This week the papers wanted us to be: angry that Stephen Byers exists; angry that civil servants swear; and angry that Russell Crowe isn't a gladiator after all, but a poncey thesp with a bad attitude. Thanks to pages devoted to unfocused ranting, those of us who read the papers every morning are suffering "anger fatigue". Symptoms include fury at celebrity-based gossip and apathy towards global politics and the future of our planet. Gosh, if I were a fan of conspiracy theories, I would suspect that this was a deliberate ploy by the controlling forces of capitalism to confuse and bore radicals into a deep Kate Winslet-induced sleep. Sadly, I've been too listless to follow that train of thought to any striking conclusion because, despite myself, I've started reading the 3am girls in the Mirror.
Drastic action was needed to combat my sneaking fascination with celebrity. So, this weekend, I got active. Instead of staying in and reading piles of supplements about who's where and why, I went to the Royal Court for a discussion focusing on Palestine.
A brief extract was read from the play When Will It End? by Ghasan Subh. This showed a group of men wanting to fall in love, party, have fun and marry. The characters can't enjoy their simple dreams, however, because of the restrictions placed on their daily lives since the intifada. The men are not free to travel between towns, the author tells us, without being victimised and humiliated. Their career ambitions, ranging from engineer to writer, are stymied by the destruction of their schools, by family deaths and arrest.
Ghasan, the young author, whose character in the play is more interested in love than politics, is currently halfway through a two-year prison term in Israel. No one knows why he's there, but he has read more than 170 books since his arrest. You can bet he's angry now.
On the debate panel was Afif Safieh, the Palestinian general delegate to the UK and a man made for the diplomatic corps. On our first meeting, he assured everyone at the dinner table that only talking and calm thinking could help his people. A Hamas sympathiser chided him for being too amenable to the Israelis, too willing to bend to the whims of the hated Bush administration. Afif insisted that engaging with the west and the media was the only hope for Palestinian survival.
What a difference a month can make.
"When I left my office this morning," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead, "25 were dead in the refugee camps and 300 injured."
Afif is no longer a man of calm resolution: he is a man who looks set to self-immolate after decades of political betrayal. He went on to name and shame members of the US and UK governments whom he considers poodles of the Israeli regime: those proud to boast of their close contacts with a killer administration. Peter Mandelson's name was among them, for bragging that his grandfather had smuggled arms to Israeli sympathisers in the Middle East.
To dark, ironic laughter, Afif concluded that "the pro-Israeli machine is powerful. But we [the Palestinians] are winning the war of the letters to the editor."
On Saturday afternoon, as joggers and inline skaters made the most of the pale sunshine, my 15-month-old daughter played among 20,000 marching boots and shoes. She blew a bright yellow whistle all the way down Piccadilly and waved at 12ft girls on stilts in tutus. The "Stop the War" march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was her very first.
She giggled at the voices chanting: "Who let bombs drop? Bush, Bush, Bush and Blair!"
She raised her arms and gurgled along to: "Who is a terrorist? Bush is a terrorist. Who is a terrorist? Sharon is a terrorist!"
She wasn't angry at all, just happy. But I was, and it feels a damn sight better than reading OK! or the Sun. When she does discover anger, I hope it's through active debate, not the pages of the tabloid gossip rags.
