Don't You Love Charlie?

In a nice kind of way, of course. Charlie Brooker has a nice style of cynical rant about lots of aspects of modern life or, well, life in general, pinpointing stupidity with his eagle gaze and then burning it with his giant-sized magnifying glass. He did it again today in his column in The Guardian in which he casually rips to shreds an article by Jan Moir in The Daily Mail. Read Charlie's article here.

Part of me hates posting this - why on earth should I give the breath of publicity (even if it's just through this little blog) to a hateful person like Moir? why am I, even indirectly, giving possible credence to her plainly barmy and unsubstantiated assertions, her casual and unthinking homophobia? I'm not. I don't want to be in that ball game. Good on Charlie for ridiculing her and her stupid theories. Why does she have a problem with civil partnerships and gay and lesbian people? Why does anyone? And playing on the sad death of Stephen Gately as a convenient event on which to spin her wierd ideas is awful.

I came across Charlie's article just after reading about a gay man killed in Trafalgar Square apparently for being gay. This is Trafalgar Square I'm talking about, the big public square in the centre of London with loads of people day and night, a police station round the corner and, all over the summer, the focus for Anthony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project with lights and cameras all over the place. So why did two teenage girls and a 20-year lad feel safe enough to kick a 62 year old man to death three weeks ago because he was gay?

Now, I doubt that the apparent killers are Daily Mail readers but this is just a different aspect of the same problem. Why do people hate complete strangers for no reason at all other than they're gay, or black, or Muslim or some other reason that just says 'different'? I don't understand that, I never have. Can someone enlighten me?