Worst Opinion of the Week: Stop Being Mean to Dominic Cummings!

Story: Dominic Cummings drove to County Durham with COVID-19 symptoms, claimed he did it to "test his eyesight", was subsequently taken to task by Emily Maitlis, among other broadcast journalists, former politicians and various bishops.
Reasonable take: Seems fair to scrutinise an unelected advisor to Boris Johnson for breaking the lockdown rules.
Brain rot: "The media are monsters. Utter monsters." – Darren Grimes.

In a rare moment of national unity that didn't involve clapping or chuckling at timely clips from Only Fools and Horses, a resounding consensus was reached among the British public this week that Dominic Cummings is "a cunt".

While lockdown for millions across the country has meant self-isolating away from our friends and families for months, in the hope that our personal sacrifices will save lives, one of the primary architects of present-day Britain had other plans. You'd think he could have just spent his lockdown doing whatever it is right-wing men do in the comfort of their own home; growing out their skullets, logging into one of their many alt accounts to pester a former assistant, or just letting off some steam in a "landlords only" chatroom. You know, the usual dude stuff. But no.

After it was discovered that Cummings was flouting lockdown rules and going on joyrides across the country, even the Guardian and the Daily Mail could agree on something beyond the star rating of a cordless vacuum cleaner, both concurring that Dominic Cummings' position as our Prime Minister's guru was becoming untenable.

Look, I'm not suggesting that Cummings just wanted to take a nice Easter jaunt away with the family, embarking on a cross-country jolly up to beauty spots around County Durham to stay in a "spare cottage" on his father's estate (which Cummings mistakenly forgot to tell us he allegedly owned the deeds to) so he could get away from the COVID-19 infested streets of London.

And I'm really not suggesting that once the story began to unfold he had to develop an absurd network of ropey justifications, with each new revelation entangling him so badly that he had to fabricate a farcical narrative about hopping into a two-ton machine, with his family strapped in the back, while visually impaired, and began traversing the English countryside as an "eye test" to check he wasn't "going under".

Who are we to question the integrity of a man whose best-known work was painting giant lies on the side of buses to confuse old people?

Before you could say "someone take the shovel off this cunt", Cummings was rolled out to sit at a fold-out table in the Downing Street rose garden, as if he was selling custard slices for The WI, to deliver an hour-long briefing defending his "instinctive" actions to protect his loved ones. Unlike the rest of us, who simply don't have the smarts to do what we consider to be best for our families. Where have I heard that before?

Seeing Cummings debase himself by being forced to offer some form of explanation for his actions proved too much for the likes of Darren Grimes, who forms the "nice but dim" UK triad of right-wing politicos alongside Tom Harwood and Emily Hewertson – all of whom are gifted huge platforms by the British media due to the sheer lack of people without prominent crow's feet who are willing to proudly embarrass themselves for a living.

Grimes felt a profound injustice was being done to Cummings and cried: "This is actually breaking my heart. The media are monsters. Utter monsters."

This is in stark contrast to his opinion a few weeks ago, when he tweeted "those who make the rules simply cannot be found breaking the rules. The quickest way to lose public trust in the official advice" in response to Scotland’s chief medical officer resigning for doing the exact same as Cummings.

I have wondered why people who constantly blubber about the lack of law, order and accountability in Britain have gone into a meltdown because some cunt was asked to explain why the fuck he drove to a castle "for an eye test", but no answer has been forthcoming.

I just wish these pricks would stop acting like this whole thing is a left-wing press sting when over 44 Conservative MPs have called on Cummings to resign or be fired for so flagrantly undermining the government's lockdown policy and making Boris Johnson look like some sort of blonde Orville to Cummings' Keith Harris.

I mean, for fuck's sake, when Emily Maitlis attempted to hold Boris and Cummings accountable on Newsnight it led to the only apology of the fiasco so far, when the BBC reprimanded the presenter for not bowing to the upper echelons of Number 10.

What's most infuriating about this whole scandal, though, is that Cummings fucking around in the countryside should rank, comparatively, very low on the list of offences the government has committed during this pandemic. Sadly our media is so broken they have no real appetite for stories such as the government knowingly discharging COVID-19 patients into care homes or the UK having the highest daily death rate in the world, so instead we have to endure a TMZ-style pap culture for Westminster figures, where nothing becomes a story worth following unless it involves a political scandal.

The British media has helped create a right-wing vaudeville where openly contradictory narratives the government try to push about them forming a "protective ring" around our most vulnerable during this pandemic quickly become unchallenged non-stories, because they aren’t titillating enough.

In one way, Grimes is right. The British press are monsters – not because they care a lot about this one story, but because they haven’t cared enough about the others.

@MULLET_FAN_NEO