This is a response to my friend Sarah’s blog post on the Ryan Giggs super-injunction.
In all honesty, 9/10 of super-injunction cases wouldn’t even be an issue if the press didn’t concern themselves with personal business. I don’t agree with super-injunctions, but I’d rather see them obselete and unneccesary than anything else.
I must respectfully disagree with any disappointment with Giggs. We need to drop this idea that having an extra-marital affair discredits one professionally. In my eyes, it doesn’t. Does it affect Giggs’ ability to play football? I seriously couldn’t give a flying flook less about what he does in his personal time. Every time someone moderately famous, even better if they’re an MP, has a little fling, watches porn or calls a hooker, we all freak out and cry, “OH MY HOW AWFUL”, before we resume our own vices.
Given that, depending on which sources you look at, up to 60% of men will at some point have an extra-marital affair, it is completely hypocritical that we attach such a level of social taboo. What does this affair make Giggs? It makes him average. Normal.
Right now, on the other hand, there are plenty of genuinely important issues going on in the world. The Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami aftermath, the crisis in Palestine… shouldn’t we be reporting on those instead?
I don’t agree with the super-injunction, but I can see why he’d get it, when you’ve got every shitrag paper in the country hounding after you. I wish we could treat the cause, not the symptom, but the cause is what we call “Western Society” and our fascination with celebrity.