There are many things that make me froth at the mouth and make my buttocks clench (or is it the other way round?), but pre-eminent among these is people balloon-tight full of moral indignation.
In recent weeks this has been the sexual harassment/bullying/rape thing(at least until the Paradise Papers story broke). We’ve had the unpleasant sight of the world and its granny clapping their hand to their collective chest and emoting about what a bastard Harvey Weinstein was, and can you believe that about Dustin Hoffman, and my God, House of Cards be damned, that bloody Kevin Spacey! How shocking to hear of such things.
Three points: one, did anybody in Hollywood or anywhere else think for one minute that there wasn’t a casting-couch culture in Hollywood? And did anybody think that MPs and people in power generally don’t use that power in order to, among other things, help themselves to what talent, male or female was around them? We know they did it. We always knew they did it. So yes of course it stinks, but don’t pretend the stink has only now reached our nostrils.
Second point: why are we stopping at sexual bullying? There’s probably far more straight-forward boss-bullies-employee going on in the world than there is boss-gropes-employee. Neither are anything but rancid; the sex thing, however, fits into a wider pattern of bullying.
Third point: as someone asked on radio the other day – Is this the death of flirting? When I was a lad, the only way to let a girl know you were interested was to let her know you were interested. So if any comment or movement that suggests you’d be interested in someone sexually is to be interpreted as sexual harassment, how are people to find sexual partners?
The bully or the moralizer – take your pick. I think they both stink.
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