ONLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
Toby Young says America would have been
outraged if a foreign-owned newspaper had stitched up the President's family
IMAGINE, if you will, the following scenario: America's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper decides to set up a sting operation to entrap the daughter-in-law of the head of state. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, she has a PR company. One of the tabloid's reporters, dressed in Arab robes and posing as a millionaire sheikh, has a meeting with her at which she makes some faintly derogatory remarks about various public figures. For instance, she says that Hillary Clinton 'hates the countryside', though she adds that she's 'an intelligent woman', and that Newt Gingrich, while also 'very intelligent', has a tendency to 'sound like a puppet'.
When the daughter-in-law realises she's been had, she offers to give an interview to the tabloid if the editor will promise not to run the transcript of her conversation with the reporter. 'Okay,' says the tabloid's female editor. 'You've got yourself a deal.'
That Sunday the tabloid appears. The front-page headline reads: 'DAUGHTERGATE: My Husband Is NOT Gay.' Inside, she's quoted at length about why she and her husband haven't had any children yet, denying it's because she's barren. This isn't quite what the poor girl had in mind when she agreed to be interviewed but, unfortunately, she's made her bed, so she's got to lie in it.
The following Sunday the tabloid reneges on its deal — that is, the editor breaks her word to the daughter-in-law of the President of the United States — and runs the entire transcript ('every shocking word') over ten pages. In the accompanying leader, the only justification that the editor offers for breaking her word is that it's 'time to put the record straight'.
Before I predict what the American public's response to this sequence of events would be, let me add just one more ingredient to the mix. The tabloid in question — let's call it the Liar — is owned by a British media tycoon who's never made any bones about the fact that he loathes and detests the American system of government. In particular, he'd like to see America's elected head of state replaced by an hereditary monarch. The President's daughter-in-law is merely the latest in a long line of the President's family members who have been targeted by the Liar.
So how would the American public react? I think it's a safe bet that they would erupt in a frenzy of patriotic outrage. The Liar's proprietor would immediately sack his double-crossing editor and, when that failed to placate his critics, he would be forced into hiding in order to avoid being lynched. In small towns up and down the country, his effigy would be burnt on huge pyres made up of unsold copies of the Liar. His printing presses would be smashed by baseball-bat-wielding mobs, and any shopkeepers unwise enough to sell his disgusting rag would have their premises demolished by incensed farmers driving JCBs.
Questions would be raised in Congress as to whether it was right that this British monarchist, a determined opponent of the American constitution, should effectively control 40 per cent of the US media. (If any congressman suggested that the President's daughter-in-law deserved to be treated in this way because the President's family were 'all a bit honkers', he'd be hounded from office.) Both Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich would attest that they weren't remotely offended by the girl's comments and they would condemn the appallingly dishonest manner in which she'd been treated. Meanwhile, the President's approval ratings would shoot up and the entire PR industry would flock to his daughter-in-law's defence. After suffering so unjustly at the hands of this anti-American foreigner, her business would be guaranteed to survive for another 1,000 years.
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