The Sun - your super soaraway source for crap propaganda

Years ago, when I had too much hair, wore too much black and listened to too much Nirvana, around about the time of the first Gulf War, my cousin's boyfriend passed me a creased bit of paper that was beginning to fall apart around the folds in it. "Here, Crackers," he said, except he didn't because my name isn't Crackers but you can imagine him saying a real name like Trevor or something, "have a look at this".


 It was the same voice my brother used when he passed me my first ever badly photocopied copy of Viz. "This is gonna be good," that voice said, "you're gonna piss laughing at a swearing postman and a man who wheels his knackers around in a wheelbarrow."

I took the grubby bit of A4, already sniggering a bit and getting ready to laugh a big one. On it was a picture of Saddam Hussein, with his beret on. I think my smile disappeared.

"Fold it out," my cousin's boyfriend said. "Fold it out!"

So I unfolded the bit of paper and Saddam Hussein was transformed into - a pig. Great. It's like Saddam Hussein is a pig. "That's rubbish," is what I wanted to say, but I didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings. I think I might have just given him it back in bewildered silence. It was my first real brush with proper propaganda, shite obvious propaganda like in World War II. My mum even said she remembered something similar with Hitler in it.*

I've come across quite a lot of shite obvious propaganda since then, most of it in the Sun. Whether you want a crap photoshopped picture showing what PRINCE William might look like as a KILLING machine or how it might go if Prince Harry got kidnapped in Iraq, you can rely on the Sun for some cheesy-arse rubbish you thought people became too savvy for some time in the fifties.

Actually, talking of Saddam Hussein, The Sun played a big part in making his execution a yuck-it-up barrel of laughs the like of which hasn't been seen since the last Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.

'The tyrant's in his pants' chortled the front page over a picture of Saddam in his pants back in 2005. In his pants! Never mind the morality behind handing him over to a court made up of his enemies who would probably want to kill him, he's in his pants! Does that violate international law? Who even cares?

'You're well hung now!' splorted the headline above the same picture just after he was sentenced to hanging a year or so later. Get it? well hung because he was about to be hanged until he was dead! And you can sort of make out where his willy is in the picture! Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The US Military were allegedly furious about the Sun getting the pictures and vowed to aggressively investigate how the paper got them. The Sun claimed it got them from a US Military source. As far as I know, that investigation was never heard of again.

If that wasn't enough fun revelling in someone's death for you to bear, a couple of days later we got 'Your Saddam Hangman Kit' with, er, a hilarious kit for playing hangman with a cut out Saddam with a comedy expression on his face. Hur hur! On the same day, the paper reminded us that we should shit ourselves about terrorism since every month that passes without a new 7/7 lulls us into a false sense of security. Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The dead baddie of choice today is of course Osama Bin Laden. Like every other newspaper in the world, the Sun reported that Bin Laden the coward had been using his wife as a human shield while brandishing a gun when he was shot before it was revealed that he wasn't. Unlike every other newspaper in the world, it turned the affair into hilarious knockabout comedy with the headline 'Bin bagged'. Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The latest bit of suspected propaganda the paper has engaged in is the - ahem - news that a large porn stash was uncovered at Bin Laden's compound. The paper missed a trick with not having a hilarious headline for this one ('Porno found at Bin Laden hideout'), leaving it to its sister paper at the News of the World with 'Unnatural Porn Killer' and Murdoch stablemate the New York Post with the amazing front page at the top of this post. It still showed us a picture of some tits though.

I'm with Robert T Long of Auburn Alabama on this, who apparently said, "I have no problem believing that Bin Laden was a hypocrite. But I also have no problem believing that the US government is a liar. Hence I have no opinion one way or other as to the existence of Bin Laden's alleged porn collection."

But whatever the situation, the Sun can be relied on to supply us with some clumsy-arsed propaganda that gives us the official line on things next to comforting pictures of tits to take our mind away from all the difficult questions we might have thought of. Question what you're being fed and you're questioning humour itself, you killjoy.  Probably a lefty as well.  No sense of humour you lot.

As for the pictures of tits, even those are wrapped up with some lovely propaganda these days. Question the propaganda and you're questioning the lady with the boobs. Nikkala, 19, from Herefordshire might not fancy you if you don't think Osborne has it right on cuts.

Which sort of brings me to a close with the weird photoshopped picture above today's Kavanagh column, which I don't think is online. Anyway, just look at this:

Now think of some words to describe it that are any better than 'fucking shit'.

The source of all the US official propaganda stuff is pretty obvious, but where does this stuff come from? Couldn't be a reciprocal arrangement of the sort that has been alleged between News International and the Metropolitan Police could it? Can't be. Just ask Jeremy Hunt.

*Yes, my mum was quite old when she had me. Yes, this makes for rich pickings if you're into cussing people's mums. But then so does your mum being a smelly tramp and a slag like yours.