One issue that has interested me - and not just for prurient reasons - is the Max Mosley privacy case. Although the case is not yet over, I believe this might be a watershed in the way society views what happens between consenting adults and may change the perception of British newspapers about what constitutes 'the public interest'. If it does -and the 'News of the World' is hit with heavy damages in this case, I shall be crowing from the rooftops for I hate the dirty, sneaky way the gutter press in Britain interferes in the private lives of individuals, makes a healthy profit from sales to the prurient, and then claims some moral high ground.
It is always good to see a gutter rag apparently misjudging the social mood completely. When they paid a dominatrix to secretly film corporal punishment sessions involving the head of Formula One racing, Max Mosley, they must have assumed that their self righteous claims of 'squalid goings on', 'perversions' etc would resonate with the general public and protect them from any consequences.
Instead of hiding his head in shame, as I'm sure the 'N.O.T.W' expected. Max Mosley has stridently defended his right to private sexual tastes with consenting women, asserted (very successfully so far) that his public role is not such that he is expected to set some 'moral example' in accordance with conventional social mores and has rejected the unsubstantiated claims of Nazi role-playing - a particularly delicate issue for him, being the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, Britain's pre-war fascist leader.
It has been interesting to read the views of other newspapers on the case, most taking the evidence against Mosley very lightly indeed, making a joke of the spanking and whipping, and almost saying 'What's all the fuss about..this is 2008 for God's sake!'
I sincerely hope this mood is reflected in the opinion of the judges. A man whose public career is not affected one whit by his taste for being whipped on the bare buttocks by women, has been publicly shamed and humiliated by a gutter rag that I wouldn't wipe my backside with..so I hope Mosley wins and the N.O.T.W. really gets a hammering on the costs of this case. Even if they do it won't be enough to bankrupt them, which is, in my opinion, a great pity.
Ironic that one of the few newspapers which seems to have huffed and puffed its self righteous way in support of the NOTW is Britain's right wing flog 'em and hang 'em 'Daily Mail' which was founded as an anti semitic newspaper and whose former publisher, Lord Rothermere, enthusiastically supported Sir Oswald Mosley and his fascist blackshirts in their authoritarian mansifesto for Britain. Oh well, leopards and spots and all that!
It is interesting that the mood of the public seems to have been primarily on Mosley's side. I'm not sure this would have been the case twenty or thirty years ago, particularly with the working class readership of the 'NOTW', for 'perversions' like spanking and whipping were seen, if at all, as the preserve of the dissolute rich. Now I reckon people of all backgrounds, even if they haven't seen 'Secretary', indulge in a little spanking behind closed bedroom curtains and it has become an acceptable sexual practice to many. And, maybe more importantly, people are becoming more cynical about what lies behind a newspaper's self righteous justifications.
I sincerely hope the judges reflect what I perceive to be the public mood here, because this really could set a bench mark for the rights of people to enjoy their own sexual tastes in private and for the newspapers to have to accept a new code of what is in 'the public interest'.
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