The Carnival of Liberty is posted here, NOW!…

Going back to the likes of Profumo, the horror has always struck me as manufactured. Were we really horrified? Well aside from the odd nun and reclusive prude with an interest in medieval archives, no … we were titillated and wanted more.

Such disclosures appeal to prurient appetites and jack up viewing numbers, so not unnaturally the press make a circus out of these lapses in “judgement”. I’m using parenthesis because there is no consensus any more that supports a monolithic moral judgement that would for sure prompt a mass nod from a scandalized public.

Clinton’s sexual capers were adolescent; deployment of cigars as WSD’s (Weapons-of-Sexual-Deviation) and furtive phone calls for the most part. By todays’ licentious standards this was really, really tame stuff. Yes he was married and the Commander-in-Chief etc, but its entirely unreasonable to expect these people to be Jesu-like in their moral constraints. Perhaps a bit of boinking on the side would actually energize them in the execution of their public duties. Prince Andrew always manages to look rather fiesty.

Apparently Mitterand was dedicated to extra-marital diddling, but he always managed to come off as the stalwart French leader. He had this haughty and sanctimonious look about him, that almost dared the gossips to bring it on. Since he was using French espionage capabilities to keep his nocturnal activities under wraps, I doubt if anyone would have had the temerity to ring any bells too loudly.

He did the rounds while covering his rear end and also managed to preside over the Republic in rather grand style. No mean feat in this age of the predator reporter.

As for bans on smoking and other petty intrusions upon privacy, I bloody hate it. I can’t believe Dublin has succumbed to the PC disease also. A Dublin pub without carcinogenic substances means they aren’t as dodgy as they once were. When the fags (cigarette for Americans lest I get accused of homophobia) go, what’s next? No whistling of The Oul Orange Flute? No good natured fondling of attractive strangers? No exhibitions of drunkeness or recitals of racier Pogue lyrics? Dreary and correct.
Bring on the Ginger Man!

No. What I was getting at was that the ban is more than one in ‘enclosed public places'; it applies to private places too. What I was trying to get at is that politicians, who complain that their privacy has been invaded, don’t seem to believe in the concept of privacy. Swingers clubs? Fine. Can we have smokers clubs and snorters clubs too, please? Using one of the examples from the piece, I don’t think Tommy Sheridan believes in privacy at all. He and the rest of the SSP voted against allowing consenting adults to have a fag with their pint. And with regards his legal action, his complaint has not been that his privacy has been invaded; it has been that the stories about him are untrue. I consider this to be highly significant.

Surely part of the problem is the way that the media bid politicians up?

I think the problem is that politicians court the media and by doing so implicitly accept their right to invade both their own privacy and that of others. They do this because they want to get elected in order to have power to tell the rest of us what to do. This is why I don’t feel particularly sorry for Prescott, Sheridan or any of the others. Live by the tabloid, die by the tabloid. Hell scud it into them, as my granny never said.

More annoying, probably. But this is not a massive step change in the creeping regulation of our private lives.

As it happens, I’m borderline opposed to a ban in pubs (I don’t actually care much any more), but I wouldn’t put the argument that – because politicians seek to impose themselves on our lives in a way that we personally don’t like – that we should then declare open season on them.

To say that politicians expressing views on how people live their lives means that they don’t beleive in the concept of a private life at all condemns an entire way of organising democratic government. Surely part of the problem is the way that the media bid politicians up? The way particular issues are focussed on, each of them have to outdo the other with more populist responses to any question.

Journalists insist that politicians stick their noses into everyone else’s business. Any politican who doesn’t will find their opponents scoring points against them at will. Journalists – yet again – are the problem IMHO.