[dropcap style=”circle” color=”#ffffff” bgcolor=”#000000″ font=”0″]T[/dropcap]he day before the love letter to her children I was becoming quite bored of Katie Hopkins. Working in the media I saw behind the pantomime façade quite a while ago and was pleased that her updates were becoming predictable and slow.
I’ll hold my hands up, I’m one of the guilty ones that feeds the media storm, as when KT tweets nastily I’m the first to click on the article. Lately though, I’ve been content with the summary and left the clicking alone, I realised others would soon follow suit but Katie obviously did too.
In my last article about Katie I asked if she was actually nice. I’ve realised through all my clicking that I was looking for some sign of humanity. For the normal ones among us, this is what we do when there are character traits we don’t understand. We delve deeper in a bid to discover the motivation, to uncover a shred of information that will help us make sense of the debacle.
This is the reason we love (admit it) reading about depraved people, about bad mothers and serial killers, we swallow it all whole as something inside us tells us that if we can just understand it, we could help to eradicate it. Katie has played on this psychology, throwing titbits of integrity into the pit of monetised hatred. In my eyes, she’s the sister of Josie Cunningham and I never have liked people who get a rise out of winding others up.
That’s why, with the latest letter to her children, I banged my head against the wall. Her motives were transparent but not to all. As I saw the comments such as “she clearly loves her kids” I had to speak up and remind the public who this person is.
She came to fame on The Apprentice, backstabbing and belittling the contestants. Then, without a bodyguard, she did it all behind their backs. She’s cowardly and two faced and not a friend you or I would wish to have, yet like the unemployed she slates, it’s us that puts the food on her plate.
The latest letter is obviously a stunt to relieve the boredom readers feel, to change perceptions in a bid to make her dull life interesting again. On the surface, yes, it does tug at the heart strings, she’s exploited human sympathy and she’s done it well.
Delve a little deeper into the text and you’ll see this is all about her, not the kids. In such a personal outpouring, there is nothing about the children themselves. There’s no bespoke advice that matches their individual characters, there’s no reassurance that all will be well.
It’s filled with lines such as, “I did that”, “mummy did this,” and, “look at me.” At one point it even tells the kids to, “Google me”. Now that’s not the voice of a mother who cares, that’s the voice of a narcissist who needs the public to pity her.
She’s done well to listen to marketing advice, she’s shown a side that could be nice but remember this is Katie Hopkins, she’s just a human like you or me. In our country she has freedom of speech and she chooses to use this to spread hate to the extreme. When assessing her character, ask yourself, “Would I do the same thing?”
Here’s the lovely letter.
You’ll find my own response, in anger, in the comments below.
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