Reflections of a stormy petrel

Sentiment is natural and simple. Sentimentality is the manipulation of sentiment to overcome reason and criticism; it is to sentiment what advertising pornography is to natural sexual desire, and I hate it even more. Let me give you an instance. Somewhere there is a demonstration about environmentalism or Third World debt, in which children take part. Some damned TV journalist interviews a ten-year-old, who is certainly not old enough to have a reasoned opinion on anything beside conkers, and the child replies with platitudes s/he has heard from his parents or his teacher. And the whole thing is broadcast with a glow of implicit moral approval that suggests that the "innocent" in question (who has maybe just pulled some prank against another child, or thrown a tantrum, or refused to obey his parents) is also wise, and that the platitude in question is given some sort of moral validity by being repeated by an "innocent" child. That sort of thing makes me wish to strangle the journalist, the teacher, and whoever allowed it to be broadcast. It is not reporting; it is brute manipulation, abuse of a suggestible child, and shameless propaganda. It does not matter whether the cause is good or not, the methods stink. This is what I call sentimentality. On the other hand, children are capable of great unconscious beauty when unmanipulated and alone; as well, of course, as of astonishing selfishness and sometimes quite scary cruelty.