One Law for the Rich, and One for the Poor

Kate the Great.

The current controversy around publishing topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge brings up an issue that disturbs me. Since Magna Carta, we have recognized a human right to privacy: “a man’s home is his castle.” Ordinarily, nobody has the right to publish a photograph of you without your permission. The exception is if your photo is legitimate news, about which the public has a right to know—if, for example, you attend a demonstration.

We also believe that the law should not discriminate: when we talk about people being “equal,” in political or ideological terms, what we actually mean, properly, is “equality before the law,” “Equal protection before the law.” The same law should apply to all, regardless of their appearance, class, creed, or any accidents of birth. Yes, I know this has been completely subverted in recent decades by racial and sex quotas—that does not make it okay, and that is a discussion for another time. Yet we throw this business about equality right out the window in the case of celebrities. They, uniquely, have no right to privacy; no right to protection by the privacy laws.

The excuse, as I understand it, is that they are intrinsically newsworthy, and so everything about them is legitimate news about which the public has the right to know.

I have always believed this is obvious bollocks. I have no compelling interest in knowing what Kate Middleton’s breasts look like. There is a clear distinction between news, on the one hand, and gossip and calumny, on the other. Not only does the public never need to know gossip and calumny; they are intrinsically sinful, and so to be avoided, over and above the harm done to their objects.

What we normally refer to as our “private lives” should therefore be “private lives” for celebrities just as for the average man—unless, like the average man, they choose themselves to reveal it. Indeed, in the case of a celebrity, their livelihood largely depends on their celebrity, on selling their image. To take and sell a photograph of them without permission and without payment, or to seek to exploit or damage their public image, is also essentially to steal from them. Their property rights and their right to work and earn a livelihood are under attack here, on top of their right to privacy.

Princess Diana: hounded to death.

Moreover, and finally, I believe a large part of the reason we do not allow the famous a right to privacy, is really that we hate them. We hate them for being famous while we are not, and we therefore want somewhere deep in our hearts to destroy them. This is the sin of envy. We want to read dirt on them so we can feel better about ourselves. Moreover, by allowing them no privacy, we can make their lives hell. We can hound them into a nervous breakdown, or force them into seclusion to lose their fame, or, as in the case of Princess Diana, actually kill them.

Then we wonder why so many celebrities seem to come to a bad end. We did it, yet we hypocritically wonder.

We are all in that crowd shouting “give us Barrabas!”