Cocaine debate is poor quality stuff
Saturday December 15 2007
In so far as I can judge from media coverage over the last week, I appear to be one of the few journalists in Ireland who hadn't met Katy French and thus wasn't personally devastated by her death. I mourn her passing, of course, as I would the demise of any young person in the prime of life, but no more than I lament the deaths of the two young men in Waterford in the same period or those of all the twenty-somethings who are killed on our roads every year.
Yet the media decided that Katy French's death was somehow different and this was because they had already gone to the trouble of turning her into a celebrity -- and one of a very contemporary kind in that she was pretty, vivacious, articulate, eager for fame and unencumbered by any of the particular talents or achievements that would have been a prerequisite for renown a few decades ago. She was simply herself -- or, rather, the media's version of herself -- and the fact that most people had never heard of her until a few months ago seemed somehow neither here nor there.
It was for these reasons that her funeral dominated the news and that the Taoiseach saw fit to ensure the attendance of his aide de camp, an honour not normally given to the obsequies of ordinary Irish citizens. And it was for these reasons that, at the outset of that evening's Expose show on TV3, presenter Lorraine Keane breathlessly promised a "farewell to Katy", while assuring us that the following item would concern "Posh getting her boobs out -- yes, rumour has it that Victoria Beckham has had her breast implants removed. We have the story."
And the RTE current affairs people were not unmindful of the circumstances surrounding Ms French's death when offering us their Prime Time Investigates report on cocaine use in Ireland, which was presented as a major and shocking expose even though it came up with little that most of us didn't already either know or surmise.
Keelin Shanley's report made great play with the fact that cocaine is snorted in pub and club toilets the length and breadth of Ireland, which is something of which only your granny could have been unaware, but that didn't stop her showing undercover footage of the practice in one toilet, then two, then 23. I think we got the message.
Much was made, too, of the fact that even the most respectable of middle-class users, whether they deem to think so or not, are complicit with the criminals and murderers who provide the cocaine. It's a link that's worth stressing but again only people who are stupid or morally bankrupt would be unware of it. And Barry O'Kelly's follow-up report on couriers and dealers was hardly more informative.
The topic also dominated that night's Questions and Answers (RTE1), minister Micheal Martin optimistically declaring his belief that "lessons will be learned" from the recent cocaine-related deaths, while pundit Marc Coleman doubted that such wisdom will be forthcoming. He deplored the "cancer of ambiguity" surrounding the issue and called for warnings on films and books that appeared to endorse drug use. So that's The Naked Lunch and Confessions of an Opium Eater off the curriculum, and farewell to Coleridge, too. Not the way to go, I think, Marc.
Over on Channel 4, the Sex in the Noughties series introduced us to Zoe Margolis, who writes an apparently much-read blog called Girl with a One-Track Mind, which is all about her sexual cravings and accomplishments. The narrator assured us that such blogs constitute "a phenomenon that for the first time tells the truth about women and sex". Seemingly, women like sex too. Who'd have thought it?
Meanwhile in RTE1's Webs of Desire, Anna Nolan concluded her investigation of the internet's sexual possibilities by revealing that "the web is a perfect medium for all sorts of contact" and that, in this regard "Irish people are no different from others". Useful to get that learnt.
In furtherance of her noble probing on our behalf, she went along to a fetishist club and talked to a man who gave her the lowdown on BDSM, which is bondage discipline sado- masochism to you and me. He seemed a nice chap, though it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying because Anna had dressed for the occasion by donning a PVC minidress and fishnet tights. Very fetching she looked, too, if a heterosexual is permitted to say that about a lesbian ex-nun.
The BDSM chappie explained to Anna about dungeon masters who monitor the sessions to make sure that everyone's alright and that "nothing gets out of hand" -- a bit like a parish priest patrolling a dance floor in the old days, I suppose.
Then Anna interviewed a man whose face was hidden from us and who was described in an on-screen caption as "Individual Addicted to Porn." This individual assured her that "the internet and pornography are made for each other". The things you discover from RTE documentaries!
This week's Scannal! (RTE1) was about the reality show boat that sank off Tory island in 2003, but for the life of me I couldn't make out where the scandal lay, unless reporter Pat Butler thought it scandalous that RTE should be wasting our money churning out a crap variation on Castaway, which is what the show in question (Cabin Fever, if you could be bothered to recall), was trying to be. From the start it had been a wreck and it was fitting that it ended up as one, so did we really want a half-hour film that laboriously chronicled its demise?
- John Boland
