Apropos of nothing:
It’s been impossible, even for me to avoid the Wagatha Christie debacle. I’ve read very little about this case compared to everyone else, but the consensus in the press seems to be that Rebekah Vardy probably did leak information about Coleen Rooney to The Sun. Their evidence seems to be the suspicious, yet circumstantial, losing of Ms Vardy’s agent’s phone in the North Sea, and the disappearance of many texts, which have been very convenient for her, they point out.
The press also seem astonished that Ms Vardy would take the risk of suing for libel, suggesting that they believe she has something to hide that would come out in court.
If they are right, this may have interesting implications about the internet, its effect on truth, and its promotion of the cult of heroic individualism: if Rebekah Vardy had leaked stories to The Sun, her motivation for going to court must have been something other than revealing or clarifying the truth. It was presumably about winning a fight with Ms Rooney, of dominating by force of will and personality. The one extended article I read in The Guardian, by Hadley Freeman (“Wigs, Wags & WhatsApp”, 28/05/22) quotes Ms Vardy texting “Not having her [Coleen Rooney] bad mouth me to anyone … if she’s doing that, my god she will be sorry.”
If Rebekah Vardy had been doing exactly what Coleen Rooney was “bad mouth”ing her about, this would stand as another example of the internet’s erosion of truth: all that seemed important to Ms Vardy, when she sued, was presentation. The relevance of reality can’t have occurred to her.
Middle-aged Male Anorexic 