The pornography of grief – and the devalued poignancy of the poppy

Pornography isn't confined to the sexual exploitation of young adults and children. Celebrity porn in this country is now almost as vicious ("Vote out the pig, Jade") and unhealthy as the sacrificial rituals of ancient times. Property porn ("Whooar, get that 50ft basement swimming pool") routinely pollutes our newspapers and the telly.

But it's the pornography of grief that has been flooding the news columns and airwaves these past few weeks. The stories are usually grim, the photos of distraught mourners compelling, pictures of good-looking widows weeping particularly enjoyable, almost as good as those of Dr Kate McCann really.

It's all become another media circus, masquerading as something profound – though profound emotions are still at work below the exploitative razzmatazz.

Thus the wholesome human impulse – sympathy – which prompted the citizens of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire to pause as military coffins passed through the town from nearby RAF Lyneham started out well enough, decent to the core.

But it becomes larger and sleeker with every passing day, the coverage growing too.

Ghoulish Nick Griffin was photographed in yesterday's crowd looking more cheerful than he managed on Question Time. And those identical fit-for-TV Mercedes hearses looked as if they might have bought half a helicopter for the frontline.

In theory the frenzy will now ease off – at 11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th month, 91 years after the guns finally fell silent on the western front in 1918. It won't ease off, of course. A bit like Christmas – which starts soon after Easter – the poppy season seems to get longer every year. After I spotted a cabinet minister sporting one on 20 October (a few days after Nick Griffin), I rang the Royal British Legion, which runs the show - and, incidentally, asks Nick Griffin not to wear his poppy broach all year round.

A nice young woman explained that the annual launch date is usually between 20 and 26 October.

This year's theme was the "Afghanistan generation" and the Legion hopes that – amid the heightened public awareness of the current casualty rate – it will have equalled its £31m record collection this year, money that will also help older veterans. Only in 1968 did no British soldier die on active service.

So I was wrong about the season being longer. It only feels that way because of the intensity and conformity. I used to be quite keen to sport a poppy. Not any longer, not since it became compulsory.

It's years since I was first "required" to wear one on TV, though it happened again this year. I always refuse. But do you notice how everyone is expected to conform – the entire Kelly committee was poppied up to discuss MPs' expenses last week. Conformity squeezes meaning out of a small poignant gesture.

Of course, Afghanistan heightens public concerns for the lives of our servicemen and women, as well as the fragile strategy which puts them in harm's way far from home. It's right that we should all talk about it, irritating though it is to have to wait for Washington to decide its best course of action. Realpolitik dictates that this be so – and has done since late 1941.

But we have now had three days of lurid discussion of Gordon Brown's spelling, handwriting and sensitivity to grief. Quite sensitive, I'd say, given the death of his child – a point that has now been widely acknowledged.

Jacqui Janes, grieving mother of Jamie, who was killed in Afghanistan at the age of 20, has fought her corner well – and, as we all now know, given the PM a piece of her mind about equipment shortages. A sitting prime minister browbeaten and secretly taped by a housewife; so much for what Peter Oborne likes to call "the triumph of the political class". It doesn't do any of us much good – not even Mrs Janes.

She comes from a five-generation infantry family and doesn't need to be patronised by Guardian bloggers about "Queen and country", though it doesn't make her best placed to discuss strategy or military logistics – as Paxo gently (by his standards) suggested when he interviewed her for Newsnight.

All the same, Mrs Janes and her heartrending grief have been exploited rotten by the media, starting with the cynical Sun, followed by its little cousin, Sky and then – weirdly – by the BBC and the rest of the pack. Why does the Beeb feel the need to help the Murdoch stable oust Brown so that David Cameron can do the Beeb the harm he promises to do?

My own view is that when people, especially private citizens, start to cry during interviews the cameras should be switched off to allow them a moment to recover. It's private and it isn't fair to exploit their feelings about a loss – whether it's an illness, a car crash or a roadside explosion in Afghanistan.

In fact, it's voyeuristic and unhealthy, part of the pornography of grief, which – like a lot of things, including celeb culture – plays well with the economics of a cash-strapped media because it's also cheap. Add in the anti-war crowd, the jingoists and the BNP and it all gets a bit grisly.

The Victorians made a lot of fuss over death too. Just look at those tombstones: exotic, even erotic, in old cemeteries. But at least it was the deaths of their own loved ones they were mourning. Death was everywhere all the time before the development of modern antibiotics.

We, who have so little experience of it by comparison, have forgotten how to handle the great unknown in a largely godless age. Hence the macabre fuss over Princess Di, over missing Madeleine McCann and over poor, abused Jade Goody too.

The yearning is there and it's understandable. But we can surely do better than this.