Hypocrisy

This is the thing that it keeps coming back to, for me - the whole moral hypocrisy of the Victorian era (more than any other, to my mind) - is the thing that not only fuelled the fascination with Jack the Ripper at the time, but also the hangover from it is one of the things that makes us generally intrigued with the wrongdoings of others today. By this I don't just mean serial killers or dodgy drunken celebs, but just the general judgemental attitudes towards pretty much everything. It's the media in particular that latched onto this and has continued to manipulate and influence moral opinion ever since - without Jack the Ripper, metaphorically speaking, we wouldn't have The Sun, The Star, the Daily Mail, Big Brother, I'm A Celebrity and possibly even Playboy or Penthouse!! Doesn't it smack of more than just a coincidence that the rise in literacy levels of the lower classes came at the same time as an increase in sensationalist journalism? Don't you think there is a parallel in the way the murders and their stark warnings were published and the way in which, for example, chavs are demonised in the press these days?