Two newspapers, the London Evening Standard and The Times, treated the story identically, publishing a colour picture of the woman, very much alive, on page one, while photographs of her suicide appeared inside without any warning to readers. Some of the pictures have appeared in newspapers over the past couple of days, although images of [...]
Two newspapers, the London Evening Standard and The Times, treated the story identically, publishing a colour picture of the woman, very much alive, on page one, while photographs of her suicide appeared inside without any warning to readers. Some of the pictures have appeared in newspapers over the past couple of days, although images of the “distraught” woman balancing on a narrow ledge and leaping to her death seem to have been considered too disturbing for the front page.
This is a very fine distinction. As far as I know, no artist was on hand three days ago when a woman jumped to her death from the fourth floor of a London hotel, but this tragic and decidedly non-mythic event was captured by a passing photographer. The wax melts and Icarus plunges to his death in the Aegean Sea, inspiring generations of painters and sculptors – Pieter Brueghel, Rubens and Rodin among them – who have interpreted the myth either as a symbol of humanity’s soaring aspirations or its propensity to over-reach itself. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Icarus ignores the advice of his father, Daedalus, and flies too close to the sun on wings made of feather and wax.
But the doubts crept through the carefully drafted words of the text to which the leader so visibly stuck.
More from John Rentoul. There will be many in his party and beyond who think that there was something admirable about his performance yesterday, and that his honesty, however belated and forced, should be rewarded. People, even politicians and celebrities, are entitled to privacy and denial is hardly the most unexpected trait in an alcoholic. It is unfair, too, to blame him for the Liberal Democrats’ strategic malaise when squeezed by a Conservative party that has at last realised the importance of fighting for the centre ground. It may be unfair and a shame, but I do not see how he can pull off this last gamble.
It is unfair, for example, to accuse him of dishonesty by denying that he had a drink problem before. It turned out that Charles Kennedy can fight when his back is against the wall, after all But it must be too late for him now. Michael Barrymore, whose career nosedived after a corpse was found in his swimming pool; Dennis Rodman, a six foot seven cross-dressing basketball star who once attended the launch of his autobiography in New York in a coffin; Anna Nicole Smith, the soft-porn model who enjoyed a fulfilling, if tragically brief, marriage to an 89-year-old billionaire; Faria Alam, who provided such an impressive range of secretarial services to the middle-aged gentlemen of the Football Association; and Johnny Vegas, a talented comic with a capacity for drink to stagger the lovechild of Homer Simpson and Charlotte Church.
More from Matthew Norman. By now, the limousines will have deposited the gallery of grotesques for the 2006 celebrity edition of the show in Elstree, where the show is now filmed, and even by the impeccable standards set previously this year’s crop looks rather special.
Leave Your Response
You must be logged in to post a comment.