Throwing Bricks In Glass Houses

NB: not the actual Samantha Brick

So imma just gonna say a couple of things about this Samantha Brick debacle and then we can all go and have a nice cup of tea, and think about what we've done. That okay with everyone?

Yesterday morning, The Daily Mail posted an article by some woman called Samantha Brick, banging on in a facetious and obnoxious manner about how women hated on her because she was so damned attractive. Being attractive was SUCH an obstacle in her life, it seems, that she has been passed over for promotions, lost friends, and (gasp) has never even been asked to be a bridesmaid. Accompanied by a number of cheesily posed pictures of a fairly regular looking woman, I happened across this article at about 9am, and, I confess, was pretty outraged, sharing the link with a female friend of mine.

Two hours later, I checked the story again. It had managed to attract an enormous 1450 comments on the Daily Mail's website. I clearly don't have the mental strength or agility to pore over these all, but none of the comments I saw were supportive. They were revolting, verging on trolling. It was hating for hatings sake. And, in fairness's sake, the article was appallingly written: no discernible structure, no actual point being made, just a series of "woe is me, I suffer from hunger being this skinny" vignettes, none of which seemed to go anywhere. It was just one pointless anecdote after another. Fine. Whatever. Liz "semen stealing" Jones has made a career out of it, so why can't this woman.

Then I saw this morning's follow up, and I felt a bit queasy. The Daily Mail had decided, in their all-pervading wisdom, to get this woman to write another article, based on the fact she had become the most villified, most pilloried member of the British community overnight. She mentioned she had been in tears for a lot of yesterday. Understandable, surely, when you see that 1450 people had taken the time - by midday - to deride this woman in public. But hey, I hear you cry - she put herself up to this, didn't she? SHE wrote the article. IT'S CLEARLY ALL HER FAULT.

I'm not so sure. Giles Coren, the Times journalist, tweeted last night that he wondered if anyone had considered that the Daily Mail had basically set her up for a fall. (In the interest of direct quoting, he actually said "fucked her over", but you get the point.) And really, this is where the blame lies. Regardless of how inflammatory her piece was to start with, this has gone past sub-editors, and editors, and they've probably rubbed their hands together, cackling, thinking of the amount of traffic to their site this would generate. Their advertisers must be rolling in piles and piles of furore-scented cashback right now. And the Mail made that possible.

If this woman really was in a fragile state yesterday, is the responsible thing to do to get her to do it ALL OVER AGAIN? The second article is even worse than the first; still poorly thought through, with no real point but this time with so much tangible "woe is me" that the commenters went just as ballistic as the day before. And all this is doing is driving more traffic to a website that is based around outrageous, inflammatory, poorly written trash pieces that all us middle class Guardian readers adore slagging off, but still sneak around to peeking at just to see "what all the fuss is about". Don't say you don't. I know you do, because I do it too. Mark my words, this will be covered on lefto-comedy program 10 0'Clock Live tonight - if it's not, I'll eat my hat.*

Just give it a bone, people. None of us are coming out of this smelling of roses. The amount of pure bilious venom that has spewed from those comments over the past 48 hours is enough. Can we not now just forget about the whole thing, and move on to examining where the real bile should be poured: onto a publication that not only allows, but openly relishes, in holding women like this up for public ridicule and judgment.




*I will not actually eat my hat. I'm probably allergic to cotton.