I watch sport to see other people doing things I can't do, so although I am not against the Paralympics I'm not specially for them either. The media is however having a Paralympic love-in, thus giving the lie (in case you doubted it) to the idea that there is value-free news. For the last fortnight or so there has been coverage of plucky Brits and plucky people generally, which is fair enough except it begs the question whether the spectacle of them competing against each other is one worth watching. It may or may not be, but it would be nice to think that there was room for the view that it wasn't.
In case this seems a nasty way of looking at things, consider that in the run up to the Olympics the media gorged itself on stories of G4S's incompetence, legacy disputes, marketing crackdowns, unsold tickets, corporate graft, incompetent bus drivers and so on. Where are those stories now?
This is the dog that didn't bark. The stories are not there because journalists and their editors have decided the Paralympics are good and, let's be honest, it would not be politically correct to publish or broadcast anything which cast aspersions on them.
Good luck to the athletes - you are brave and driven beyond anything I could accomplish. But you are all being thoroughly patronised. That might be better than being abused, but I doubt somehow it's what you would want.
I told my daughter that I watched sport to see people doing things I couldn't do. She said, "So you think you could win the Paralympic 100 metres?"
The realisation that I would be left standing by a double-amputee was a sobering one.
"Er, no", I said.
Perhaps I will watch a bit after all.
