Irish Independent
August 7, 2011
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/declan-lynch-a-hacketariat-in-search-of-a-scandal-2841837.html
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The "key question", they all agreed, was this: how would we react if a Catholic bishop had written that letter, pleading for clemency for a paedophile priest?
And the answer, they all agreed, was that we would be expressing outrage and that we would be calling for the bishop to step down or to move sideways or otherwise to acknowledge his grave error. Therefore it follows that we should be expressing outrage about David Norris and that he too should remove himself from what they all agreed was a doomed campaign.
For about three days on RTE radio, this was the
official verdict. Each new voice from the hacks of politics and political commentary echoed this line of reasoning as if the comparison was perfectly obvious and logical, and the parallels were beyond dispute.
But of course they were all wrong. They are usually wrong, but in this particular case they were so clearly wrong it seemed to set some new standard in hackery, all the more abysmal for the self-regarding piety of their tone.
No, you wouldn't need to have Plato or Aristotle in the Morning Ireland studio picking the bones out of this one for Aine Lawlor. Nor would the theological prowess of a Thomas Aquinas be required to point out that a Catholic bishop in this case would be in a position that is fundamentally different to that of David Norris, for this reason: there is a thing called context.
A Catholic bishop represents an institution which has been involved in a systematic way in the sexual abuse of children for a very long time. This places him in a certain context. And it is a context far removed from anything involving David Norris, who is entirely blameless of any such activity either in his own history or that of any institution with which he has been associated.
At a stretch, the analogy might be vaguely meaningful if the bishop in question was writing in defence of a priest who
happened to be his former lover. But I don't think that's what they were saying, those voices of what we might call the hacketariat.
So they carried on anyway, because, for them, the chase was on. They know this ritual so well, they know all the moves, and in their institutionalised way, this is what gives them the horn.
They selected an old favourite from their collection of political noise, the one that has got them out of many tricky situations in the past -- "this was a matter of judgement".
Ah, they love that one. For members of the hacketariat, life is sweet indeed when they find themselves on the radio solemnly intoning that "this was a matter of judgement". Yet while it makes them sound like serious people for a few moments, if you think about it for another few moments you see the true dimensions of the shrunken universe in which they live.
All they're encouraging is a form of politics in which, ultimately, nobody does anything, in which "judgement" means abandoning your friends if they're making things awkward for you.
They said that ultimately "this is about child safety".
No it's not. It's about them getting frustrated that this was coming up a bit short of a proper scandal, which it would have been if Ezra Nawi had reoffended after Norris's plea for clemency, which he hasn't. That's what it's "about".
Norris was said last week by deserters to be "delusional", but in fact he has always had a sound grasp of the contradictions and complexities of real life -- he has had no choice -- while his accusers hack away in their half-life of crude misrepresentation and cliche-encrusted bullshit.
Norris has read books too, which has encouraged him to adopt a highly nuanced view of human affairs, the mark of a civilised man, but a cast of mind that can get you hacked down pretty quickly on Morning Ireland, where nuances are frankly... well, a bit gay.
They will be happier with Gay Mitchell, a "safe
ANALYSIS pages 20, 21, 23 and 30
pair of hands" and suitably institutionalised.
And now the David Norris-shaped hole will be filled by Michael D, another
man who has read books, leaving him endlessly vulnerable.
Oddly enough I was perhaps the first to go against Norris when I wrote several months ago that I found him too conservative on matters of culture, that Michael D's rock 'n' roll heart made him the choice of the thinking person.
Norris has never understood rock 'n' roll and has poor taste generally in music. It remains his greatest crime.
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