Perhaps, the reasons I never made a professional success of my life, apart from the rather obvious lack of talent and skills in almost everything (this is not self-pity, more a simple fact), is that I am not nasty enough, that I have a conscience and that I often feel guilty about things that happen to others even when I am not at fault. In short, an old fashioned snowflake, consumed with political correctness and definitely woke (and proud to be woke). I do have my moments of nastiness, mind you, and I’m not proud of it. I see a black and white world where there are rarely any shades of grey. This hasn’t served me well.
For example, I have been unfollowed by social media ‘friends’ for views I hold and things I have said. At least one religious fanatic and someone I used to know who pretends to have psychic powers have dumped me. When I write about how I have had a cull of social media ‘friends’, I am not oblivious to the fact that I have been culled myself. It’s just too bad.
Yesterday, I wrote what I hope was a sympathetic piece about Huw Edwards, without once mentioning his name. That was entirely deliberate, making I suppose what was a subliminal point that in this instance, certain sections of the media – I am talking about you, Rupert Murdoch – were eating him alive. The stories across the media sold papers and boosting viewing figures, which they would say vindicates the nature of their coverage. Some of the reporting was quite poisonous and, whether we like or even admit it, it undoubtedly ends up on social media, with added hate. I can’t understand it.
I write primarily for myself and in the hope that I manage to entertain someone (note the singularity of the sentence) or perhaps enable them to see a subject from a new or different angle. And while I am as adept as any woman and man in tipping a metaphorical bucket of shit over someone I don’t like, I like to think that normally I adhere to the hashtag #BeKind. I have my limits, for sure, and if you were to trawl through the 5000+ blogs I have written since 2014 you would find some ugly stuff. All I can say is that was then, this is now.
I always wanted to write and, as I never tire of pointing out, I never made it. At least the invention of the blog means that I can write to my heart’s content about anything I want, even if hardly anyone wants to read it. That’s something, I guess. But here is what may be my achilles heel: I could not have written any of the stuff in The Sun about Huw Edwards. I was, like most people, curious when the story, such as it is, when it became a big splash in Rupert Murdoch’s drooping organ, but as it became clear that no laws had been broken my curiosity morphed into sympathy. It is public knowledge that Edwards has suffered from severe mental health issues and now the media was, it seemed to me, trying to almost crucify him.
I could not have written any of the stuff The Sun printed as fact. I would have drawn a line in the sand. Where some people saw a scandal, I saw a tragedy. Where some poured oil on the flames, I wanted the flames to be put out. As the levels of hate rose, I felt only love and compassion. If that reads a bit drippy and soppy, well so be it. Knowing, as the reporters must have, Edwards’ open history of poor mental health, they must have also been aware of the likelihood, the near certainty, of a collapse. And they didn’t care. They can’t have cared. Probably because it’s how The Sun has always operated.
For example, in 1986, the actor Jeremy Brett, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes on TV, suffered a breakdown following the death of his wife. The Sun led with ‘TV SHERLOCK IN NUT HOUSE’. When the former boxer Frank Bruno was sectioned under the mental health act, the headline was this: ‘BONKERS BRUNO LOCKED UP’. But these are not rare exceptions: this is the norm for the red tops in general and The Sun in particular.
It is not for me to tell people what to read. But I would say this. People usually buy the newspaper that most closely reflects their worldview. I used to buy The Guardian because it’s politics was broadly speaking in the same place as mine. I stopped buying it when many of its columnists, though not its editorial stance, lurched to the hard left. People who buy the Sun and Mail are presumably happy to support the hate merchants of Fleet St, the likes of Richard Littlejohn, Rod Liddle, Tony Parsons, Dan Wootton, Sarah Vine and all the other right wing pound shop polemicists who pollute the media, always punching down. I’d rather be regarded as a failed writer than join these people in the gutter and increasingly the sewer.
I suppose the point I am making, in a somewhat convoluted and round about way, is that while kindness and decency alone may not pay the bills, then they beat the alternative. If the media hatemongers really don’t care who they hurt and how they go about hurting people, as long as they get rich, then I can’t beat them, but I won’t join them, either.
I’d fancy my chances of making into Heaven if there was a God, but sadly, dear reader, there probably isn’t one so I have to make do a life that’s far nearer its end than beginning. I’ve learned my own morals and principles, horribly flawed as they can be at times, and I’ll stick with them and try to become a better person. I still hate some people, like Rupert Murdoch, and that will never change but it feels good when I’m being kind. And as the great poet Todd Rundgren put it, love is the answer.
