Where there are no saving graces, the media should have the good grace to say so

As one gets past the stage of being able to self-define in terms of ‘middle age’, the day’s time gets divided up rather differently to the essentially positive activities of earlier life stages. I would roughly segment a normal day for me as follows:

%

Looking for stuff I’ve lost                                                      10

Not seeing my lost stuff, even though it’s clearly visible      10

Blaming others for losing my stuff                                        10

Blogging                                                                                 25

Reading stuff                                                                         20

Forgetting stuff I just read                                                     20

Nodding off from the effort of all of the above                       5

I have omitted drinking from this analysis (and especially during it) on the grounds that it would only muddy the waters, and detract from my main point which is this: what we more wrinkly participants in the roundabout of life may lack in cognition, we make up on the swings of discernment.

Isn’t that a great parallel? It’s such an intellectually respectable way of saying something essentially blunt, which is “I may be losing it, but you never had it in the first place – so f**king listen up”.

There is, my friends, a world of difference between being unable to see a wallet on a table because it’s open not closed, and being unable to spot immediately that David Cameron is a cheesy hypocrite, Ed Miliband a sanctimonious hypocrite, Neil Kinnock a pointless Welsh windbag, Barack Obama a rhetorical suit, and Jeremy Hunt a weaselly chancer who would’ve had Jesus of Nazareth yelling “Crucify! Crucify!” along with the rest of the mob.

I will evidence my point here with one simple example: the insistence of the Tory leadership that we must grow to like profit, when they know perfectly well that our problem is with the people who want all the profiteroles.

Thus in this week’s news alone (and it’s only Tuesday) Scottish Power is to pay customers back an eye-watering £8.5m because of mis-selling; Jamie Dimon has had to set aside $39bn for mis-sellling toxic crap to Fannie & Freddie Mae; former UBS trader Tom Hayes stands accused with 22 others of manipulating the Libor rate; and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it has “serious concerns” about regulatory compliance and risk management at Options Clearing Corp., the world’s largest equity-derivatives clearinghouse.

And the FT’s response? ‘There is no case for Washington humiliating JPMorgan’. Really?

This sort of upside-down ethical drivel must stop, and stop soon: I am tired of watching supposedly respectable media outlets defending the indefensible. And I’m obviously not the only one: even the likes of Lord Saatchi are beginning to feel the same.

Earlier at The Slog: Jeremy Hunt’s Hotcourses paedophile surveillance is non-existent