Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This topic came to my mind because there have been quite a few articles I have read in the papers that have revelled in the misery of others.

There are the articles about how President Obama’s cabinet is crumbling, how he will suffer in the mid-terms, and how all his hopeful ideas will be nipped in the bud. $5 billion dollars will be spent on campaigning, a ridiculous amount. Think of the actual good that money could do. Now that campaign donations are protected and anonymous, the powerful and the rich (traditionally Republicans) can even more blatantly abuse the system to get their stooges into positions of authority. The paper’s are revelling in Obama’s suffering, and to a certain extent I don’t blame them.

I love watching people trip over in the street, I love watch people walk into things. As a nation, the Brits we love a plucky underdog story, but we prefer, much more, watching those same individuals crash and burn. We love Schadenfreude, me especially, and I get that from my dad.

However there is the side of Schadenfreude no one likes to dwell on, and that is the suffering of the individual. There are certain types of situation, where there is no joy to be had in the suffering of another. Famine, genocide, nothing to chortle about there. Yet George Michael, getting stoned AGAIN, and crashing a car AGAIN is alright. You could wonder what the underlying issue is with George that means he needs to self medicate with drugs, or you could just laugh at the fact that even though he is stupidly wealthy, he won’t just get a driver.

It is like the journalists who took great relish at Jonathan Franzen, author of 2 of the finest novels of the 21^st Century, having the wrong version publish. Maybe they liked it because they are all failed novelists. Or maybe they liked some egg on the face of a true Titan of an art form. Or maybe they just loved a cock up. Who doesn’t? Isn’t that what Youtube was invented for?

- Anand