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Twitching the net curtains in our minds

Taking responsibility for Susan Boyle

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Monday, 15 June 2009

How we love the freak shows, all wanting a front row seat, ‘tut’ing in unison and acting superior as we secretly revel in the spectacle of awfulness. There’s nothing any of us like better than to twitch the net curtains of our mind and delight in the debasement of some poor unfortunate soul. If it’s not the Home Secretary’s husbands grubby porno scandal then it’s dear Susan, who Boyled over in such a sad way, clutching her pussy and disappearing in a puff of angry smoke into the clutches of the Priory and Mad Max Clifford's profitable paws.

Is it a surprise that she couldn’t take losing? Is it any surprise that we loved watching the shattering of her poor sweet mind on the cold comfort of our screens? We are responsible for this, in allowing the TV folk to treat her like a commodity and allowing our compassion to be exchanged for the chance to text, ring or interweb our votes in and decide who will be thrown to the lions next. Hear that ugly baying in the background? That’s you that is. Shame.

The next round of desperate untalented no-hopers are due for a season of Big Brother bullying as we whoop and snigger at their transparent neediness but do they not whisper an unpalatable truth to us as they fall? God might see all but the neighbors see everything as in this plugged-in world, where every slip is magnified by a million clicks into everyone’s line of sight, there is no forgiveness anymore. We have turned our homes into coliseums, all clamoring for the next set of games. More brutal, humiliating and debasing that the last lot. The worse they are the better we like it, for don’t they deserve it? Mr Warhol was wrong, he should have said that in the future everyone will be humiliated for 15 minutes; it would have been closer to our truths.

If we’re not careful, then when our appetites for humiliation, degradation and cheap, nasty gloating are done with we’ll all be left hollow, not knowing how to care anymore and being lined up, one by one, for our turn in the Public Stocks. You do the maths. There’s only so many of us to go round We might all have to take a turn at one point, and when you do, when it’s your turn and the cruel spotlight turns its searing, slicing light your way, I hope you get exactly what you deserve.