Two Repressed Egotists

We know all too well how easy it is to make fun of The Daily Mail, but a quick flick through today's issue proves that it's a worthwhile activity nevertheless.

For today, The Mail has landed upon the very root of everything that is wrong with the world. Forget the credit crunch, forget the war on terror, forget knife crime - because the real problem is the proliferance of 'obscene greetings cards'.

You know the sort of thing. And if you don't The Mail helpfully prints reproductions. They pick on one particularly brilliant example which revolves around a picture of Jesus praying in a garden with the caption - "Jesus loves everyone except for you, you cunt!"

Of course, as this is The Mail we're talking about, they don't print the word cunt, choosing to asterisk out the offensive 'unt' part of the word. Presumably the more innocent Mail readers might choose to interpret that word as 'carp' or 'card'. Either way, The Mail has done everything it can to protect it's readers, so the reproduced images of the cards all have their offensive words blacked out. You could have hours of fun by trying to work out just what words are deemed worthy of the Mail's black line of prudence. Or you could just laugh yourself silly at the Mail's own captions - underneath the reproductions lies this not-at-all-heavey-handed disclaimer for its readers's benefit:

"Horrifying: We apologise for reproducing these offensive cards but readers MUST see for themselves how distasteful these cards have become".

Oh, to live the life of a Daily Mail reader! To have such obvious opportunities for outrage pointed out to you so clearly must make life so much easier to deal with...