Judging books by their covers? We've all done it

Within two days, a video on YouTube of her rant about baby names on ITV’s This Morning had more than three million hits.

And within a week, she was at it again – this time mouthing off about fat people being lazy and why she wouldn’t employ them.

In case you missed it, Miss Hopkins appeared on the reality TV show The Apprentice in 2007 and has made numerous media appearances since, including I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

Last Wednesday she appeared on the This Morning sofa before presenters Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield and this, in a nutshell, is what she said: ‘Kids with names like Tyler and Charmaine aren’t as good as my kids, so I don’t want them anywhere near my family.’

She branded such ‘lower-class’ children as disruptive and said there was ‘a whole set of things’ which made her not like those kind of kids. Oh, and she said she also didn’t like children who had been named after places, a statement she stuck by even after Mr Schofield pointed out that one of her own three kids is called India.

It is, therefore, no surprise that pretty much the whole world has laid into Miss Hopkins in the days since that interview first aired. She’s been called an insufferable snob at best and an awful lot worse. Her website has been hacked, she has been lambasted in newspapers and on television and radio programmes the world over and one cannot begin to imagine the type of messages she has received on Twitter and other social media.

But, here’s the thing, I kind of get where she was coming from. I don’t by any means agree with everything she said but had she left it at ‘I think you can tell a great deal from a name’ and suggested that maybe it would be a good idea to meet little Chardonnay’s parents sooner rather than later just in case, then that would have been fair enough.

Yes, everyone likes to think they don’t judge books by their covers (or titles) and all that, but that’s simply not true – we all do it.

However, in a case reminiscent of the Samantha Brick ‘don’t hate me because I’m beautiful’ saga (you remember, she was the pretty normal looking one who told the world how gorgeous she was and said other women hated her for it), she didn’t stop there. Instead, she went on and on and the more she said the worse it got until she was simply playing the role of a classist, child-hating snob.

Think also of my fellow columnist Ramsay Cudlipp who almost crashed the JEP email sever and blocked the postal system with responses to his column in which he described Christianity as an outdated superstition and the Bible a tattered old book.

His point was a worthy discussion – should the taxpayer be picking up the bill for a hospital chaplain at the cost of £13.75 an hour, but he forced the point home with all the sensitivity of a blunt axe.

But, all three of these people made their points – there was no mistaking their arguments. And, loads of people read or watched them and then went home and chatted to their families – perhaps even argued with them – about it.

In a week when this newspaper, in conjunction with the Love Hearts Appeal for Great Ormond Street, is trying to raise awareness about organ donation and the need for Islanders to discuss the matter with their loved ones, you can see the merits in such an approach.

For example, I could say that everyone should have their organs taken from them after death and given to others, regardless of their wishes, because our bodies are just shells and could stop hundreds of people dying each year. I won’t, because I don’t agree with that statement, but I bet it would get people talking.

‘Did you read that awful thing in the paper,’ they’d say. ‘How dare she suggest such a thing,’ they’d add. And then someone would say: ‘So what do you want to happen to your organs when you die then?’

It is also the same with Deputy Montfort Tadier, who made comments in the international media about Jersey as a tax haven that exists primarily to allow people not living here to escape paying taxes – he sparked a debate, both locally and oversees, and thus did exactly as he intended.

Hyperbole or ‘doing a Katie Hopkins’, whatever you want to call it, we are all guilty of it at times, often those in the media more than others.

It is a useful device but it must be used with caution if you still want your kids to have someone to play with, people to vote for you on Celebrity Big Brother, Christians to stay friends with you or Islanders to elect you again.

It must also be taken with a huge pinch of salt and seen for exactly what it is. And, when you do, watching people like Miss Hopkins go on national television and spout off with such passion about such an inane subject it really is quite entertaining.