Reds v Dead (Woman).

My weigh in on the media's coverage of the death of Maggie Thatcher: Late on the uptake as ever, here’s my reaction to the reactions. 

Grief-Encounter

Whatever you think about Thatcher, old ladies, strokes, strikes, Tories, the dead; your view was probably echoed thousands of times across the internet last week. At lunchtime on Monday, the web experienced an almost instantaneous sea-change as people uploading pictures of their soups and sandwiches were suddenly drowned out by the swaths of people expressing sorrow, cheer, voicing disgust, advertising party venues, publicising condolances, moralistically chiding cheerers and shouting chiders down from high horses. ‘Shouldn’t we remember what she did in the Falklands?’ ‘Can we get Hefner to number 1 this week?’ ‘This isn’t a victory, lets be perfectly clear, boys and girls …’



Social media became a verbal riot. In half an hour, my facebook feed was transformed from the usual continuous drone of cat pictures and football results to political essays abound, expostulating about the reactions of both right and left. Monday’s twitterverse confirmed that, as we were all aware, Maggie polarized opinion, leaving no one on the fence. I can’t help feeling like die-hard Thatcherites who are also big fans of Frank Turner and Irvine Welsh must have spent the day in quite the emotional pickle, wrestling with an inner beast. (Although in my opinion, that must be how they spend most of their lives. Can an extreme exercise in doublethink such as singing along to Different Class whilst concurrently harbouring a mistrust of welfare-recipients stem from anything other than deep-seated confusion? David Cameron can’t listen to Morrissey and live with himself simultaneously, CAN HE!?) But that dichotomy is for another time.

We have no control over what is said on the internet. So naturally, sitting at our computers, like we do all day, we are exposed to an uncensored and unpoliced view of what people have to say. Especially in the aftermath of an event as emotionally evocative as the death of the Iron Lady. The reaction on the internet, varied and discursive as it was, was a lot less troubling than the coverage that has since graced our ears and screens for the past week from official news outlets. The television, and the papers. The professional correspondents, and politicos. Even the satirists. Watching news (the local, the national, the rolling; the Newsnight extended edition; the specialist Question Time, etc …) as I - masochist that I am - am wont to do of 5 consecutive evenings, I was a little disturbed. Not by the lack of debate, but the nature of the debate which did take place. 

The news did not erase the fact that she was divisive, or that her policies hurt people. Insults or disrespect were not what I was hoping for, anyway. Given that I felt uneasy watching the celebrations taking place after Osama bin Laden was killed, I knew I could not join the revelers in Brixton. Such action would make me an unparalleled hypocrite, and probably not a very nice person. Given that I disapproved of the way the Americans denied Bin Laden the correct muslim funeral, I’m wondering whether it’s even okay for me to condemn the expensive, sappy vom-fest that tomorrow most probably will be. (But I can’t help a little bit of me hoping that someone throws an egg … or a carton of milk …) No, I didn’t feel like there was any attempt by the media to paint her as something she wasn’t.



However, there were a few moments of news coverage in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death that I found very disconcerting, and very telling. One was David Cameron’s speeches on the subject, first outside Downing St, and then a couple of days later in the House of Commons. His choking up at the phrase ‘she didn’t just lead this country, she saved it.’ His visible, full bodied wince as he admitted that ‘she … divided opinion.’ His fairy-tale reference to the position of Prime Minister as 'the greatest position in the land.' His waxen forehead, reflecting the weak sun as it bowed in sorrow and grief ... his pudgy finger subtley and yet oh so obviously wiping back a tear from his soulless eyes … But I'm getting carried away. Whatever, it was the most histrionic bumlick of a speech I have ever witnessed outside of the Academy Awards. Ken Livingstone is labelled ‘absurd’ on Newsnight for harking back to the banking regulations of the 70s, and yet Davey C's theatrics go unchecked and un-mocked?



Leftwing ideology has lost a lot of credibility in the last 30 years; these days, 'unionisation', ‘tight regulation’, and ‘high taxation’ are buzzwords for political suicide. And the media are playing the same game. Thatcher was an unwavering Conservative, and everyone feels the need to appease her slightly in their policies. Shirley Williams desperately trying to make it apparent that she respected Thatcher as a woman, did nothing for her Socialist Democratic Party whatsoever, and the sight of it made me squirm almost as much as she did in that Newsnight chair. 

While the coverage of the Lady herself may have been reasonably fair and not too airbrushed, it was an odd post-Thatcher world the media coverage showed us. One in which there seems to be an unwritten rule that we cannot question the goodness of markets and money. One in which broadcasting voxpops of people who clearly weren't alive under Thatcher's government shouting ‘She’s a witch, I’m glad she’s dead’ constitutes an uncontroversial and newsworthy representation of leftwing opinion, but for informed commentators, uttering the word ‘socialism’ gets you the verbal backhand, and the label ‘absurd’.