Depths to which BBC’s Newsnight has now descended
APPARENTLY I am a latent rapist, held back from lunging at women on the London Underground thanks only to a weak code of social conduct. I learned this on Wednesday’s Newsnight. Though I hate to give the programme a plug, it is worth watching on iPlayer if you didn’t catch it just to see for yourself the depths to which a onceserious programme has sunk.
But it isn’t just the BBC. All week we have had activists and the Twitter mob trying to whip up mass hysteria over sexual abuse and poisoning relations between men and women in the process.
The programme began with a clip of Sir Michael Fallon’s resignation for the indiscretion – for this alone, as far as we are aware – of touching a woman’s knee 15 years ago. It then tried to conflate this with genuine sexual assault by featuring the experiences of three women, one of whom had been raped and another of whom had been in an abusive relationship.
The programme then attempted to lay the charge of sexual assault on men more generally by cutting to a series of clips of baying male animals, including zebras, gorillas and elephants, and a voiceover which implied that all men are genetically- programmed through evolution to be beastly towards women. Black widow spiders, for some reason, were not featured.
FINALLY the cameras panned around the Newsnight studio where a serious- looking Evan Davies and Emily Maitlis sat on stools next to a logo reading: “The problem with men”. We were then introduced to a rather pathetic “jury” of men who were invited to review the failings of their own sex.
It was 20 minutes of selfloathing. “We have to have a complete rethink,” said one sorrowful middle- aged man.
“I don’t understand why it is appropriate to touch somebody when you are having a laugh and a joke with them,” said an earnest young man, earning him a pat on the back – metaphorical of course – from one or two others in the audience.
Genuine sexual assault is of course a serious criminal offence. But to equate it with everyday social contact – a shoulder nudge here, a pat on the arm there – is verging on