Paul Dacre, much feared editor of the UK Daily Mail, wanted a journalist to go to America to find out about the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. One would have hoped that this might have produced a reasonable and fairly balanced bit of reporting on two topics that have not really been treated seriously in the UK media. Unfortunately he wanted to do it on the cheap.

So he sent airhead celebrity gossip hackette Jane Fryer instead. Fryer, who likes to pimp herself as “quirky” and “cutting edge”, is in fact a long established “filler” – that is when the paper needs a thousand words or so to fill an empty space she will scribble something on a topic nobody else is interested in….think paper clips, unicycles, turnips…..just to fill the gap. Think of her as a decorator rather than a journalist (I am sure there are millions of such hacks in the US…)

Still, equipped with her one brain cell and her company blackberry Fryer tootled off to flyover country to give us Brits the lowdown on what was shaking up American politics and came back with this.

Garbage. Garbage on stilts. A mephitic, palpitating pillar of guano – and what is worst, unlike the bats she actually got paid for depositing this malodorous mess onto virgin paper. For that reason alone I feel she could be a firm favourite to win the coveted Glenda Slagg Award.

She obviously went to the US and travelled around a bit so her expenses were probably quite fruity – hacks on expenses never stay in cheap motels or fly coach. She met up with Tea Partiers in Kansas and Illinois and played the usual hack game – all smiles and understanding nods with the “stiffs” (journalese for non journalists) then caricaturing them with an air of supercilious disdain once on the plane back to Blighty.

Palin, of course, gets it with both barrels in a way that is quaintly retro to those who keep up with the PDS scribblers of the MSM (RINOs and lefties). Even they have ditched the Palin as ditz meme now – the party line is the cunning and crafty Wicked Witch of Wasilla. Clearly Sullivan, Ambinder and Huffington didn’t send Fryer the memo.

So from which dark cave did Glenda (whoops, Freudian slip there folks….I mean Jane) collect and process her bat’s dung on the ‘Cuda?  The stuff about the Lear jet, Levi, the resignation speech etc. – was it someone else’s cave she visited, was there other DNA on the guano?

Enter “Sally from Anchorage” who told her that Palin had quit to make money and was now dead fish in Alaska. Fryer was so impressed by Sally’s honesty and perspicacity that she felt no need to vox pop beyond one (and anyway maybe the bean counters in the London office were sending a few texts about expenses)

Now here is a conundrum. Is there a familiar odour about the source of this Anchorage guano? And would we need to call for Sherlock Holmes to tease this one out – or maybe “Sally from Anchorage” is really someone else whose name also starts with S….

With her brain cell working to the max Jane is puzzled why the “Tea Baggers” (now where would she get that from?) should take Palin seriously as a politician as “She appears to know little about government”. She’s also “batty” with a “tawdry” family and ignorant about Russia and Africa.

Of course outside the weird world of right wing Republicans Fryer found nobody had anything positive to say about Palin

Investor’s Business Daily? They lied.

Roger Simon? You might be a big cheese at Politico but Jane Fryer has got your number. 

Camille Paglia? What would she know – and who the hell is she?

Willie Brown, former Mayor of San Francisco – obviously seduced by Fox gold.

Veteran Chicago newsman Clarence Page? Probably a GOP sleeper…

None of them have a clue about Palin. It needed a feisty, fearless and cut price hackette from London to tell it how it is, someone who knows about wrestlers….

Paul Dacre you have in your employ a true symbol of the current state of the dead tree press, a woman who embodies the core values of journolism.

She is already worthy of following in the footsteps of Glenda Slagg in terms of literary style but maybe some might go even further – is it possible that Jane Fryer’s investigative reporting skills are as well honed as those of that giant of The New York Times…..Jayson Blair?

You, dear reader, must be the judge……