Tabloid money…
AOC’s misfiring message
● American writer Tom Lehrer famously observed that “satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”, says Nick Ferrari in the Sunday Express. Surely, the same can now be said of “irony” with the headlinegrabbing pictures of Alexandria OcasioCortez (pictured), dubbed AOC, arriving at the exclusive Met Gala event in New York last week. The left-wing New York congresswoman came dressed in an exotic ball gown by Brooklyn-based designer brand Brother Vellies, bearing the slogan “Tax The Rich” daubed in large red letters across the back. Tickets to the Met Gala had cost £25,000 each and French luxury fashion house Chanel even splashed out £360,000 on just one table. “The medium is the message,” said AOC in response to her many detractors. “You’re wrong,” says Ferrari. “This was one giant-sized gaffe.”
● Nona Gaprindashvili, the Georgian chess grandmaster, has every reason to be angry with Netflix, who she is suing for $5m over her depiction in The Queen’s Gambit, says Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail. In the series, a character says of Gaprindashvili: “She’s the female world champion and has never faced men”. In reality, she played against many male grandmasters and shared first place in a 1977 tournament. Her lawyer has asked the streaming behemoth, with its $25bn annual revenues, to admit its mistake, but has met “extraordinary hubris”. “Defamation writs are difficult to win in the US… But it would be so good if Nona beat Netflix to add to her
chess victories.”
● A reporter wants to know if I am “a money-grabbing b ***** d”, says Jeremy Clarkson (who owns a farm) in The Sun. The journo reckons
£126 is too much for a box of lamb containing a leg, a shoulder, 12 loin chops, four chump chops, one neck fillet and 12 sausages. “It isn’t.” The cost of producing a lamb was £508. “That doesn’t include a penny for the endless nights I spent in the lambing barn, with my hand up a sheep’s a***... Nor does it include the cost of replacing Wayne Rooney, the ram, who died.” This is good meat and you don’t have to buy it. “Therefore, my message to the reporter is: Why don’t you continue to fill your face every night with a Subway and understand that in farming, absolutely no one is getting paid too much.”