Is it any wonder, with the disproportionate significance given to England playing in the World Cup, and tabloid journalists dipping into their bag of cliches, that BBC News report an attack on a young German student, in Dane Park, Margate.
Roger Gale, rightly states that this has "brought shame on the town", and refers to xenophobia. Clearly this is something that could and probably does happen in other towns, however I wonder if it's about time that our tabloid newspapers started to act responsibly. A typical example of nationalistic reporting, was to be found in the Wednesday edition of the Sun newspaper.
Sun journalist Harry Macadam, is the scribe who takes a double page in the middle of the paper, to describe how the sun places a 7500 square foot beached towel, thus indulging in a typical caricature of the German behaviour we have come to expect from the Sun.
The thing is there are plenty of simple-minded yobs who read, this type of story and thus have their xenophobic views of Germans reinforced by this sort of ostensibly manufactured story.
There is no problem with being proud to be English, but stories such as Mr Macadams, make me feel embarrassed to be English, still presumably that's what the Sun pay him for, it's just a pity that visitors to this country have another price to pay for English xenophobia.
The words of the victim "I think the reason they attacked me is because we were German and the World Cup starts in a few days." .
I feel that the Sun is more entertainment than news, but really isn't it about time they got some fresh ideas.
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