Roy Greenslade on the Duchess of Cambridge and Sarah Vine

Of course not. She's got a pitch outside Leicester sq station.!

You mean she works in an newsagents?

Kate sells papers and magazines. Top celeb.
Pity for her they couldn't stay on lovely Anglesey where the people treated them normally and it was too far from the centre of things for the paps. to bother them.
Yes gillybob celebrities do court the press. But as the phone hacking scandal has shown, the press don't always know where to draw the line.
They don't just print a photo of someone having an off day. They make all kinds of unnecessary hay out of it. They don't just take photos of celebrities when they are attending events and in their work mode. They harass them mercilessly and criticise them mercilessly too.
The example set is not good. Schools are working hard to reduce bullying - including personal remarks about appearance. Then the kids go home and read OK and consume this institutionalised form of celebrity bullying. It encourages "taking down a peg" and promotes the idea that women are obliged to make a bit effort to look perfect when they have got a stinking cold, or their kids are ill, or they have just had a baby.
Kate went up in my estimation when she faced the cameras the day after having a baby.

I didn't think she looked any of the adjectives so bitchily attributed to her. Just a normal unglammed picture, possibly even airbrushed (negatively)? She rises to the occasion when she has to. I don't think the photo looks awful. Are the paps short on other 'celebs' to snap and write about?

Gilly But the D of C is not quite like an ordinary celebrity.
I am not so naive as to think that the Royal Family don't welcome and even court favourable publicity, but as Bags said, the pictures didn't show Kate in an 'unfavourable light'.
They just showed her going shopping and looking pleasantly natural in her appearance, yet Sarah Vine chose to criticise her and make unwarranted conjecture about her personality and whether she could cope.
She really doesn't deserve it and if we dislike misogyny when it comes from men, it's ten times worse when it comes from other women.

I still don't understand the reference to SV's 'sad life' though.
Sad Life to me means a sad, lonely person who has nothing going for them in their lives, which is not what I understand SV's life to be like at all. Sad = wretched, woebegone, melancholy etc.
Perhaps the DM tells them to 'bitch up a bit' if they start being too nice, now that would be nasty.
And she probably doesn't write a political column any more for obvious reasons as she is married to a government minister and that could be construed by some as her ideas being government policy .

I know I had a rant at her about something else but occasionally I have agreed with her - but not this time!

This pretending to sympathise whilst being utterly bitchy is fairly common rosequartz. People who say one thing to your face and bitch behind your back. Horrible.

The problem with many of the "celebrities" JessM is that they court the press when it suits them (or when they are being paid a fortune for their wedding/baby photographs) and don't like it when the press photograph them in a bad light. Sadly you can't have it both ways.

Maggie

What a nasty piece of work. We can only thank our lucky stars that we won't be invited for Christmas chez the Vine-Goves.

Or who knows, there may be a Gransnetter who has to attend? Perhaps one of those who doesn't get on with her DIL?

The papers print what their readers want to read

Yes well, unfortunately bitchiness sells and it sells to women. Sad.

I suspect the DM expects 'bitchiness' from some of its female columnists. Suzanne Moore now writes for the Guardian, enjoyable, clever pieces whereas when she wrote for the DM her articles were so often aimed at putting other women down.
The DM does seem to have an editorial line that women should all be SAHM. It's all a bit Doris Day 1950's but with a very unpleasant undertone.

I think you're spot on about this sort of article selling newspapers, ga. Sad though it is, it seems some people just want to read trash.

Re bookdreamer's point about Sarah Vine seeming a different (nicer?) person when she wrote for The Times, a quick thought sprung into my head which is kinda odd: if SV can apparently change her personality by what she writes, she's a bloody good writer! Somehow this doesn't seem right! Maybe her inherent bitchiness came out as good political mud-slinging in the Times. I'm just speculating....

One thing it ain't is "cutting edge journalism" , I am sure there must be better outlets for SV's fearless pen (?)
Trite, low, and basically another non-story.

I used to think SV and Liz Jones in DM were as bad as each other, but SV is way ahead when it comes to writing first class bitchy articles. For ages I thought she was Jeremy Vine's wife which I found confusing because he's a lovely man. SV's role is definitely to provoke readers (same with Richard Littlejohn) and reading the comments below on her articles, she achieves that objective.

Seems to me that Sarah vine was a different person when writing for the Times. Since she's been writing in the daily mail it seems to me her persona has changed completely.

I do wonder how these things get into print. An editor has read the article in question and agreed to publication, therefore s/he presumably believes there's an audience who want that sort of writing style and content. Who are the people who want to read articles like this? Who is the article aimed at?
A Mail journalist once told me that he wasn't in the business of telling the truth, but of selling papers. Could it be that this sort of story therefore must aid or even boost newspaper sales?

rosequartz - I do believe that sv and anyone else who so easily manages to stoop so low to write such rubbish and can actually find such vitriol within them to vomit over other people certainly has massive problems and a sad life. It certainly says a great deal about her character that she can display the ability to be so crass and nasty while pretending to be otherwise and then to actually sign her name to such garbage so that everyone knows the depths she is prepared to go to for financial gain.
Would you want to be her friend? I would be surprised if she has any!

The Mail does seem to make a habit out of putting down well known women. At one time they kept running really vitriolic stuff about Victoria Beckham. After I read one story which I knew was untrue I stopped believing any of them. I imagine most of the stuff they publish about the Duchess is equally unreliable.

Clearly sv has massive problems and a sad life

But I don't think she does have massive problems and a sad life; this is journalistic bitchiness disguised as sympathy. They think it sells newspapers.

That article is a bit like a thread about a thread.

Wars of the journos.

There are shelves full of magazines in the UK that are equally toxic plus lots of websites. They criticise celebrities endlessly for being too fat, too thin, lost their baby weight too fast, not lost their baby weight fast enough or committing fashion faux pas. The lowest point might have been reached when Kate M was criticised for her shape 24 hours after giving birth - I think it was in OK magazine but if you put suitable terms re kate and baby weight into google you get - bit surprise - vast numbers of hits.
I think this "you can do no right" criticism of famous women is utterly poisonous and misogynistic. Undermines all women. And probably boosts the businesses of those who prey on the insecure.
I hope Kate is confident enough to keep away from these publications and treat them with the contempt they deserve.
(Also a bit fed up today about coverage of the auctioning of Thatcher's wardrobe. There is no let up.)

Oh, having read the actual article (only part of it, mind you!) I see she is pretending to sympathise whilst being utterly bitchy.

I've met her sort in RL

Well, I have only read a bit of it and that was enough.

How do we know that KM is not still breastfeeding? How do we know she wasn't up half the night with a fractious child or baby? I know she has a nanny and lots of help, but sometimes a little child just wants Mummy. Most Mummies don't have long-range lenses focussed on them every time they go out either.

People do not realise now much of their characters they give away in what they write. Clearly sv has massive problems and a sad life.