Public entertainment

Yesterday evening I was told a story - which I may have got quite wrong - which made me rather cross.

It seems that a group of youngish men had groomed a girl for sex, a girl who subsequently became pregnant and had a baby. Along the way the young man who was the father of the girl, married her. Subsequently, he murdered her, while sparing the baby. Some fifteen years later, he is eligible for parole, or has perhaps been paroled, and the baby is now a young women.

This story has been the subject of coverage in recent weekend supplements and was to have been to the subject of a television documentary yesterday evening.

As I say, I may have got this story quite wrong, but whatever the case, it did for me exemplify the important principle that one should not make public entertainment out of private evil. With the most important part of this private evil being the further damage that might be done to the life of the surviving young woman.

It is bad enough for Judge Judy to make a very good living out of making public entertainment out of the troubles of poor people, poor people who seem to think that being on television is sufficient reward for being made an exhibition, but this seemed to me to be much worse; at least it did last night. This morning, I am not so sure: if the young woman concerned chooses to make an exhibition of herself and of the wrongs that have been done around her, perhaps as some kind of catharsis, perhaps in an effort to make sure such things do not happen again, perhaps that is her choice.