Te Radar: Media grief-porn as offensive as bombings

I know I wasn't the only one who, upon initially hearing of explosions in London the morning after the city beat Paris to host the Olympics, immediately thought: "Those French are certainly poor losers."

Indeed some of you may even now be thinking: "Yes, I initially thought that too." Others, however, will no doubt find this remark neither clever nor funny. And that I guess is the point.

One person's offensive lunacy is another person's messianic proclamation.

As the world is evidently full of lunatics interpreting God's word as they see fit, and because there are those who would follow them for whatever reason, then holding an entire religion culpable for the actions of a few seems as silly as castigating this country for my remarks.

It made as much sense to daub a few mosques with paint as it would to trundle off to your local Christian Church and desecrate it because of the actions of committed Christians such as Pastor Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

Pastor Fred publicly thanked God for the London bombings. He even wished the tally of victims had been higher because (and here I quote him) "England [is an] island of the Sodomite damned".

Even if it was it still doesn't really seem like a good enough reason to blow them up.

The question is how we reason with the likes of Fred and his delusional multi-faith counterparts.

I would love to see the hate-mongering hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza captured, and his hooks replaced with spoons, or toilet roll holders. That way no one could take him seriously.

Coincidentally, I would like to do similar to those sections of our media whose actions in the last week exemplify the grotesque exploitation of the misery engendered by the tragedy.

That one current affairs programme began its broadcast several days after the event with a prolonged voyeuristic (but beautifully filmic) montage of photos of the missing epitomised the fetishisation of the victims of terror.

This emotional grief-porn is as exploitative as any promotional videos of bombers used to rouse others to jihad.

While not wishing to belittle the dead, we do need to get a little perspective.

It is a cliche, and so therefore must be true, but terrorists win simply by creating a sense of terror.

To aid them in this quest they now appear to have the allegiance of the mainstream media, various politicians hungry for an edge in the polls, and our supposed gullibility.

Personally I am more frightened that the Government will be unable to afford my pension when it comes time for me to retire (should I have avoided bird flu) than I am about being the victim of terror. I like to think of this as practical naivety.

Hopefully the perpe-traitors of the devastation are now in their heaven, with their supposed 72 virgins. With any luck they arrived in their paradise the same way they exited Earth, with no balls.