Songs to shoot yourself by

Liz Jones

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2093248/LIZ-JONES-Lovely-young-women-men-pink-cheeks-Katie-Price--me.html

reckons women only study at Oxbridge to meet a better class of husband.  This is despite referring to herself as a 'feminist' - without any sense of irony or shame, as I really don't think she possesses either.

Nor much of an intellect, come to that, because she has also recently stated that at the proud and venerable age of 53, there is nothing she would like better than to be swept off her feet by none other than Mr Darcy.

What the HELL is this woman on?

Caitlin Moran's supremely pragmatic test for this elusive condition seems to have totally passed her by.  All you need to do is look down your knickers, then answer the following two questions:

1.)  Do you have a vagina?

2.)  Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you answer yes to both, congratulations, you're a feminist.  You perfectly fit Rebecca West's definition of the term as a woman who expresses views that differentiate her from the average doormat.

She utterly fails to notice the somewhat vital point that women have been studying at Oxbridge and many other venerable institutes of learning since the 19th century in order to get an education.  With one of those to your credit, there's nothing you need less than a happy ending with Mr Darcy and a ridiculous collapsed meringue of a dress.

The reason she hasn't picked up on this fundamental fact about women's lives today is vanity.  If we are to believe the picture of her created by her extensive body of work, basically, she is so obsessed by herself and her pathetic excuse for a 'life' that she considers nothing outside herself and her own petty concerns to be of any importance whatsoever - including history, facts and the opinions of other women.

This self-obsession run riot probably explains why her writing is so poor.  It appears it simply has not occured to her to read her own work back and think a bit about how it might be coming across to other people.

So why haven't the editorial team at the Daily Mail taken her aside and had a quiet word of friendly advice whenever it seems called for?

Maybe they think their readers out there in Middle England really DO believe women are as flaky, sad and all-round bloody useless as depicted in Liz's columns - in which case we need feminism more than ever.  Or they really don't give a monkey's butthole how many people she manages to infuriate +/depress beyond endurance with every new installment of her columns, just so long as it shifts loads of papers and gets plenty of hits on their website.  Or perhaps they actually have tried to say something at some point, possibly more than once, only she just wouldn't damn well listen.

Not that we should let the Guardian off the hook, either.  After all, they are the outfit that published that truly dire column about her total disaster-wedding some years back.  This, if I remember rightly, was during the era when the editorial team were obsessed with features penned by people dying of cancer.  That's right, they decided the wedding of the century made the perfect follow-up to harrowing accounts of terminal illnesses faced with great courage and dignity by highly talented journalists.

Every sodding week, she would go drivelling on and on about how her husband didn't like her, fancy her or respect her.  The feeling was obviously mutual, as she spent much of the rest of the time detailing what a lying, faithless git she reckoned he was.

Every week I would hurl the paper against the wall and yell:  "Then why the **** did you marry him, you stupid *****?"

Things reached such a pass that I was seriously considering writing to the Guardian to complain.  I eventually decided against this course of action because I was worried they would reply: "Why don't you sod off and read the Daily Mail, you raving nutter?".