The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Pyrrhic” as “resembling the victory of Pyrrhus over the Romans at the battle of Asculum (279 B.C.), in which he defeated the Romans but suffered a great number of casualties; (hence) gained at too great a cost to be worthwhile”. The dictionary omits that this most disastrous of victories would prove to be a turning point for the war – that the Greeks would ultimately lose some years down the line. Dictionaries are meant to be practical tools for retrieving definitions. For all the rest there is Wikipedia.
The idea of a Pyrrhic victory must surely be doing the rounds among the Daily Mail “intelligentsia” today. Their latest stunt – through their equally sensationalist Mail on Sunday – has proven to be a fantastic example of Pyrrhic stupidity. A lot has been written about it, about the ethical stupidity by which a reporter – Ross Slater – sets out to prove that something can be abused by actually abusing it; about the ideological stupidity by which the problem is posited on the fact that “food banks can be abused” instead of on the fact that “food banks exist and are used [by many]“. Writing more about these forms of stupidity would be giving too much importance to the Daily Mail and its pseudo-journalistic posse. Writing about whoever buys the Daily Mail’s paranoid drivel would be equally useless. I think the most important thing to highlight today is that even a lettered toilet paper like the Daily Mail can be used as a force of good.
Even the Daily Mail can be brushed against its grain. Yes. Have a look at the Trussel Trust’s Just Giving page. The page went from 250 public donations – before the heroic action-journo Ross Slater decided to “infiltrate” them – to 4,695 (at the time of writing; it keeps going up). Since I checked them out yesterday they went up £20,000 – this a remarkable feat at a time of crisis. I invite you to check out the page, maybe donate some money, you never know whether you won’t be queuing at a food bank one day. Whether you donate or not, please read the comments (for once, read them): you will hardly come across one that doesn’t mention the donation is a direct result of the Daily Mail’s stunt. This is heart-warming, the antipodes from a petty journalist setting out to con a 60 year old food bank volunteer to show that the system can be abused. That the system can be abused, we all know, is the main ideological argument put forward by most of the UK’s right wing press.
The Greek historian Plutarch refers to the battle of Asculum, attributing to Pyrrhus the following words: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” Wishing that the Daily Mail followed the same path as the News of the World, being utterly ruined, would be wishful thinking. Some other lettered toilet paper will take their crusade against anything remotely progressive. What we need now is more of their Pyrrhic stupidity, more of their battles against imaginary Romans (food banks, single mothers, immigrants, et al). And more readers being able to read tabloids against the grain.
