Why, Stephen Fry, WHY?

I consider myself a normal person (pretty much). And like every other normal person I love Stephen Fry. His wordiness, his wit and his intellect have often left me amazed. In fact, in my last blog post I asked whether it was "possible to describe anything Stephen Fry has done as anything other than wonderful?". Sadly, it seems that this might almost have been a challenge.

In case you are unaware, Fry was interviewed for Attitude magazine, and made a series of comments suggesting women did not enjoy sex, but "that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want." When these comments were picked up by The Guardian on Sunday, there was naturally a huge commotion on Twitter, amongst other places.

Fry claims to have been misquoted by the Guardian, saying

"So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up."

Since then, he has tweeted once more -- "Bye, bye" -- and so, worryingly, looks like he may be about to leave Twitter, which would be a terrible shame for one of the most popular tweeters out there.

I have found the whole situation to be incredibly confusing and disheartening. Fry has not earned the "National Treasure" badge by accident, but by being one of the most likable and warm public figures in the country. These comments seem so out of character, so naturally I would hope that he has been misquoted, as I'm sure would so many people.

But Fry doesn't seem to be using Twitter as he said he could. One of the benefits of the social networking site is that it enables you to clarify your position without having to be filtered through the journalists who can twist your words to suit their own agendas. When the Mail accused him of leading an "Atheist Hate Campaign", he neatly demonstrated this to be false in his blog, and was able to put across what he actually believed.

Slightly more problematic in this regard is that Fry himself tweeted a link to a website with extracts from the interview himself (I believe it was this one), but has since deleted that tweet. Certainly, this article contains contentious quotes, so it seems less likely that The Guardian has entirely misrepresented his case, leaving one to wonder why he would initially tweet the link, then remove it after he claims to have been misquoted? (For what it's worth, I had this on my Tumblr the day before The Guardian ran with the story, and it's contents are such I don't feel I need to argue Fry's point again here.) He also seems to have made similar comments in a previous interview, which can be found on YouTube here.

The curious thing I have found is that some defenders of Stephen Fry are so ready to criticise The Guardian for misquoting the interview without looking into any other sources to see what the interview said. Of course, it's still possible that his intentions have been misread, and I would dearly love this to be the case, but to blindly assume that someone is right just because they're Stephen Fry is wrong.

I have focused on this more than most stories of this nature. Had it been almost any other figure, I probably would have made some remark and passed over it, but Fry is different. His charm has won so many people over, including me, and his intellect is so great that it's often easy to forget that he is fallible, and so devastating when proved so. But I hope that Fry rejoins Twitter, takes the time to clarify his statements, point out where he's been misquoted, and that this issue can be left behind very soon.