Torture porn

I was reading today one of those thinly disguised “broadsheet” tabloids, when I happened across a story concerning a functionally retarded couple (socially speaking) who thought it would be entertaining to suspend their offspring - a toddler, no less - with gaffer tape from the living room wall, together with his favourite juice beaker. Just out of reach. At least the partially functional retard might have had the wit not to record the scene – along with their evident amusement and delight slapped across their slack jawed features - on a digital camera and then proudly display the resultant graphic memorabilia to a work colleague, who would then go on to report them to the relevant authorities. But no. That would require the recognition that some people would view this behaviour as shameful, even if that response was absent from their personal emotional repertoire. And do you know what? No you don't because I have got to that bit yet. The pictures of this poor toddler, reproduced in high definition for our comforting sense of moral outrage and condemnation, reminded me of those form Abu Ghraib: soldiers' thumbs-up over dead human bodies, grinning and gurning faces over humiliated, stripped and tortured humans – together with the reminding realisation that humans were doing this to themselves. But then the reassuring thought – unbidden – came to me that, if this idiocy prevails, it can't be long before it brings about our inevitable self-willed extinction. But that's me: always the optimist.