Do I have meme fatigue? Have I become unbearably pious? Have I just lost my sense of humour?
Yesterday afternoon, Twitter was in paroxysms of delight over a lawyer at the Leveson Inquiry, who was supposedly “flirting” with Hugh Grant as he gave his evidence. Sitting to the left of the counsel for the inquiry, she was swiftly christened “#womanontheleft” and the witticisms began to flow.
So far, so Twitter. I didn’t really see it, myself, but I’m at least self-aware enough to understand that sometimes other people find things funny that I don’t, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad people, or that I possess a superior sense of comedy to them.
But then it got a bit weird. Someone found out her name. Someone else posted a link to her profile at the chambers where she works. Someone, with the deadening inevitability of a joke about Gazza, chicken and fishing rods, photoshopped her into a scene from one of Grant’s films.
Poor woman, I thought. She spent years training as a lawyer and now all anyone thinks is that she’s a dippy bint mooning over a famous actor. But, following my newly minted “Liz Jones” policy, I thought: ignore it. Engaging is just adding to the problem. It’ll be a one-day wonder.
Only then, something awful happened. Sky News ran a “news story” about her. Yes, a news story. About a Twitter trend. (Full credit to them for trying to dance around the irony of this level of exposure happening to someone at an inquiry into privacy by straight-on reporting it, though). She also got a mention as a “woman lawyer” – because you know, lawyer is a male noun – by Michael White in the Guardian. The paper also ran a panel on page 15 of the paper on her.
The thing that really gets me about this whole kerfuffle is that the male lawyers involved were FAR more swoony over Grant. Watch the first few minutes of the afternoon session yesterday, as the counsel to the inquiry, Richard Jay, tells the actor:
“Everybody, of course, probably knows all about your career, but you made it big, if I can so describe it, with a film in 1994, “Four Weddings and a Funeral“, but although you don’t say so yourself, you did rather well, I think, with another film which some of us enjoyed in 1987 called “Maurice“, so it wasn’t as if it’s a one-off. You career then took off thereafter.”
Puh-lease. It was excruciating to watch.
Still, perhaps I’m being, as fellow NS blogger (and generally sensible type) Guy Walters suggested, a bit pious about all this. Maybe a male lawyer will be memed to death for gazing dreamily at Sienna Miller later in the week. In the meantime, the “woman on the left” was back in the Inquiry room this morning, quizzing Garry Flitcroft. Good on her.
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