[This is the headline over a section in Richard Ingrams's Week in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]
It was not so long ago that Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn announced that the nation was "recoiling in disgust" at the release from prison of the so-called Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi. A few days later, Times journalist Tom Baldwin claimed that much of the world was "shuddering" as Megrahi was given a hero's welcome on his return to Libya.
We have become used to being told that we are recoiling or shuddering over some particular horror. Right now the nation is reported to be reeling with anger or possibly even fury over the news that child murderer Jon Venables, pictured above at the age of 10, may or may not have committed an unnamed offence following his release from prison.
If there is anger, or even fury, you may not have been aware of it as you went about your daily tasks any more than you noticed anyone recoiling in disgust over the Lockerbie bomber.
It would be nice to say that these instances of mass fury exist only in the imagination of journalists. But even that isn't true. No one has imagined fury or anything of the kind. It is a purely cynical exercise designed to drum up sales. The murder of James Bulger would have been forgotten long ago if it had not been for the tabloid press. The same was true of other bugbears like Myra Hindley who was regularly featured on the front pages with reports of nationwide anger about her favourable treatment in prison.
If the nation is going to be angry about anything it would be nice if it could get angry about such cheap sensationalism. Even nicer if it felt like recoiling in disgust. The sad thing is that nobody will be all that bothered.
[A somewhat different attitude is -- unsurprisingly -- displayed in an editorial headed "A terrorist's last(?) laugh" in today's edition of the New York Post. It reads:]
More than six months have now passed since Libyan Lockerbie bomber Abdul Ali al-Megrahi was given a "compassionate" release from a Scottish prison -- because he had less than three months to live.
Not only is Megrahi -- who got life for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 270 -- still alive, but the cancer that allegedly had him at death's door reportedly has stabilized.
So instead of rotting behind bars, Megrahi's apparently living a life of relative ease in Moammar Khadafy's Libya.
Supposedly, he's now taking a chemotherapy drug he couldn't get in prison -- and which might have kept him in stir.
No matter; Megrahi is alive and free, and laughing at Western justice.
And may well be for a while longer.
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