Babbsy’s babble

Can someone tell me, please, why so many in the media are fawning over Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel?
Okay, perhaps not quite so much now that Babs has let us all know how she really feels about us.
Apparently, reporters are all, “sluts and vermin.” With a bit of scum thrown in.
Okay, she later corrected those reports to say that the “slut” comment was directed to only one member of the media. But, pot and kettle, Barbara had a pretty good batting average when she was at the Sun, as I recall.
Still, one woman’s slut is another woman’s vermin.
She also made a snooty comment about how, as a reporter, she never “doorstepped.” No, I’ll bet she didn’t. But I bet as a newspaper proprietor, her husband’s underlings doorstepped every day. And I bet his newspapers made lots of money out of the stories they got for doing just that.

I presume what Barbara means by “doorstepping,” is the time-honoured journalistic practice of staking out newsworthy people. It is a brutal job. Reporters hate it. The worst kind of doorstepping is knocking on the door of someone who had had a loved one die recently. You then have to ask for a “pick-up” – a photograph of the dead person.

Do reporters like doing this? I’ve never met one who did. They will all acknowledge, however, that it is part of the job. Readers like to read about tragedies. So that’s why we do it.

Babs is now complaining about it? Give me a break.

This isn’t to pass judgment on Black’s guilt or innocence. Only a court will decide that. And it isn’t against the law to be a horrid person. Yet.

Just because a person is thoroughly nasty should not automatically convict them of the kind of complex criminal activity of which Black stands accused.

You can’t help thinking, however, that there is some media consultant somewhere who has been paid gazillions of bucks to rehabilitate the Blacks’ reputations from one of being snobby, Champagne-swilling, puffed up, pompous asses  to benign, benevolent grandparents who just want to inform us hopeless little people of the errors of our ways.
If there is such a media consultant out there, he or she must be slitting his/her wrists after Babs’s little hissy fit. Then again, I guess they just stand to make further gazillions on more training.

As far as I’m concerned, Babs just showed herself for what she truly is. And I don’t think I have to spell it out.
I vividly remember when she worked for the Sun, she treated me appallingly – despite the fact that I was  in the middle of a difficult pregnancy at that time.
I can’t decide whether I’m a slut or vermin. I’d like to be a slut, but at my age, I should be so lucky. I guess I’ll just have to settle for vermin. Oh, rats.