Thursday, December 12, 2013

Shut up. You're not really cross


The Danish Prime Minister's selfie at the Nelson Mandela funeral rally occasioned this week's outbreak of the 21st century disease - fake indignation.

Jeeves might have raised an eyebrow at this apparent breach of form but it really is no reason for newspapers, columnists and phone-in shows to pretend to be mortally offended - not for themselves, you understand, but on behalf of some unspecified group of people who apparently can't speak for themselves.

It's a binary world. People only stop being cross long enough to gush. Most of the things they're responding to don't warrant either.


6 comments:

  1. I wasn't outraged, but I thought it was a bit pathetic to see two world leaders (well, one leader plus Cameron) getting all silly over a nice blonde lady. Mrs Obama was definitely not amused, judging by the body language.

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  2. Well said that man!

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  3. Ah being cross about people being cross. Classic Hepworth.

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  4. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/africa/obama-cameron-pose-for-selfie-at-service-1.1623483

    and here's the sub-headline "Leaders criticised for inappropriate behaviour at Nelson Mandela service"

    I saw this and wondered precisely who was doing the criticising. There's a hierarchy, isn't there? If, say, an ANC activist living in Dublin was annoyed, that'd be something. If the South African ambassador was cheesed off, that would be something.

    But no. It's a few people on twitter, which is enough to justify (it seems) the story, and then the snowball starts a-rolling downhill...

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  5. The only decent part of the story was the First Lady's expression and yet they cropped that out. Whatever magic the Sun once possessed has gone as they slide into irrelevance.

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  6. The photographer thinks it was all taken out of context. More information about it here http://cheaperdrugsnow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/roberto-schmidts-view-on-selfie-at.html

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