One of the things highlighted by the Ipswich murders late last year was how dangerously divided our society is becoming. While liberals here on Machiavelli blog and elsewhere commented on the fact that mainsteam media (i.e. papers owned by Murdoch and other pornographers) could not see past the fact that the women were prostitutes as if that made them less human, the more liberal minded saw a horrendous crime against human beings.
Perhaps the sneering attitude of The Sun helped its editorial team deal with the guilt they felt at working for a paper that carries column upon column of ads for "personal services".
Society was not always so pejorative. Back in the early sixties (when "Please Please Me was number one" to quote the Pet Shop boys, good time girls, as the News of the World coyly called them, were epitomised by the ethereally beautiful Christine Keeler and the cheeky cutie Mandy Rice - Davies who stood in the dock of the Old Bailey and gave us one of the great catchphrases of the decade.
The whole nation took a prurient delight in the doings of Christine and Mandy and their hapless lovers. The whole scandal had the air of a Carry On film about it.
Present day society is less innocent, less articulate and more likely to gang up on people who do stuff that might affect property values. The stylish witticisms of the Profumo affair have been replaced by crude insults. And in the mania to join the mob it is forgotten that "prostitute" is a word with several shades of meaning.
I'll give you an example, forget the crack hos for a moment and consider this; have our leaders not prostituted their office and the honours system through their "cash for titles" activities? And are they not further dishonouring themselves through their inept attempts to engineer (or more accurately bodge together) a cover up.
And is a teensy bit suspect that, just as the investigation seems to have cut through all the official obfuscation to get some hard evidence, Labour MP Tony Wright, chair of the Commons Public Administration Committee publicly calls for the investigation to be ended as "it is getting nowhere."
The "nowhere" it is getting is of course perilously close to the truth.
So no wonder Wright's outburst brought to my mind the words spoken by Mandy Rice - Davis when she was told another witness had contradicted her evidence.
"He would say that wouldn't he?"