The savage triviality of modern media morality

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As yet another of my friends and colleagues (this is now happening annually, or more often, in my circle) gets into a vicious media firestorm over an utterly trivial remark, I reflect on the horrific combination of causal non-offense with consequential unrestrained condemnation and vengefulness that is characteristic of modern 'morality'.

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This stuff is not going away, on the contrary it is getting worse - with the advent of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like such narratives have, indeed, become a mass media daily staple.

It is impossible to exaggerate the mismatch between the alleged (non-) offence and the scale and fervour of condemnation - which can lead, nowadays (at least in the UK) to sanctions up to and including prison - since (in a bizarre variant of the butterfly-causing-a-hurricane story) it is argued that any remark on any topic which 'offends' anybody can be extrapolated to some possible catastrophic conclusion.

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So, on the one hand, nothing is too trivial to dominate world media discussion; yet on the other hand no truly abhorrent moral offense is so serious that it cannot be ignored, hidden or re-framed into either victimhood or even a virtue.

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It is a despicable, shameful state of affairs.

It reveals the utter evil of modern morality as initiated and sustained by the mass media and those who consume it and allow it to dictate their world view (which is, in practice, almost everyone).

And that's about all I can say on the topic.

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