Not so - it has been reported on in great detail by the British tabloid press and, to my astonishment, even in some US papers. Were both these lovers British, it would not make the small print of a local newspaper. What makes this matter different is the fact that Sofiiya is Ukrainian - a refugee fleeing the war in her homeland and taken in by a British family. This makes her an ideal target for the hyped-up and hypocritical moral outrage of our tabloid press. Tony Garnett's wife, Lorna, told the Sun on Sunday:
“I had my reservations at first about taking a refugee into our home — who wouldn’t?We were bringing a stranger into our house to live with us...And this is how Sofiia repaid me for giving her a home".
This is a classic example of tabloid smear tactics: find one situation involving a Ukrainian that has gone wrong, and thus confirm the "bloody foreigners" prejudice of their readers. Why worry about the repercussions for the people involved in this matter, as long as the story boosts circulation? Why care about the fact that Sofiiya and Tony could well face public opprobrium and hostility? Why be concerned for the embarrassment caused to Lorna Garnett and her two children by bringing such attention on their already melancholy situation? Why bother about the fact that racists and bigots can seize on this case as ammunition to vilify all Ukrainians? Such questions, as we might expect, are merely rhetorical, as the main aim of the Mail, Mirror, Sun and Express is to sell newspapers. Scandal, flavoured with xenophobia, is always good for business.
However, this unfortunate affair has illustrated one very important thing that we all know about already: the double standards of the tabloids. While they write with such concern and moral rectitude about the conduct of the working-class Tony Garnett, it is amazing (not to say disgusting) how they have displayed no such outrage about Partygate or the infuriatingly slow publication of the Sue Gray report. Then there is the fact that immorality, adultery and other illicit sexual behaviour is not the exclusive province of the working class. Have we forgotten?...
With around 33% of marriages ending in divorce, this is - as you say - scarcely news, so the fact it has hit the national papers must be related to the nationality of the woman involved: "Foreigners coming over here, abusing our hospitality and taking our men". Had she been Sue from the local council office, we'd never have known about it.
ReplyDeleteThe double standards involved go further than this. Our prime minister has seven acknowledged children by several women, with the Evening Standard stating that "his exact number of children remains in doubt as a possible eighth was child alluded to in court documents." The elements of the press who are pillorying Sofiia Karkadym as a home breaker just chortle about the PM's serial philandering and turn a blind eye to the children he has left abandoned in his wake.
This is partly sexism. When I was a student, a male who slept around regularly with different women was referred as 'a bit of a lad', whereas a female doing exactly the same was called a 'slut'. This incensed me to the extent that I started to refer to the men concerned as 'male sluts'.
The utter hypocrisy of double standards extends even further. Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph in October 2007: "The world's population is now 6.7bn, roughly double what it was when I was born. If I live until my mid-eighties, then it will have trebled in my lifetime... I simply cannot understand why no one discusses this impending calamity, and why no world statesmen have the guts to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves... We seem to have given up on population control."
To the press, Johnson's serial womanising is simply him being 'a bit of a lad' - a woman politician who had behaved similarly would have been subjected to endless preaching, moralising and condemnation by our male-dominated media. Johnson's own hypocrisy of producing at least seven children after sternly deploring international inaction over the rising world population is quietly ignored.
In the light of all this, Sofiia Karkadym really has little chance: to the press, she is a home-breaking 'seductress' (being a male seducer is apparently okay) and, to cap it all, she's a foreigner.
To bear out your point about double standards, all the opprobrium from the tabloids was heaped upon Sofiiya; no criticism was levelled at Tony Garnett for leaving his wife and family. The double standards you encountered as a student are alive and ill today.
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