It is becoming increasingly apparent that the News of the World might have hacked the phones of everyone in the country. So yes, that includes the victims of crime and their relatives, but it would be churlish to criticise them for that. They're hacking everyone. Give them a break dudes. See the bigger picture. In a sense it would be more offensive if they didn't hack the victims of crime. I believe in equality and think they should either hack everyone or no one and given they weren't doing no one I can only applaud them for their rigour. It must have been hard to listen in to all that grief and anguish and which of us wouldn't have deleted a few of the more harrowing messages?
In any case it's journalists jobs to reveal and revel in the hypocrisy of others, not to have their own hypocrisy revealed and discussed. They have done such a good job in uncovering hypocrisy over the years, it's just darn rude to have a go at them when they just act a teeny bit hypocritically themselves. Sure they've hampered a police investigation by deleting messages, but they've done a lot of good work in ensuring paediatricians are chased out of town. So it's swings and roundabouts.
And though Murdoch's papers might suffer from a backlash now, it is nice that all the other papers get to sell more copies by having another excuse to put pictures of murdered children on their front covers.
It's almost like the journalists were driven to these extremes of hacking into phones because they realised how obsessed with such stories the public were. But it's good that now the public are furious with the journalists for providing them with the stuff they wanted to read and that now they can read about it all again, through the veil of pretending to be interested in appalling the journalists have been.
I was getting a bit bored with the pornography of grief to be honest, so I am glad we know have this new level, the pornography of being offended at someone attempting to bring the pornography of grief to people who want grief porn. I like to be able to wank whilst feeling a sense of moral superiority, so this has worked out great for me. As long as no one does another pull back and reveal and starts exposing the people wanking over the people wanking over grief. I guess there's a way you could skew that to make it look hypocritical too. But I have to say anyone wanking over me wanking over the people wanking over grief is really twisted and perverted and has no right to criticise me.
Where's the surprise really? Journalists have been cunts for years, clearly raking through gossip and fabricating stories and poking their noses into stuff that was none of their business. In a sense it's interesting that it's only now that people are saying, "Hold on, this isn't on." Surely none of it was on. I mean, yeah, this is super not on, but journalists clearly have little understanding of morality and what is acceptable and the public have let them down by not putting their collective foot down earlier. The journalists thought - well people didn't mind when we taped Camilla and Charles chatting and they seemed to enjoy it when we exposed and entrapped love rats or hounded that posh woman, whatsername, to her death (and remember how the public outrage over that stopped that ever happening again) and they bought loads of newspapers when a child got murdered or a child murderer got convicted, so surely it's OK for us to get them some extra info. It's your fault, the public. These people aren't capable of telling right from wrong. They're giving you what you want. In a way you're exploiting them. The poor feckless fools with no concept of morality. It was your duty to guide them, but you led them down this blind alley and then only pounced when they'd already gone way too far. You criticise those innocent journos for entrapment, yet what have you done to them.
The most shameful thing about realising that a private detective may have had access to my answerphone for the last decade is that people know about how few people ever ring me and how boring the messages are from the ones that do. I have worked hard to try and give the impression that I have a full, exciting and disgusting social life, but in reality I might get two phone calls a day, usually from my management company, but sometimes a cold call from someone trying to sell me something. Or a wrong number. I don't really like talking on the phone so I nearly always let all of these go through to the answerphone. Can the private detectives tell this, or might they be thinking I always answer my phone which is why there are so few messages from secret lovers and famous friends? I actually pity the private dick who was assigned my phone number to check up on. With such paucity of material it's no wonder that they preferred to listen in to crime victims. In a way I blame myself for this whole thing. And I have just discovered that the pornography of self-blame and shame is the most powerful of all.
It's hard to pinpoint ultimate responsibility, but as long as we're all furious at someone then that's all that really matters, right. Let's boycott everything, even the things that we never bought in the first place, then let's applaud the people and firms that have boycotted the thing that we didn't like, but then boycott them further down the line when we find out they have been hypocritical in some way and then boycott ourselves when we realise we are hypocrites too.
The important thing is that we treat all this in the most hysterical way possible, even if we never liked the way that the tabloids treated big stories in a hysterical fashion in the past. Because there's no fun in being hysterical about hypocrisy if you're not being hypocritical yourself.
Luckily I am allowed to say that because I have never been hypocritical myself. Oh apart from just then. But that was the first time. Stop wanking.
