On Mocking the Afflicted

As a child of clairvoyance, my susceptibility to negative impressions rendered television viewing equivalent to peering through the window of an abattoir. Most people would regard Hughie Green or Noel Edmonds as minor irritants. To the young Hamilton Coe, however, they appeared as Angels of Desolation, their heads ringed by crackling auras the colour of suicide. At this time, of course, the celebrity assiduously ingratiated himself to the public. However hateful his thoughts or private behaviour, no-one was in any doubt that his public role was comparable to that of a trained parakeet. If a passing drunk were to kick his shins, he would force a smile and obligingly repeat whatever inane catch-phrase had provoked an overwhelming compulsion to assault him in the first place.

The advent of reality television has heralded a bewildering role reversal: members of the public audition for panel of personalities whose own accomplishments are so insignificant that their  collective 'Who's Who' entry might be limited to the insertion of a full stop. Nor do these Ambassadors from the court of Nonentity feel obliged to count their blessings and behave charitably toward the (frequently deranged) exhibitionists who vie for their approval. (Piers Morgan in particular should be grateful that anyone will tolerate his company for more than five minutes before reaching for a horse-whip.) Snorting with derision, they turn to Simon Cowell, the only member of the panel capable of linking one coherent sentiment to another, for an adequate summation. Cowell has been accorded an inexplicable renown for the asperity of his put-downs: in reality, he's nothing more than the equivalent of the leader of school clique telling a prospective member that he's wearing the wrong type of shoes. The ghosts W.C. Fields and Dorothy Parker have little to fear. While his wit might be more aptly compared to a rubber mallet than a rapier , it has to be a concern that some of his victims are ill-equipped to endure public ridicule, however lame. It's all very well arguing that individuals are responsible for their own decisions, but in a civilised society we do what we can to coax our fellows away from harm: we don't point and jeer at their folly.

*Now we refer to the most obscure television personalities as if they were descended from an entirely separate lineage. Traditionally the phrase "members of the public" has broadly encapsulated all but the Royal Family. Celebrities now routinely use it to dismiss those who gawk, demand autographs and harass them in restaurants. Conversely, fallen celebrities are sentenced to psychic annihilation: shipped to jungle studios and forced to eat insects. Any reality television show featuring celebrities is the modern equivalent of a public execution.

 

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