There was an interesting contrast in the front pages last week concerning the differing responses of two European politicians to moral policing by the press, writes John Waters
At home, Séamus Brennan was quoted as "admitting" that the "controversial" corporate tent hosted by Fianna Fáil at the Galway races had become "a lightning rod" for controversy.
"There's nothing wrong with it," the Minister said. "It's an open, transparent fundraiser and people pay a few bob to have your meal and a bit of fun, but given that it's been such an issue, I do think we should review it at some stage."
This is an example of the abject, self-mortifying school of confessional politics, in which politicians, accustomed to the moral lash of journalists, lapse into penitential mode, even when there is no sin.
Mr Brennan was right the first time: there is nothing wrong with the Fianna Fáil tent, except that a lazy form of journalism has managed to make capital out of casting innuendos in its direction each year, as an alternative to doing some real work. Contrast the Minister's reaction with the robust response of Cosimo Mele, reported on the front page of this newspaper last Wednesday.
Signor Mele, an Italian politician of the Christian Democratic UDC party, was responding to inquiries concerning his "misadventure" with two prostitutes and a portion of cocaine in Rome. "I say one thing to you out loud," he told a journalist from La Stampa. "How many deputies go to bed with prostitutes? It's not a crime. Of course I identify with Christian values, but what have those got to do with going to bed with a prostitute? This is a private matter. Are you saying that I cannot be a good father and a good husband just because, after five, six days away from home, I had a little adventure? My electors do not give a damn if I go to bed with a prostitute. What they want is for me to resolve our problems, the problems of our area."
Who, wearied by the incessant moralising of the journalistic profession, does not cheer loudly on reading this? We are not privy to the precise questions posed by the journalist from La Stampa, but Signor Mele's response provides us with the shadow of their tenor. We live, supposedly, in an age of liberal non-judgmentalism, in which what really happens is that the media promotes a culture of libertinism in respect of choices by those deemed supportive of the current ideological prescriptions and punish those who are not supportive.
Anything goes, so long as you remain on message. The non-judgmental prescription becomes radically involuted, however, in respect of those offering different prescriptions. Anyone advocating traditional concepts of morality and family is challenged at each and every suggestion of a disjunction between word and deed. The proffered rationalisation for this practice is that there is a legitimate public interest in the private lives of those who advocate certain values in public and fail to adhere to them in private. This is a shrivelled figleaf calculated to conceal a base and scurrilous purpose: the pursuit of titillating information to sell newspapers while also shoring up the ideology of liberalism.
Either we live in an age of non-judgmentalism or we do not. If a left-winger's private life is not the business of the media, then neither is a right-winger's. The claim of the media to be legitimately pursuing the exposure of "hypocrisy" is bogus. If a politicians tells me I should refrain from sleeping with prostitutes, find a nice respectable woman and settle down, then the quality of this advice remains unaffected by whether or not that politician is able to follow his own advice.
Society needs to hear a range of political viewpoints, and not only from people capable of total and consistent moral probity. To suggest that only those advocating free-for-all amorality are entitled to the protections of privacy legislation or journalistic ethics is to decide in advance on the complexion of the society we are as yet only in the process of building.
At this point, I suppose, I am expected to engage in the mandatory dissociation from Signor Mele's activities. But actually no. I couldn't care less what politicians get up to in the middle of the night. It's none of my business, any more than what I do is any of theirs.
It is not so long since we lived under the moral scrutiny of cassocked priests; now we labour under a similar tyranny by journalists in ill-fitting suits. I have been in journalism for nearly 30 years and in that time have met many politicians and many journalists and can say without hesitation that the average politician is infinitely more principled, more likeable and more fundamentally decent than the average journalist.
If ever I find myself in trouble, in need of compassion, human understanding or the loan of a tenner, I will have no hesitation in seeking out the average politician long before troubling the average journalist. I don't recommend that politicians follow Signor Mele's example to the letter, but they might at least become inspired to stop cringing under every swipe of the journalistic crozier.