“Esto peccator et pecca fortiter….” (Martin Luther: 1483-1546)
I thought it might make me look properly clever to start off with a quote in Danish, innit, because recent judgments in my head have found me royally lacking in the boffiny intellectual stakes - and foreign words help make folk look smarter than they is. Non, c’est vraiment vrai.
What a grubby pervert that Martin Luther must have been, though. Certainly not the kind of guy you want loping through the neighbourhood and worrying the horses as the winter sun glints provocatively on their swishing tails and brings a playful little sparkle to their come-hither eyes. And teeth. No.
His quote is incomplete, of course, but I’ve seen enough to make up my mind about his distasteful propensity towards smut and depravity. Why bother disgusting myself further by finishing the sentence and everything? A lot of pious Protestants must be feeling very disappointed with Luther’s debauched outlook right about now. You’ll maybe think twice before ripping the church asunder and plunging Europe into crisis in the future, hmm? you naughty little puritans. Jeez - what a hypocritical monster the man was. (192 words already, oh God).
So I don’t trust him anymore, that’s for sure. I also wouldn’t trust my girlfriend if she started waking me up in the night to deliver match reports on, say, 20/20 cricket. She hates cricket. Refuses to watch it, in fact. And so her analysis would be necessarily flawed. She’d nail the basics, sure – there was grass today at the match, most handsome sleepyhead, and some sticks in the ground and a couple of gangs in colourful costumes who threw stuff at each other – but her stubborn absence from the match itself would quickly shine through.
Where was I? Oh yes. I bought The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian today, but chose not to read either of them. I held them out in front of me with a look of distaste as I wheezed my way back up the hill towards home. They both went straight on the fire. This firm and manly action allowed me to sit back and idly guess what might have been in them. I really wanted to have a strong opinion on the news today – I’ve been meaning to have one for ages – and so burning the papers created a problem.
Thank the Lord, then, for Celebrity Big Brother. I watched this horribly addictive trash today – as I do most days, in fact, because I’m interested in, let’s see, people – and tried to deduce from the show what might be going on in the papers (so that I, too, could have an outbreak of opinion).
Try as I might, though, I just couldn’t quite pull it off. It turns out that it is bloody difficult to assess the contents of a newspaper without first reading it. Who knew?
I’m not going to let that stop me from being utterly shocked about all the things I didn’t read today, however. Far from it. With their relentless insistence on showing the world as it really is - and by covering the dreadful actions of humankind in all its unedifying glory - newspapers run the very real risk of being seen to promote genocide, football violence, car crashes, famine, fatness and even, God help us, Doncaster.
These harsh insights into how so many lives are lived and lost can be very upsetting to those who would like to deny their reality by assuming a haughty disdain. And the answer, of course, is to ban the news. That way everything will get better. No doubt about it. Clever people are behind the idea – reasoning that a ban on the newspapers that report the ugly bits of life will very likely solve the problem of the ugly bits themselves. Admiration for this stance has been quite secret, unfortunately, but there is still time to squeeze your head up your own behind if you’re quick.
The alternative – a momentous and nation wide debate on the ills of society – is almost too unbearable to think about. How DARE the newspapers force us to consider these things? - especially when we haven’t even read them. Filthy, money-grubbing, sensationalists.
Okay, enough already. Just one more thing. The sneering and bitter prejudice that has fallen upon the members of the Big Brother house has been perfectly dreadful to behold. Without irony or, it would seem, self-awareness, the middle-class hordes have been busily exposing themselves as distastefully vicious snobs with a fine line in bigotry towards the working-classes. Mockingly disdainful and at permanent pains to clumsily point out their own superiorities, they have gleefully joined in the bloodsport of hunting down Jade Goody and making her cry - laughing at her depressing inarticulacy as they do so. Quite rightly, it has to be said, her lack of education has been cited as a possible reason for her own horrible behaviours. She may, at some point, use this as an excuse.
I wonder if our journalists can use this excuse and I wonder, dear reader, can you?
