Were you as struck as I was by the picture of Adam and Eve in Eden? The text on the opposite page says they were naked and they were not ashamed; the picture shows them both in garments that cover them from neck to knee.
Are we so delicate that we try to ignore the clear text? There are many ways of showing that people are naked without actually displaying everything, but then we have a highly developed sense of decency, haven’t we?
But aren’t we the same people who buy the most lurid tabloids in Harare and Bulawayo every day? You’ll find stuff there daily that would make a few full frontal naked photos look mild. The front page always manages to find some story about people who behave like pigs and dogs. Incest with a daughter or daughter-in-law is just one favourite example, to go by the few copies I see lying around. Then it promises more lurid revelations if you turn to the inside pages.
I get the impression that if they can catch a reverend with his trousers down, he’ll be on the front page. So will anyone opposed to their political bosses who is foolish enough to step from the straightest and narrowest interpretation of his or her marriage vows. Anybody else who features there seems to remain anonymous. We don’t need to know their names because it’s not about stopping this kind of activity. It’s about entertainment.
Entertainment? Is somebody trying to reduce us all to the level of perverts who read this kind of filth for entertainment? The people who feature in these stories may be behaving like pigs and dogs, but pigs and dogs don’t buy newspapers to read about this kind of stuff. They don’t even stand around cheering. They have some standards. People who find entertainment in those rags are literally, worse than pigs and dogs.
Before you start shouting, yes, I know there are people who buy these papers for their football reporting. If you are one of those, I have two questions for you: (1) is their football reporting so much better than any other paper’s?
The one good thing I can find in The Herald is its football reporting. You don’t need to go lower than that. Question (2): are you so pure and saintly that you can trust yourself to handle this kind of filth without getting contaminated eventually? I wouldn’t dare to answer “yes” to that question myself.
So if you do buy it for the football, beware of where the rest of the paper could drag you.
It does look as if there are some people who want to drag us all down to that level. That’s not a new trick; there are tabloids designed to take the minds of the oppressed off their oppression in the most advanced countries: the New York Daily News used to be notorious, the German Bild and British Sun still are, but ours reach the lowest level of the same gutter those wallow in.
Roman emperors used to keep their troublesome classes quiet with free bread and free tickets to watch people being eaten alive by lions. Modern empires do that job without spending much on bread.
When we remember that these papers are owned by the people who first brought pigs and dogs into this kind of discussion, the picture becomes clearer.
Who is it who wants to distract us from hunger, unemployment, AIDS, cholera, derelict schools, collapsed health services, destroyed industry and stolen elections?
Who is it who would be happy if our voters were all brought so low that they couldn’t see the moral difference between one of their candidates and a donkey when the next election comes?
Post published in: Analysis