In the 1873 play ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ (turned, in 1942, to an Orson Welles period drama of the same name), the author Booth Tarkington has one of his characters say ‘Politics is a dirty business, for a gentleman’.
This is a sentiment that I feel is more pertinent today than it was in the early half of the 20th Century, and applies, now, to people of all genders and all social platforms.
Less than one hundred years later, we have newspapers and news channels that openly lie about all shades of politics (and politicians) to their audiences.
In the UK every single news outlet is biased, from the outright purveyors of lies (The Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun, et al), to the unjustifiably biased BBC.
They’re all at it.
And that leaves us, the public, floundering for the truth.
Who (or what) are we supposed to believe, as we sift our way through the sewage discharge of filth?
Where do we put our bait of credence, in the hope that it will return a tiddler of truth, instead of a shark of a lie?
And isn’t this serious for me?
Well yes, it is, but there’s a reason, so please bear with me.
There can be no doubt that the political landscape across Europe and the US is changing.
Because of these changes, and because I have an interest in the world in which I live, I am closely following political news updates from across the world.
So when someone I know, someone I went to school with, someone who lived in the same tiny Welsh village as I, when this person is extensively reported on across international news outlets, and is reported on in front page and banner headline fashion, it makes me sit up and take great notice.
Actually, not only does it make me sit up and take great notice, the reportage makes me read not just the headlines, but the background stories.
And then I read the supporting ‘lifestyle’ interviews in newspapers and magazines.
As a result of reading those things I despair.
No piece of background reportage has achieved 100% accuracy.
Many of the features didn’t even come close to that lofty ideal.
So what chance does truth have, in the here and now reporting, if the outlets can’t even get the background stories right?
Really, what chance?
If I sound as if this has got me wound up, it hasn’t.
What all this has done is make me disbelieve everything that I read/or hear/or see, even more than I already do.
So to Penny Clarke (as was), formerly of Llanover, and late of King Henry VIII School, Abergavenny, I raise my mug of hot chocolate in solidarity.
I have no idea of who Penny (formerly) Clarke might be, but yeah, good luck to her.
I don’t read the papers much nowadays (I won’t go near the tabloids) and I get most of my news from the BBC News website. But even then, I have a large pinch of salt next to me.
Ooh! I know! I know! (Waves arm in air). I guessed anyway and wiki gave her place of birth as Llanover. It’s not a story I have taken too much notice of athough maybe I should. I haven’t red realworld newspapers for 10-15 years, maybe longer, other than Metro if I went on the tube or train which was rare. I’ve always found that people of all political persuasions think the BBC are against them so they are probably somewhere near walking the line but never analysed to any extent whether they are are pro one thing or another. Like you, I have a connection to a public figure although in my case it gave me access to stories behind the stories you would have seen. Smoke and mirrors my dear sir, smoke and mirrors is all I shall say. My post today may also be about politics and news but I shall see.