Writers are used to a certain class of people being rude about them by Salty Vixen

Writers are used to a certain class of people being rude about them; those people are called critics, and in the name of free speech you can say what you like, as long as the writer is not in the room. If the writer suddenly appears in the room – especially if they have done so by first banging on the front door,? then you can expect a Vesuvius of a press row about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior.

Being rude about someone, in whatever context, is quite different to being rude to someone. I believe in good manners, and practice them up to the point where they become downright lies. ‘How lovely to see you’ should never conceal, ‘God, I detest that woman.’ ‘I’m a big fan of your writing’, should never be a self-preservation attempt when the person whose work you have slagged off for twenty years is suddenly standing in front of you with a meat axe.

Journalists have bred a culture of saying anything about anybody and getting away with it. This translates to readers as saying anything to anybody and getting away with it.

Rudeness is a million different ways of saying the same thing; ‘I don’t respect you.’ In the name of truth, the media is no respecter of persons, and quite right too, but what about in the name of sex, money, sales, scandal, and all the grubby excuses the media makes to probe and expose and ridicule?

I read a bit ago, The Man Who Listens To Horses by Monty Roberts. Roberts, on Horse Sense For People. It is obvious stuff – you get what you give. If a horse doesn’t respect you, you can force it to behave by beating it, or you yourself can behave differently so that the horse responds differently.When Roberts is asked to come in and talk to big companies, he stresses that their whole corporate culture has to change, if they want to root out their problems of skiving, slacking, and stealing.

He believes that most people are externally, not internally motivated, and that most people will follow what’s happening around them. Humans, like horses, are herd animals, highly susceptible, and used to acting in groups.

I love art and books precisely because they work on the individual and not the group, but I know that the group or the mass is hugely influenced by print and visual media – both what is said, and just as importantly, how it is said.

The media has decided that everything is fair game, nothing is sacred, no-one is to be trusted, gossip is good, celebrity sucks, (but it sells), politics is corrupt, art is a luxury item, (unlike the must-have Vuitton handbag), everyone, everywhere, is only in it for themselves. And then we get the why oh why hand-wringing vlogs about stupid crap on the internet, and rich people getting paid to bully others just to make news. . Excuse me? As Monty would say, ‘there can be no positive consequences for negative actions.’

Obvious stuff, but Horse Sense might be good on the bedside tables of a few media types who wonder why nobody is smiling at them or giving a crap what they are saying.