Rupert and James, ” very sorry”, they were found out.

Geoffrey Rush doesn’t eat. He’s in lockdown in his house. His confidence and reputation shot. In the courts the Sunday Telegraph and Rupert’s flunkies fight it out with the STC, ( Sydney Theatre Company) to name the person who leaked.

This is trial by media, and Rupert must be very happy indeed.

We remember the News of the World Scandal. Private telephone conversations hacked, people left to hang in the gallows of public opinion after their private lives were trawled. In the end we had the edifying spectacle of Rupert and James confronting the parliament to say they were very sorry, the culture would change. And it didn’t.

Geoffrey may have touched someone innaproriately under a directors prompting. Was he a Weinstein serial type? We doubt it. Was he a Cosby and Rolfian, (Harris) serial offender? Most assuredly not. And what constitutes the inappropriate? Buggered if we know. You’ll have to ask Mr G from Summer Heights High. All we know is that two careers, the accuser and the accused are down the toilet.

In the end a good actor, some say a very good actor has had his career shot, and the hunt for sex offenders goes off track.

Indeed it was unwise for some well meaning tool to blab to the Telegraph. Someone, in the theatre industry may have forewarned them that Murdoch doesn’t have any one’s health in mind when his flunkies make enquiries. It’s only scandal he’s after. And it keeps the foremost principle of Murdoch’s Empire, (to impoverish the masses with salacious gossip, inuendo and degrading simplification) to keep going. And the cash registers pinging.

Mr G, advice on “appropriate” and “innapriopriate” touching.

The tabloids survive because they trawl the lowest common denominator of the human condition. They do this because the public seemingly have a thirst for the lowest common denominator. And the public, since they removed public hanging, like a metaphorical one.

In America, a shooting can be recorded on anyone’s I phone in graphic detail The blood, the sight of corpses, are daily fare, and no one bats and eyelid. But when an alleged victim of serial fiddler Bill Cosby protests by flashing her naked breasts, the editing departments are working full tilt, to ensure that no one is shocked by the sight of bare breast. We still reward violence as healthy prime-time entertainment, and yet stoop and genuflect to some ancient biblical hang-up up about sexuality by digitally removing a woman’s sexuality as “offensive”.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Corey

We are in strange times. Serge Gainsbourg would be non plussed, and Arthur Miller re- writing the Crucible in a more contemporary vein, because both the victims and the perpetrators are devalued as human beings and sent to purgatory for having any sexuality at all. This is Rush’s crime, to be a bloody good actor, and die on the pillory of this purient and all pervasive fear of sexuality. Whether he touched, fiddled or groped is irrelevant. He was alleged to have (under direction)  an alleged moment, and his life is irreperably changed. And Rupert is richer by half. And we the public impoverished.

And Guilty?

We only have ourselves to blame.