Two stories in the news today which show that the society in which I live is as serious as a bubble, floating away into insignificance as more advanced civilisations look upon us and laugh.
Firstly, the foreign secretary in the coalition government, the former Conservative leader William Hague, has been obliged to make a statement denying he is a homosexual, after a Labour Party blogger stated Hague had spent the night in the same hotel room as one of his male special aides.
As if spending the night in the same room as another male were not confirmation enough of Hague's gay tendencies, a photograph of he and the special advisor Christopher Myers appeared in the Press last weekend, showing the pair of them laughing, and Hague wearing a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. In 21st-century England, then, sleeping in the same room as another man, and being seen publicly laughing in your sunglasses with him is proof of homosexuality, at least as far as some sections of the media are concerned.
The default reaction of anyone who has been libelled is to go to the civil court, assuming they can actually afford to do so. The difficulty is in demonstrating (on the balance of probabilities) that what has been written is sufficient to cause the reasonable man to feel hatred, ridicule or contempt for the libelled individual.
Fifty years ago, perhaps, when being gay was more of a social taboo than it is now, it might have been possible to sue for libel and win. Today, perhaps not, leaving Hague to either do nothing and let the rumours continue to circulate, or release a statement in which he said his wife had suffered a number of miscarriages, and that there had been no improper relationship with Myers. Myers, incidentally, resigned.
The next story which caught your author's eye involves The Stig, an unnamed professional racing driver on the television programme 'Top Gear.' The Stig's job is to set lap times for cars tested on the programme, and Wikipedia tells me the character plays on the running joke of it being difficult to identify exactly who or what is inside a racing suit which covers the whole body.
It turns out that now the unidentified racing driver wishes to publish his autobiography, The Man In The White Suit, much to the disappointment of the BBC, who tried to take out an injunction to prevent the book being released.
The BBC said that the release of the book, and the unmasking of The Stig, would spoil the fun of Top Gear viewers, hence the reason for attempting to take out the injunction, which was refused.
So, in modern England, a man who is unfairly called homosexual doesn't have any legal redress against the blogger who made the allegation, and must resort to releasing difficult statements about the nature of the relationship he has with his wife, a statement which will presumably do little to make the rumours go away.
Yet it's perfectly acceptable to go to court to avoid spoiling television viewers' fun, and to spend public money doing so (even if the BBC failed, they made the effort). We are gradually being infantilised, and the likes of the BBC are complicit in this - we must be allowed to have our fun watching television programmes which keep us in suspense, so that there is something to talk about at work the next morning. Let me have my fun: this is worthy of the court's time.
We have our priorities wrong. Say what you like about another person, even if it compromises his career and damages his marriage and causes people to nudge each other for as long as William Hague lives. Dare to reveal yourself as The Stig, a prop in a television programme, and the full might of an injunction will narrowly miss you.
