Kate Middleton's tits

The furore in the UK over the Irish Daily Star’s decision to publish pictures of Kate Middleton’s knockers, and the subsequent suspension of that paper’s editor, raises a number of concerns to my mind which warrant further scrutiny.

Firstly let’s examine what I understand to be general public opinion in the UK on the matter.  Their affront at the publication of the pictures – an insult to a member of the royal family (does One use capitals?) – borders on hypocrisy when we think back to Martin Johnson’s failure to adopt appropriate standards of behaviour in forcing the Irish President to walk off the red carpet to shake hands with the Irish team in 2003. 

This incident was viewed as a gesture of defiance, a sporting tactic, and as a key moment in the English team’s successful grand slam campaign that year.   If the same happened to the Queen (or even Kate Middleton) at Twickenham how would the English react?

I write as a confirmed Anglophile but I have to say they've got their heads up their arse on this one.  Poor judgement on an Irish issue and not for the first time in recent decades either. 

In the week that the Hillsborough deception and corruption has been made public, there is increasing pressure on the authorities to prosecute those who perpetrated the crimes.  Let’s hope that they do.   But what of similar disciplinary actions in respect of two other recently-revealed instances of police corruption – the infamous cases involving the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four?  I can’t recall there being a public call for prosecutions in these instances  – is this because the victims were a few lower-class, close-to-illiterate, Paddies and not the women and children who died at the Leppings Lane?

The injustices perpetrated by the London Metropolitan Police, the West Midlands Constabulary and the South Yorkshire Police were equally distasteful and all warranted or warrant appropriate follow-up action.   Are we likely to get Hillsborough prosecutions?   Not if precedent is anything to go by - in the case of the Birmingham Six, Wikipedia informs us that Superintendent George Reade and two other police officers were charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice but were never prosecuted, while in the case of the Guildford Four, three British police officers—Thomas Style, John Donaldson, and Vernon Attwell—were charged, but they were each found not guilty.  Not hopeful that those who were partly responsible for the deaths at Sheffield will ever be held accountable for their actions.

I now return to the Star’s photographs and the suspension of the editor, Michael O’Kane. There is something very worrying in this development.

It is a known fact that the typical reader of the Star comes from the lower socio-economic classes in Irish society. Their motivational drivers in buying a paper are probably sports, TV listings, celebrity gossip, and page 3 girls. Sitting comfortably in this mix are Kate Middleton’s tits, with the interest being not in the fact she married into the Windsor clan, but because she is a quasi-celebrity and she probably has nice tits. (I promise I haven’t seen the pictures, not to mind buy the paper for that specific purpose).

And here’s my concern – the minute we start determining what the “less educated” or “less high-brow” members of our population should be allowed to buy or read is the minute we commence on a path which will have us designing yellow badges for “other” members of society to wear when the time is right to identify them in this manner. Society has form in this regard, and I can assure you we're no better than the rest.

The pictures of Kate Middleton weren’t plastered across billboards or on public display – those wishing to view them needed to seek them out and consciously purchase a newspaper which fulfilled their needs or desires.   They should always have that right.  

Long live free speech.  Vote for Obama.