19 October 2017

Bad News Opportunity

Using the Hollywood sex scandal.

By Chin Chin

Well there’s an opportunity to be sure.  While the attention of the nation is focused on Hollywood actresses and casting couches, other news can be slipped out without anyone spotting it.  What is it you said?  Something about the Treasury having modelled the various Brexit outcomes and not being willing to release their models?  Disgraceful I agree, but have you read what the dreadful Weinstein said to Kate Beckinsale, or Angelina Jolie, or Gwyneth Paltrow, or just about anybody else in a skirt who is not a Scotsman?  Now I’m no voyeur, not one of those rubber necks who go slowly past crashes on the motorway, but I like to be up to the minute on current events and that means that I have to read the double page spreads which explain the ins and outs of the film industry.  It isn’t just Weinstein either.  I read somewhere that the problem is Endemic.  All I can say is that they should grab that chap Endemic and lock him up.

It is odd that it has all taken so long.  In an industry where they all talk so much about themselves you would have imagined that the story of the grabbings and gropings would have come out earlier.  But then maybe concerns about privacy have led to matters being hushed up.  After all, the media are very keen on privacy, particularly in relation to sexual matters.  Hugh Grant and Max Mosley are both strong supporters of Leveson’s attempts to muzzle the press.  Maybe they have moved social norms so that it is no longer regarded as respectable to report sexual peccadilloes.  Is that why things went unreported for so long in Hollywood?  What was it that Louis Brandeis said?  Ah yes:

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Well, there wasn’t much sunlight or electric light on this one, was there?  Still, that is the price of privacy, I suppose.  You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Be that as it may, no one is going to read about anything except sex for the next week or so, so the political parties have a little dark space in which they can do things which are best kept out of the light.  A sacking of a minister here.   A deselection of a popular MP there.  The publication of awkward figures.  A reversal of long-established policy.  All deeds best done in the shadows, out of the public eye.

And what about personal revelations?  A good moment to get those out while attention is distracted.  We all have one or two things which we will have to reveal at some stage, and in my case it was the fact that I had mislaid the only key to the little safe in the garage in which my wife keeps her jewellery.  Actually I lost it some time ago, having meant to get it copied as a surprise for her, but I must have put it in those trousers with a hole in the left pocket.  Anyway, when she finds out, the surprise will be on the other foot.

So far with a little legerdemain I had managed to buy time to keep searching.  I worked out what jewels my wife had in her dressing table.

“The artificial rubies would go just nicely with your orange dress, dear.  Yes, red and orange are so complementary.  No, I don’t think we should try anything else.  Didn’t you appreciate my Christmas present?”  That sort of thing and, while deferring the evil day, I searched and searched and searched.

“I think I’ll go and rake the drive again, dear.”

“Really, but you did it yesterday.  What is this?  You aren’t normally keen to do it.”

“No, but I think that I got the wrong slant on the gravel yesterday.  If I raked left to right it would catch the sun better in the early morning.”

“But you don’t get up in the early morning.  You are late riser.”

“Yes, but I’d like to know that if I did there would be the right light on the gravel.  After all, it is still there whether we see it or not.”

As you will gather, things were getting pretty desperate, so when I saw my wife reading about the goings-on in Hollywood, I decided that this was a bad news opportunity which I should not miss.  How to introduce the subject delicately?

“I wonder where all those actresses keep their jewellery?” I began.

“In the bank, I expect.” Her eyes returned to the newspaper.

“Maybe in a safe like ours,” I hazarded. “I expect they are valuable jewels so I hope they don’t lose the key.”

“No one who bothers to get a safe would be as stupid as that.”  It didn’t seem to be going quite as I’d hoped.

“Er, I suppose that accidents do happen.”

“Not that sort of accident, unless you’re an idiot.”

I was just about to reply when something in one of the pictures caught her eye.  “Look, that broach is just like mine” she pointed.  Yes, I thought to myself, except for the fact it isn’t locked into a safe which has no key to it.

“I was looking at mine this morning…” she began.  This morning?  But how?

“How did you open the safe?” I asked.

“With the key, of course.  I picked it up off the floor a couple of weeks ago and I was just about to put it back when I decided to have a look at my broach.”

Whew, thank goodness for that.  Still, it does seem a bit of a waste of a bad news opportunity.

 

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