Lin Sampson out bitching herself

Dear Lin Sampson,

         I hope you’re happy with your slaughter of the innocent.

         To say your attack on a 17 year old school girl’s matric, dance dress was totally over the top and unwarranted would be a lie – it was far worse than that.

         Her story was about her enterprise and ingenuity in getting South Africa’s Olympic swimming, gold medallist Chad le Clos to be her date at her school’s matric dance. As you know she did this by holding up an invitation placard in the crowd that was at Johannesburg’s airport to welcome athletes returning from the Olympics.

         But you chose to do your utmost to take the gloss off what was a particularly momentous occasion for any school girl, by belittle her in the meanest possible way. And you were aided and abetted by Nadine Dreyer, the Editor of the Sunday Times Lifestyle Magazine, who allowed your vile venom to appear in print.

         Your article came across as some kind of warped revenge for what happened to you 50 or was it a 100 years ago at your own matric dance.

         You told us you designed your dress yourself based on one you saw in Vogue and it made you look like a Voortrekker wagon.

         Well judging by the only picture of you that I could find on the internet very little has changed. You still look like a Voortrekker wagon only now your wheels have come off and it would take more than a team of oxen to pull you up again.

         Looking such a mess your bitchy ranting about the dress style of others can’t have any validity at all, let alone what the Sunday Times seems to give it.

         If the way you looked for your own school dance made your father cry, hopefully he’s not around to see you now. You say you got drunk and was only allowed back to write your matric exam.

         It was the first forbidding presence of recklessness that would define my life and it started with an ill-starred frock, you wrote.

         So we can blame all your reckless, trashy sniping at the world on that ill-starred frock.  

         No wonder you had to look for the snidest remarks available in your book in an effort to destroy Melanie Olhaus’ special occasion that was so very different to yours.

You began, OK so the dress was wrong. Anyone could see that, as if this was an established fact, not your warped opinion.

Surely your murderous pen could have done better than to describe her dress as a bit like a Swiss cheese; a hole where you expect cheese.  Or it looked a bit like a bathing suit that Ester Williams, a 50’s swimming star might have worn – in the pool and it was little more than an animated rag.

Lin on Cape Town Fashion Week

         And when you ran out of your own store of bitchy remarks you quoted an anonymous colleague, who I don’t believe exists, as saying It doesn’t fit.

         You had a field day lambasting Melanie’s dress and evidently just as much fun knocking Jan Gert Coetzee, the celebrity designer who produced it.

         One of his greatest crimes, apart from the one that appeared on Melanie, was evidently having designed a dress for one of the Kardashian sisters.

         In your eyes that made him a warrior of the junk genre de jour, of reality TV, of people who are famous for being famous (whatever that means), people who are not famous at all but think they are.   Not content with that slap down you continued with your insults by saying, With his platinum curls and sweet lips, he has a terminal case of celebriphilia.

         Your idea of how Melanie should have looked was for her to have had a simple hair style as her hair augmented with extensions gave the appearance of boiling over. So she didn’t even get that right in your expert opinion.

         Her dress you believed should have been a chic contemporary outfit in soft flamingo silk, an ivory and rose cardigan, and a swathe of seed pearls.

         Don’t tell me you saw that in Vogue as well.



'Sunday Times & the Art of Fiction' by Mathew Blackman

         Didn’t you once say that you had your first reporting job with the News of the World? Well look how far trashing the lives of the famous for trashing’s sake, just to increase circulation, got that rag.

         I can’t resist asking if you had had too much to drink when that rare photograph of you was taken because if you hadn’t been drinking you have absolutely no excuse.

         I would crucify the photographer in you next article, if I was you, because he certainly didn’t take you from your best side - if you’ve got one.

         Regards,

         Jon, Chairman of the Protect Our Children from Predatory Journalists Society.