One perk of being a freelance journalist who writes for the Daily Mail is that there is always the chance of becoming a leftwing hate figure. Last month, it happened to me. I was denounced in the Guardian, Observer and Time Out. Normally friendly fellow critics accused me of being “very, very, very, very bad” (Ann Billson, Sunday Telegraph) or setting myself up as “moral guardian to the nation” (Alan Frank, Daily Star).
I grew tired of repeating that I was not seeking to impose my moral or religious-or, in my case, irreligious-views on anyone. I see probably 100 films a year that I find offensive: I do not think they should be banned. But nothing I said made any difference. My media alter ego had been created, and he seemed to be a bastard child of Mary Whitehouse and Senator Joe McCarthy.
I became aware of my doppelg??nger when I opened the Guardian one morning and found somebody with my name caricatured as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, complete with hood and flaming torch, apparently about to set fire to a cinema.
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