Oh, I have had fun so far this week, reading all about all these mad 'superinjunctions' taken out by a succession of footballers and Andrew Marr, trying to stop people from talking about their private lives. It's been really entertaining; far more than it would have been if these people were just upfront about their little misdemeanours in the first place. Who wants to read about people being honest and penitent about their indiscretions? No! We want them all shame-faced and embarrassed, lamely protesting that their private lives are nobody else's business and they just wanted to protect their families.
This is true, of course. Footballers' and journalists' private lives aren't anybody else's business, and in the grand old scheme of life and issues in general, they also don't matter much. But that argument itself doesn't matter either, because whether these stories are our business or not, once they're in the news and we all know what these people have been up to it's pretty irrelevant as to whether or not it's our business to know about it all. We just know, and the story becomes one of the latest 'issues' for people to state their opinion about, ad infinitum. But surely that's a good thing for Andrew Marr, John Terry and the like; given that we're always being asked for "our say" on everything from rubbish collection days to what we think about Simon Cowell's hair, we won't be lingering long over their scandalous dalliances. Just long enough for a few people to express the usual spitting outrage about how these people are role models and therefore should be living guilt-free lives, and of course the usual sanctimonious "well if they wanted to protect their families they shouldn't have cheated on their wives in the first place, should they?"
I can honestly say I have no opinion regarding the infidelities of people I don't actually know, and also that anyone who considers a Premiership footballer as any sort of role model is the kind of person who should probably only be let out in public if they're wearing a muzzle and a straitjacket, just for their own protection. But I must admit, if the story makes the newspapers I will have a good old read. I might have stopped buying 'Heat' a while back, but that doesn't mean I don't like a bit of throwaway gossip every now and again. It's human nature (isn't that always the excuse?).
I think it's only the minority of people who lap up all these 'scandalous' stories and then is actually affected by them, or lets the details influence their opinions about the people concerned. I noticed a comment from a particularly wounded soul under an online edition of the Andrew Marr story, stating that they absolutely weren't going to watch his shows any more, now he's been branded a "useless liar and an utter hypocrite" (in the words of David Cameron, calm down, dear!).
When I was still into 'Heat', I (shamefully, I know!) read a copy of it's former editor's autobiography, in which he stated that although people were regularly sending him letters to complain about the "dumbing down" of society being reflected in his magazine, that he thought his readers "got it" - i.e. it was all just a bit of light, throwaway fun. You weren't supposed to reflect on anything in there, or use it as a symbol of our deteriorating moral fibre. You just flicked through it and had a bit of a laugh, and then you forgot about it.
And that's the thing with Andrew Marr, John Terry and countless others. Living proof that if you're in the public eye, you have an affair and someone finds out, you'll most likely be talked about for a bit no matter how hard you try to stop it or "protect your family" But for most people, all that story will really mean is a bit of light relief over a coffee, or a three-minute slot of gossip at the hairdressers, and then they'll carry on with the more important stuff like work and shopping and feeding the kids, and life will continue as normal.
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