It is amazing that in the spiritual home of newspapers so much dros gets published. The Financial Times and Guardian aside*, the average p-geezer gets by on a daily diet of scandal, and expose - the literary equivalent of pork pies and deep fried mars bars. Do they love it? A sample observation of tube readers suggests no link between reading about Kate Moss's cocaine-fueled exploits and inner happiness. The train is confettied with free copies of the 'London Paper' and 'London Lite' - enough tittle tattle to fill a thousand Herald Sun's - and yet nobody breaks the vow of tube silence. Not even a private "tut tut" about the latest ministerial orgy. S I L E N C E. And visual silence too - no smirks cracking through the morning makeup. After the 15 minute tube ride the rag is tossed aside as if it added no value, delivered no news, and provoked no inner conversation at all.
So why publish them? Does the content gestate for a few hours and re-emerge at coffee break, or in the pub at night, or on the extra-marital pillow? Perhaps they are published to enable tube riders to avoid eye contact with other punters. Perhaps in time the 'news' will come to replace 'weather' as Britain's conversational flotsam of choice. And there's so much juicy material, whether or not its complete bollocks. A recent edition reported a rapid increase in tropical fish in English waters due to climate change - including a mermaid sighting at Cornwall! Can we expect a country happy to be delivered news riddled with the tangential fantasies of work experience copyboys. Why not I guess - after a long day punching keys, perhaps nothing cushions a ride home to suburbia like a smattering of political humiliation, celebrity gossip and starsigns that predict good weather.
*hereby acknowledging my newspaper snobbery but hoping it is offset by my affection for both left and right wing rags.
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2 comments:
pray tell us how the english rags are recounting england's woeful start to its defence of the ashes? a 166 run thumping at the hands of john howards' boys at the cauldron of Manuka Oval. the incongrous (and shortlived) numberplate designed by that washington DC PR firm summed it up nicely yesterday: "feel the power of canberra"
toby
Didn't you know, England is a football nation now - cricket is like so 2005! Jetlag to blame apparently for the drubbing - that flight from Bondi to Canberra is tough. Better to focus on the decline of cricket in the Tuggerenong Valley and other rural oasis'.
th
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