Damian Thompson
Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret".
The delicious, malicious joy of shaming politicians
Shame is about to enter the picture
From Saturday's Daily Telegraph
Schadenfreude. When I started out as a journalist in the Eighties, I would have had to explain what that word meant. Now it’s part of our everyday vocabulary. Why? Because it’s so useful, capturing a complex emotion that we are feeling more and more often.
I say “complex” because modern Schadenfreude doesn’t consist of simple glee at random misfortunes: our days aren’t brightened by a tsunami in Bangladesh or a pile-up on the M4. What turns us on is a cocktail of black humour, idle malice and, above all, satisfaction at the public shaming of people we don’t like.
I felt that satisfaction on Tuesday, when my least favourite MP resigned his seat. “Why aren’t the church bells ringing?” I tweeted – not funny, but a typical 21st-century reaction to political humiliation.
Something interesting has happened to shame, a phenomenon so fundamental to society that it’s the first emotion described in the Bible: think of Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness. I’ve been reading Deborah Cohen’s book Family Secrets, which argues that Western families, which had traditionally hidden their embarrassments (and were none the weaker for it), now flaunt them. Indeed, the same people who bellyache about CCTV and Google’s infringements of privacy seem desperate to reveal their intimate secrets on Facebook.
Self-help gurus tell us that we should never be ashamed: we should embrace our frailty, blaming it on society or addiction. But this advice does nothing to weaken our primal obsession with shame. It just redirects it towards shaming other people, a process made easier by limitless opportunities for finger-pointing online.
Accusing your opponents of disgraceful behaviour has always been part of political discourse. But a new combination of media-driven nosiness and sadistic activism means that public figures spend more time dodging humiliation than they do debating ideas.
As a result, four or five government ministers resign “in shame” in the average parliament, many more than the number who leave on a point of principle.
Then consider how shaming techniques affected this week’s vote for #equalmarriage. At least one gay Tory walked into the aye lobby because he was frightened that if he voted no an incriminating iPhone image would find its way on to the internet. His fears were well founded. Certain gay rights champions would have published it without a flicker of conscience. In their eyes the MP would have behaved “shamefully” by not supporting other gay people.
The assumption that lies behind what I call hashtag politics is that those who disagree with you are morally repugnant. Scumbags. Bigots. Libtards. Take your pick. They should feel ashamed of themselves – but, since they don’t, it’s your job to ridicule them. Or a “campaigning journalist” can do it for you, though woe betide any commentators on the wrong (i.e. shameful) side of the fence. They risk being hounded into silence, either by the Twitter mob or, coming soon, statutory instruments of censorship.
That’s the worst thing about this flavour of politics: the gag-making hypocrisy it induces in otherwise rational individuals.
Of course politicians who behave dishonestly, for example by fiddling expenses, should be held to account. But when I watch Question Time and compare the terrified waffling of the panellists to the sneeringly cheap shots of the audience and the idiots live-tweeting the show, I can’t help wondering: who here, exactly, is incapable of feeling shame?
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