Daft Old Duffer is back with his weekly column. Ed
There was a photo of the Prime Minister’s wife, Samantha Cameron, in the paper the other day. She was on a holiday beach and she was wearing a bikini. And I did not like it one tiny bit.
Not because she looked bad in any way.
Indeed she looked every bit as good as an ex-model and rich man’s wife should.
No prurient pictures please, we’re British
But I do not want to see prurient pictures – because that was what it was – of any man’s wife, any mother, displayed in that way for the titillation of certain readers. Okay for a young lass fancy free and proud of her looks. Alright too for anyone in the entertainment business and willing to use her body in that way.
Not for a decent, normal housewife enjoying a normal, decent holiday with her family.
And let’s not hear any silly argument about her not showing herself in public if she didn’t want to be seen.
Everyone knows – everyone of ordinary common sense that is – that attire suitable on the beach is not suitable off it.
Illogical it may be, but we all accept in our lives that is so. As well as the right not to be stared at.
When did it all change?
There was a time when the entertainment industry and newspapers shared a mutually beneficial agreement.
Publicity departments seeking to advertise their latest film or show would issue statements and pictures, stars would grant interviews, and occasionally some starlet would display some leg in a swimsuit.
The newspapers, keen to sell their product would eagerly reproduced them and everybody was happy – including Mr and Mrs Public.
The rise of the greasy slimbags
Then one day one of the greasy slimebags that infest the industry reckoned he could earn a bigger dollar by laying on the pavement and snapping up-skirt shots of women exiting cars. And thus was born our present day conglomeration of comics, run by editors who make larger sales the nearer to outright porn they get.
As for the news – that’s a matter of printing whatever the news agencies send in. No need to check because any accusations of libel and defamation can only result in further sales.
The standard defence produced by this industry of immorality is of course that if stars want publicity they can’t complain when it’s sometimes adverse. Rather like telling a cyclist that if he or she wants to ride along public roads they can’t complain if a car runs them down.
They’d print it whether we wanted it or not
What really rouses my ire however, is the way this sleaze is now infecting Mr and Mr Normal. No one now is safe from the grubby slitherers of the media with their whining excuse that ‘if the public didn’t want to see it we wouldn’t print it.’
Of course there is a large appetite out there for soft porn. Beyond profit there is no justification for pandering to it.
When I left school, my overiding ambition was to become a reporter. Fortunately a self-appointed ‘careers adviser’ – who turned out like so many of them to know much less about careers than I did at age 16 – put me off.
Sometimes now I’m rather glad he did.
Image: pedrosimoes7 under CC BY 2.0
