I probably need to add a disclaimer every now and again pointing out the general principle of writing a piece every day based on random word generation. Otherwise people will rightly question why I exist. I know I do.
I’ve been trying to put this random word off. I needed to be in a proper angry mood, but instead I’ve just been depressed, followed by chipper (thanks to a nice evening – don’t worry it soon wore off). Cos there’s no point talking about the word “muckraking” without at the very least being a teensy bit annoyed. You can’t just be sad about it.
“I saw some muckraking today” (sigh)
Doesn’t work.
But I can probably get a bit worked up if I consider how muckraking cheapens life and democracy and important things like suet pudding. Not the sort of raking that leads to the exposure of that fiend Vernon Kay who finds himself caught up in shock headlines like:
“Man in ‘attracted to pretty model with huge breasts’ shock”.
Tess Daly will maybe take some reassurance in that the page 3 girl in question looks a bit like her. Except, y’know, younger. With a flatter stomach and no stretch marks.
Hmm. OK, maybe not.
Right. Back to the point.
Which was?
As we know, the chances of it turning out that Vernon Kay did no such thing and that the story only works because all three points of this allegedly sordid triangle happen to sound suspiciously northern are quite high. Back in October a documentary team of celebrity-news hoaxers blew their own cover to reveal that they had been feeding hilariously stupid stories to the tabloid press for months. Given that their stories were normally based on the flimsiest original premise and had then been distorted and twisted to the point of ludicrousness, it was faintly alarming how many times their stories had not only been picked up, but further embellished by the newspapers.
Stories about Amy Winehouse’s hair don’t have any wider significance than making stupid people laugh at Amy Winehouse (she’ll live) and less stupid people laugh at shit newspapers (sadly so will they). But we’ve got an election coming up, and people have already started to make shit up. It's difficult enough to challenge the idea that the UK has the worst debt in the G7 (nowhere near), but at least that's economics – famously difficult for everyone to get their heads around, particularly bankers, it seems. Now we seem to have the Conservative Party – who most of the time don't seem to have any policies and arguing that there's no particular reason for them to have any yet – attacking Labour for a policy that has not only been yet to be implemented, there's no evidence that it was ever going to be.
Fortunately those wonderful people at mydavidcameron.com have wasted no time in using the Tories abject failure to get the tone of their poster campaigns right to undermine the campaign, but where are we headed when a party that refuses to tell us their own policies are attacking the other parties by making shit up? It's not like there are serious issues to debate in the real world. Is this election taking place in Narnia?
At the least the objects of Vernon's attention were real.
No comments:
Post a Comment