Wayne Rooney, on his knees. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for Sony

The fact that the elder Thompson even has a forum to apologise to Coleen is down to the UK media’s obsession with the fact that Jenny Thompson, also known as “Juici Jeni”, came from a middle-class background. Cue horrified gasps and sputtering moral outrage from The Sun and The Daily Mail.

Bel Mooney, columnist for The Daily Mail, demanded to know, “What have we come to when middle-class girls like this see whoring as a career choice?” Mooney opined, “When it comes to human failings, I always try to be understanding. In fact, readers of my Saturday advice column in the Mail will know that it’s my stock-in-trade. But there are times, I’m afraid, when sympathy fails me and I am left nursing a deep anger which needs putting into words,” she tut-tutted. “Sometimes, even those words fail me. How else to respond to this week’s story of well-educated girls — brought up in decent homes with every privilege — choosing to sell their bodies for a fast buck, not caring how many footballers use them in one week?”

Envisioning Dickensian scenes of street-corner degradation, Mooney claimed that at least those “abject females” selling their bodies to “feed savage drug habits” have an “excuse”. But the Jenny Thompsons of the world, with their “intelligent, well-heeled parents, a stable home, moral guidance, a private education, and all the opportunities that modern life can offer a girl with brains” – what are they thinking?

So, what did turn this middle-class school girl into a £1,200 a night hooker? “If you were being facetious you’d say the answer lies in the question. How many jobs do you know of which pay £1,000 for a few minutes’ light work?” responded Carol Midgley, in The Times. But, of course, the specific why is not what Mooney or Midgley want to know – they want to know where middle class Britain went wrong. Opined Midgely, “Ah, well that’s the thing about money – so unreliable. Some things it just can’t buy. Private schooling couldn’t guarantee Gary Lineker’s son top A level results. And it couldn’t buy Jennifer Thompson class. Class being a pertinent word here.”

But Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian, claimed that all this talk about Thompson’s A-levels, her mother’s Porsche, and her father’s job as an “oil engineer” is beside the point. “Of course this is a rhetorical question: a private education isn’t meant to teach you specifically how not to be a prostitute. Rather, it is supposed to confer a set of values that would make prostitution an unthinkable proposition,” she observed. “Indeed, a private education is held to be a paradox for any woman sleeping with any footballer, getting paid or not… Furthermore, an education, fee-paying or not, should alone be enough to keep you out of the sex industries, so long as it’s advanced enough.”

Well, she declared, it’s not enough. One in four lap dancers has a degree, according to recent figures. “This is only news because of an assumption that all sex for money – indeed, all objectification – is abuse. You get into it via ignorance and poverty. Nobody would do it without profound problems of self-worth, and a warped relationship with their own sexuality… It’s accepted that there’s no financial context to selling your body, no sliding scale. It is what it is.”

Ultimately, however, selling sex is a bad idea, Williams wrote. “But whether or not a young woman with some good A-levels is selling her body couldn’t be less relevant: we should be pulling this tree up by the roots, not hassling one of the apples.”

According to the Observer, the Wall Street Journal is to launch a new book reviews section in the US. Thus “doubling the number of weekly stand-alone book-review sections nationally” noted New York Magazine.

Many publications including the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times and the Washington Post have been forced to kill-off their pull-out books supplements over the past few years in financial cut-backs. That left only the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review section as the notable remainder.

Gawker.com speculated that the new section was just the next tactical move in the on-going battle between the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Since Murdoch acquired the Journal in 2007 it has started to cover more than financial news. Recently Murdoch introduced a New York specific section to the Journal, and in doing so claimed a share of the NY Times’ characteristic beat. Gawker said,  “The Wall Street Journal is really taking this “anything the New York Times does we can do better” fantasy very seriously!”

That books sections are not particularly lucrative has been reflected in their recent disappearance from the market. Perhaps it could be argued that Murdoch’s decision is not based on finance but on his personal tastes. News Corporation, Murdoch’s media empire, also includes the Times Literary Supplement and Harper Collins publishing house, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world.

The Observor reported that it is unclear how many pages the new book review section will have or if it “will surpass The Times‘ usual 20-plus pages for its weekly Sunday Book Review.” But the New York Magazine realized that “the Journal‘s section will be included in Saturday’s paper, meaning it’ll arrive on newsstands a full 24 hours before the NYT’s. Checkmate.” Even if it’s smaller, it will be available sooner.

The new section is to be edited by Robert Messenger a former editor of The Atlantic and The New York Sun. The existing books editor Erich Eichman will report to Messenger and Messenger will report to the Edit Page chief Paul Gigot.

In the Nation earlier this year, John Palattella wrote a lament for the book review, which ended in rousing call to arms: “Despite the turmoil and doubts, I think there’s no better time than the present to be covering books. The herd instinct is nearly extinct: newspapers inadvertently killed it when they scaled back on books coverage en masse; and the web, for all its crowds and their supposed wisdom, is a zone of unfederated cantons. The field is wide open. If you can’t take chances now, if in such a climate you can’t risk seeking an air legitimate and rare, when can you?” Perhaps Murdoch is simply rising to Palattella’s call.

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The film is directed by Robert Rodriguez, the Mexican-American director of B-movie influenced movies like El Mariachi, Desperado, Grindhouse and the Spy Kids franchise, and Ethan Maniquis. It also brings some interesting star-power, with Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Cheech Marin and Robert De Niro.

But more than that, Machete seeks to tap into the political zeitgeist with what is basically a gory pro-immigration story, bloody and violent where films like Under the Same Moon (La misma luna) were sweet and humanizing. It’s already attracted the ire of right-wingers (but really, what doesn’t?), despite the decidedly Mexploitation – and therefore ridiculous – style of the film.

So is it good? Sort of. Noting that the film is “conveniently timed to sprinkle gasoline on the fires of the immigration debate”, The New York Times, critic Stephen Holden opined, “Although laughter is the appropriate response to this pulpy, lighthearted gorefest, its pro-Mexican, anti-American stance is so gleefully inflammatory that some incensed nativists may refuse to get the joke.” And they should – because Machete is a fun ride: “The pace is swift, the tone playful, the screenplay peppered with one-liners,” but is “too preposterous to qualify as satire”. The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr loved it: “The movie’s an unexpected end-of-summer tonic: a trash guilty pleasure with a healthy (if really violent) sense of outrage. It’s also Rodriguez’s freest movie yet, and possibly his best.”

But Amy Biancolli, at The San Francisco Chronicle, found the film more repulsive than funny and a bit of a slog: The whole thing is monumentally gruesome and just as monumentally cynical, a riot of grisly cliches designed to titillate and amuse. I’m not sure about the titillation part, but the amusement factor comes and goes.”

However, the real question isn’t about the film’s place in the immigration debate – but its place in the Lindsay Lohan canon. Lohan’s turn as the  gun-toting, nun’s habit-wearing, drug-addled party-girl daughter of the corrupt senator (De Niro) has won plaudits from the critics and couldn’t come at a better time for her . But can she ride this upswing back into an acting career? “[N]ow that Machete has reminded us she’s an actor, Lohan has never had a better chance to seize upon this newfound momentum,” wrote Stuart Heritage on The Guardian’s Film Blog. “This, however, will require a lot of work on her part. To become the serious actor she’s always wanted to be, Lohan should forget about everything – Machete and jail and the slow-motion car crash that is her family life – and just start from scratch.”

Machete‘s message for Arizona:

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Sarah Palin. Photo credit: Jeff Geerling, www.lifeisaprayer.com

Palin continued with a direct appeal to Dove World pastor Terry Jones and his congregants, admonishing, “If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive.”

Bringing it back to the Islamic community center, “We don’t need to agree with each other on theological matters, but tolerating each other without unnecessarily provoking strife is how we ensure a civil society. In this as in all things, we should remember the Golden Rule. Isn’t that what the Ground Zero mosque debate has been about?”

Palin has a point, if one assumes, as much of the American right does, that the building of the community center is intended as a provocation. And not everyone’s buying it: “As it is, comparing burning a religion’s most sacred book to building an Islamic-themed community center in a Burlington Coat factory near Ground Zero is like comparing an apple placed on a table next to someone slightly allergic to apples with Daisuke Matsuzaka pitching an orange in the face of a person just released from the hospital with a broken nose. But, oh well, I guess we should just be thankful Sarah Palin isn’t the Koran-burning’s keynote speaker,” wrote Gawker.com’s Adrian Chen.

Despite the snarky disapproval of folks like Gawker, Palin’s post has garnered 20,230 likes so far.

The prepster's Bible. Photo credit: Smitten Kitten Originals

And now, she opined, “Perhaps preppiness is less about demographics and style than it is about living decently in an often indecent world. As stuffy and elitist as its preoccupations can be, preppiness at its core is ultimately about self-respect. It’s about pulling your pants up. It’s about being able to come up with an acceptable answer when asked what book changed your life. It’s about knowing that you don’t necessarily need to have money to have class. And what better time to be reminded of all this than now?”

The Lady of Justice, The Old Bailey, London. Photo credit: Free Foto

This would not only bring the UK law more in-line with the US, but would also restore the British legal system to its former glory, according to the Independent. The paper blamed recent Labour governments for the current “mess” in the UK murder laws. A succession of Home Secretaries, promising to be tough on crime, and spurned on by stories in the right-wing press, took away judges’ power to distinguish between different types of murder. The Independent argued, “the resulting rigidity reduced the judge to a robot, and cast a blanket of moral uniformity over actions that ranged from the unspeakably vile to the merciful.”

However, the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer disagreed and said the existing laws were effective. “I think broadly the view of reasonable people is that you probably do need a quite draconian law,”

Reasonable people like Baroness Newlove writing in The Sun contributed, rhetorically, “There are no degrees of death, are there?” So why should there be degrees of murder sentence? Newlove appealed: “Do not trivialise the act of murder.”

Newlove admitted, however, that her argument was based entirely on her lack of faith in the abilities of juries. “They are not versed in legal terminology and the nuances of court procedures.” A skilfull brief, she argued, could easily manipulate a jury with complex evidence and get a murderer off the hook. Thus Newlove questioned the legitimacy of the British legal system as a whole.

Stephen Pollard writing in the Daily Express was also against both the change in the murder law, and the British legal system in general. The proposed change in law “sounds so sensible in theory,” he said. But, “like much of what comes out of the mouths of lawyers, what makes sense in theory turns out in practice to be dangerous nonsense.”

According to Pollard the motivation behind such a change in the law isn’t, as Starmer said (and “as you might think”), to make the  punishment fit the crime. Pollard claimed, “It’s the very opposite: to make sure that some  murderers are treated even more leniently than they are today. The effect would be not to make the punishment fit the crime but to make punishment even less appropriate.”

However, the proposed law could allow courts to be tougher, not encourage them to be weaker. The Telegraph pointed out, like the Independent, that the current system prevents juries from ascribing relative levels of culpability, and so forces some juries to hold back on issuing a murder sentence at all. Starmer’s predecessor, Ken MacDonald, explained to the BBC, “It is not just a question of people who are not guilty being convicted, there is a risk that people who are guilty will be acquitted of murder.”

Whether for good or bad, Guy Smith writing for the BBC noted that: “Any change would need a wholesale reform of law of homicide. It would take a huge political will and a lot of parliamentary time – it’s possible but I have my doubts.”

Listen to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken MacDonald speak about degrees of murder here.

Oil-covered rocks by a public beach in Gulfport, Mississippi. Photo credit: Greenpeace USA.

“No single factor caused the Macondo well tragedy,” BP explained, in a press release announcing the report. “Rather, a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties led to the explosion and fire which killed 11 people and caused widespread pollution in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.” Those failures – or “eight key factors”, as the report claims – were mechanical, human, the result of engineering design flaws, a bad cement job, and operational implementation – but they weren’t all BP’s fault.

That blame-shifting is not sitting well with critics, who were hoping for an abashed mea culpa from the oil giant. “BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece,” Rep. Ed Markey told a Telegraph reporter, following BP’s announcement of the findings. And Robert Gordon, a lawyer representing more than 1,000 fisherman, hotels and restaurants hit by the spill, told the paper, “BP blaming others for the Gulf oil disaster is like Bernie Madoff blaming his accountant.” Transocean, the rig contractor BP implicated in the report, also threw the ball back in BP’s court; the company released a statement to The Washington Independent reading, “This is a self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP’s fatally flawed well design. In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk — in some cases, severely.”

But others aren’t so worried. As The Telegraph observed, “The City reacted with a shrug of the shoulders to BP’s report into its Gulf of Mexico spill yesterday, as the oil giant’s share price ticked marginally higher and analysts kept their share recommendations on hold.” Shareholders are relieved, especially by the report’s finding that there was no major issue, like a faulty coupling casing, that could be used to pin the whole disaster on BP.

And Patience Wheatcroft, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, noted that the report by no means exonerates BP. Moreover, “It would have been unreasonable to expect BP‘s report into the Macondo well disaster to have been a mea culpa from cover to cover. Deep sea drilling for oil involves many designers, contractors and suppliers and in a project on this scale, the scope for minor errors from any or all of the participants is wide.” It’s what happens next that’s the important part: Learning the lessons from the Macondo well may mean that BP has to pony up more than the $20 billion for damages it already has.

The Financial Times also noted that though this report isn’t likely to be the last word, “the story it tells is bound to inform the work of other inquiries, enabling BP to shape the narrative”. Though the Financial Times, in one of its leading editorials, doesn’t entirely condemn the report, it noted, “[T]he shadow of BP’s long-standing failure to embed a culture where safety is paramount hangs over the report.” That needs to change, going forward, not only for BP, but for the entire sector as well.

Castro propaganda. Photo credit: Chris Goldberg www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgold/

Just helping out the government. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commoms

“People should understand,” he continued “those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state.” Commented The Wall Street Journal: “Lucky for [Kudrin], Russians require little persuading. An estimated 38% of Russian adults smoke and the average citizen consumes the equivalent of 4.75 gallons of pure alcohol yearly.”

Breaking up is hard to do . . .
An unnamed 50-year-old Italian businessman took his breakup particularly badly, reported The Sun. Apparently unable to countenance the prospect of life without his girlfriend, the lovelorn Italian took a collection of photos of his ex to adult toy maker Diego Bortolin, whom he commissioned to create a £15,000 sex doll in her image, with a few . . . upgrades. “She was a smiling blonde girl,” said Bortolin of the ex girlfriend, “but [the client] wanted bigger boobs and a curvier backside.”

All the money in the world and more.
We all know how litigious Americans can be, but Las Vegas resident John Theodore: Anderson (yes, apparently the colon is part of his name) must take the biscuit. Anderson has launched the biggest lawsuit in history, claiming $38 quadrillion dollars in damages. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Anderson believes the government has no control over him but that he has complete control over the government, including “an ability to force any court to grant him damages just for filing a motion – to the tune of 204 times, every time.” Besides some of the immediate legal questions the lawsuit raises, Anderson may face a more practical obstacle: $38 quadrillion is more currency than actually exists in the world.