I am once again inspired by current events to put finger to key and spout some ill thought out knee jerk drivel for the edification of probably nobody. This time by the use of the phrase 'Dumb Cunt' to describe the wife of a philanderer. Seriously, Dumb Cunt.
I have to tell you, for someone who has my utter disdain for all things football related, it does seem to have the ability to get under my skin more than anything else. After the last time I was compelled to blog on here, bemoaning the World Cup nonsense that was going on at the time, I've managed to avoid the whole shebang pretty thoroughly but alas, it has caught up with me again. In the form of a certain aesthetically challenged England player and his alleged dalliance with a lady of the night.
Now, I have no problem at all with people who spend their cash paying for sex. While it may well be illegal I see no reason to consider it immoral and have said as much many times in the past, often leading to quite heated arguments. In fact, I shall go on record, here and now, and say that I myself have partaken of the services of such a woman, just the once, when I decided that the age I had reached was just a little too old to still be a virgin. I figured that this was my best way of 'getting the first one out of the way' without worrying about the reaction of the woman to my inexperience. She was, after all, being paid to flatter me. The fact that I can type this, and post it on the internet for the world to see, without embarrassment, should tell you what my philosophies are about prostitution.
That aside, I do have a problem with men who cheat on their wives. Were the man in question single I would care not a jot about this story. To be honest, even now I don't care about the prostitution angle, which I see as secondary to the fact that he slept with a woman other than his wife. The fact that he paid for the privilege is beside the point. What I do care about is the attitude that has been thrown around, by people I would ordinarily like and respect, regarding the wife in the equation.
The prevailing attitude seems to be one of mockery. That she is a gold-digger who has no right to be upset because she's little better than a prostitute herself and she will obviously stick with him for his money so she deserves what she gets. My question is, when did our society become so fucking heartless? Assume for the moment that the allegations are true and she wasn't aware. She has just found out that the man she's been with her entire adult life has cheated on her. That doesn't engender just a little bit of sympathy?
Now, I may be wrong here, because as I've said I have very little interest in football and as a rule I have even less interest in the private lives of those who play it, but I seem to have the impression that these two have been together since they were like 17 or something. Is that right? I've definitely got that idea from somewhere. So as a kid she started going out with another kid who was a bit good at kicking a ball around. That makes her a gold-digger how exactly? Does she have The Sight, able to tell from watching a couple of school games and some 5-a-side at the local rec that this lad she kinda fancied was gonna one day earn millions on the international stage? Could it not be even remotely possible that she quite fancied him, went out with him for a while, fell in love and subsequently supported him in his attempt to build a professional career?
Does it make her a gold-digger that she stayed with her partner, who was not rich when she met him, after he made some money? Should she have left him? Would that make her more acceptable to the public at large?
Something else that has become more and more apparent over the last couple of days is that the people who seem to have the strongest reactions to this kind of story are those who spend the most amount of time bemoaning how celebrities have overtaken popular culture. The kind of people who will tell anyone who will listen, and a lot of people who'd rather not, that these celebrities are worthless and full of shit and a blight on our world and they couldn't care less about what they are up to and who they are up to it with. Then they leap on a story like this with all the ferocity of a starving fox in a battery hen shed. It seems that they view this evidence of celebrities being flawed as validation of all the abuse they have so delighted in heaping on them over the years, whereas I would be more inclined to see it as evidence that they are ordinary people who make mistakes and maybe we should leave them alone to sort it out in private.
At this point it is traditional for someone to pipe in with the age old arguments of "They're not shy of publicity when it suits them" and "They shove themselves down our throats and then complain about invasion of privacy". To these arguments I say "Bullshit". Football players play football. If you want to go and shout at them at the ground, be my guest. If they sell the photo rights to their wedding, feel free to mock their tasteless excesses. If they show up at a red carpet wearing a ridiculous outfit, tell a few jokes about it by all means. Then stop. Recognise the line. They do these things because it is a part of how they make their living. They would not do these things if they did not think that a market existed for it. That they do does not give you, me, or anyone else the right to pry into the deepest recesses of their private lives. It is voyeurism, pure and simple and frankly, I despair at the thought that I live in a society where this is not only commonplace (rape, murder and robbery are commonplace) but also considered acceptable.
He was in the wrong, she is a victim. Lets not lose sight of that. But also, lets not lose sight of the fact that there is a marriage on the line here. They are a young couple , not long married, who have nevertheless been together for a long time. Perhaps some would say that they settled on each other too young, I don't know. Regardless, many marriages survive this kind of mistake. I would hope that this one could as well. Why can't we leave them alone to sort out their problems. I would consider it a shame if a salvageable relationship faltered because of public indulgence in schadenfreude.
Oh, and if they do stay together after all this, can we please refrain from assuming that the 'Dumb Cunt' only stayed for the money and is as good as a prostitute herself. Cheers.
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