mainstream media prefer – they never prefer “American populist far-left leader B.A. Barackabama”) appears to have died because he drank too much and drove too fast (for an earlier post concerning the truth of the subject of drinking and driving please see “In vino veritas”, below).

The mainstream media are positively euphoric over this event. They love reporting it and implying that Haider was a drunk rather than a reckless driver. They also make strangely gleeful references to imputed homosexuality. They refer to him having been “outed” in the German press some time ago. See http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gzoH4V9vcxjPUS41v6zwnx-VYyMwD940R6000 for a typical example. The only “outing” of which Frit can find evidence is in the form of quite baseless, gratuitous and politically motivated assertions made by a Nobel literature prizewinning ugly Austrian feminist some years back.

Those who rule us permit no stigma to attach to the word “homosexual” under any circumstances, but, when it suits them, they can strangely use the same stigma-free word to stigmatise and denigrate a political opponent without a second thought.