Once again the news feeds of social media are ablaze with
righteous indignation at the latest tweets from Katie Hopkins.
Excuse me while I yawn.
What’s that Mr Barnum?
There’s a sucker born every minute?
Really?
I mean all that hate, all that scorn.
Not from Ms Hopkins ,
but rather the deluge of bile laden regurgitated responses from the masses.
Pavlov is spinning in his grave with glee at this.
I wonder if those who pay Hopkins for her television appearances and
newspaper columns are rubbing their hands together in ecstasy at all this
promotion that they are getting.
Well of course they are.
The kinetic energy they are building up would provide all
the energy needs for a small town like.....London .
It’s been oft promoted that people should just ignore her, and
while that’s an option we have to be honest and accept that as she disappeared
over the horizon another hate figure would appear.
The name doesn't really matter.
Neither does the gender.
I will admit that she used to annoy me, but then I decided
that life was too short to indulge in being so very obviously manipulated.
So I excused myself from the party and just let her
nonsensical click bait comments wash over me.
Then I read a rather frank interview with Hopkins and my semi loathing disappeared entirely
as I began to pity her.
She wouldn't want my pity - and I would guess that she would
rage at the merest hint of it - but when we become aware of her background of
being punted to a public school early, of how there was apparently little
parental contact never mind love, and how she joined the army only to fail on
medical grounds just short of beginning a career path that she desperately
wanted, and then as if that wasn't enough how she was betrayed horribly by her
husband who thought marital vows were optional then it is difficult not to feel
pity begin to flower.
And then there is her epilepsy that apparently has had her
in hospital frequently as during her seizures she can dislocate both arms.
It’s all a bit dark isn't it?
If it was a Disney film this would be when the knight in
shining armour would arrive, but no one swept her off her feet and provided a
light to banish the darkness of her former existence.
Instead what happened was that she did a stint on the apprentice
and displayed her abrasive and over confident easy to loathe self to the world,
and then someone somewhere had a light bulb spark into life above their head
and thought ‘hold on a minute. There’s money in this’ and low and behold the
troll queen was created.
So who is to blame really?
As would be usual it is not one single person.
She herself has to shoulder some responsibility as instead
of seeking some support she dived right in and took the cash for being the
current panto villain for the nation.
Then there are those who profit from her.
The very obviously ugly and manipulative parasitical individuals
who collude in exploiting her failings to make a buck.
If we were to apportion blame then how much should they be handed?
And then finally we have to consider our own role in her existence.
We love a villain don’t we?
So how much blame should we embrace?
Maybe we should just stop jumping through the hoops and give
Katie a hug and refuse any further participation in a game that does nothing more
than raise the blood pressure.
There just seems to be so many others things that we could get
our knickers in a twist over.
Legitimate issues that impact on us all.
Or possibly we should just keep our focus on Katie like good
little hate filled citizens.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary
act. (George Orwell)
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