5 Feet of Fury

‘Roll up, roll up – watch Nigella being strangled!’

Brendan O’Neill:

If anything, the broadsheet stabs at raising awareness through the Nigella story are worse than the tabloid poring over the NIGELLA CHOKE PICS. At least the tabloids are being fairly honest about what they’re doing: publishing SHOCKING and HORRIFIC pics (their words) of a celeb in seeming distress.

More respectable observers, by contrast, disguise their voyeurism as a form of radical social activism, as a method of enlightening the public about the scourge of domestic violence, when in truth they’re also merely ‘gawking’ at Nigella because the pics arouse nice, warm feelings of concern and sorrow — feelings which can then be ostentatiously splashed across Twitter to show ‘I CARE’. It’s vicarious anger, expressed by the awareness-raisers because apparently Ms Lawson is incapable of expressing it herself, and it’s ugly and self-serving.

As one columnist puts it, ‘the fear in her eyes… genuinely upset me’. They keyword here is ‘me’.