I have moved to lynnroberts.org

I do my best not to read the Daily Mail for one very good reason: I like to pretend to myself the world is a nice place, and its terrifying outpourings of bigotry make that quite tricky.

Last week the lower-case-c conservatives turned their malignant attentions to Russell Brand. Now, vitriolic racism and being the embodiment of all that is wrong with society I can handle, but attacking a comedian I like? That I will not stand for...

On his BBC Radio 2 podcast (which anyone with the faintest whiff of a sense of humour should listen to every week) Russell mentioned a Mail article about his autobiography. It carpet bombed bile and criticism over the left, Russell, his fans, the Guardian, the BBC, the other tabloids, cat lovers and lonely people. Good going, even for the Mail.

Article author Alison Boshoff apparently thinks someone who had a Thai prostitute bought for him by his father should keep schtum about it. She also took exception to Russ having watched his father's porn when he was at primary school. So a boy had a premature sexual awakening thanks to a negligent parent. How it's conceivable, even in the most closed and hateful of minds, that it could be the child's fault I don't know. As for keeping quiet, it's a mystery to me what that would achieve.

Boshoff writes disapprovingly: "Auntie is keeping faith with him, no matter how distasteful the skeletons in his closet are." I don't know why I'm surprised at this attitude. It won't come as a shock to anyone that the Daily Mail is of the 'lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key' school of rehabilitation, but naively, I didn't think it would apply to ex-addict, promiscuous TV presenters who've never claimed to be anything but.

More worrying than The Mail's lack of compassion is its attempt to set itself apart from the other tabloids. In this article it calls The Sun "a downmarket red-top newspaper". Thus it allows its readers to think themselves 'upmarket' and tells them they're different to the 'yobs' who read The Sun or The Mirror. They probably are different: they're probably wearing suits and they probably have more abhorrent views.

No-one would ever think "I'm a Sun reader. I know about the world." The Sun is not for people who take politics seriously. The Mail, in styling itself as a paper that does just that is far more dangerous.