Emily Thornberry, Labour’s incompetent shadow foreign secretary, would have you believe she was this weekend making a principled stance against sexism.
(In fact, she was frantically covering for her own incompetence in a TV interview, but who’s keeping track?)
After getting pummelled in a disastrous Sky News interview, Thornberry said she was being picked on for her gender and took the fight to social media.
But amid the glow of approving Corbynista opinion came this rather curious exchange, which saw Thornberry “like” a gag by the Sunday Sport newspaper.
For the unenlightened, the Sunday Sport is one of the finest creatures of British journalism – tabloid news taken to the nth degree.
Its stock-in-trade are headlines about “sex dwarf” lookalikes (most recently Keith Vaz, below), “space aliens” and hard-hitting bodily function stories like “FIND THE BASTARD WHO SHAT DOWN MY CHIMNEY”.
Keith Vaz sex midget sucked off my hubby in the shed! Only in @thesundaysport tomorrow pic.twitter.com/6xlDwTOpjc
— Sunday Sport (@thesundaysport) September 10, 2016
“@qikipedia: All time favourite front page headline in the Sunday Sport: GORDON RAMSAY SEX DWARF EATEN BY BADGER” pic.twitter.com/rogTTOvf
— tim (@timb0nic) December 5, 2012
Did space aliens have taboo romp behind Farmfoods in Kirkcaldy? From tomorrow's @thesundaysport pic.twitter.com/w3n5espHNk
— Sunday Sport (@thesundaysport) March 5, 2016
Find the bastard who shat down my chimney! Householder's despair – only in today's Sunday Sport pic.twitter.com/fzkLWiMjVI
— Sunday Sport (@thesundaysport) October 6, 2013
Alongside this good, clean fun is an absolute avalanche of porn. It’s been a while since Heat Street picked up a copy, but the paper certainly used to feature a nipple count, with figures in a single edition often exceeding 50. UPDATE: It’s still going strong:
@kj_corcoran Yes, we still do a nipple count.It was 109 on Sunday and the paper is still on sale today in all good newsagents.
— Sunday Sport (@thesundaysport) September 13, 2016
We at Heat Street would love to see Thornberry appear in the Sunday Sport as suggested.
But we do wonder how her feminist crusade squares with trading jokes with the most shamelessly sexist publication still on British news stands.
