Sneering at Wagatha trial reeks of snobbery
WHOEVER’S side you’re on in the torrid ‘Wagatha Christie’ court case – and with sympathy for Rebekah Hardy in such short supply, I’m guessing it’s on Coleen Rooney’s – it’s automatically assumed that you are holding your nose in the process.
On a recent edition of RTÉ Radio 1’s discussion panel The Gathering, participants were swift to declare not just their utter lack of interest in the spectacle of the two WAGs at war but also their disgust at it.
One pundit said that even contemplating the courtroom circus made her feel grubby, while Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane, who had no problem bellowing ‘Up the Republic, Up the Ra’ on the night he was elected to the Dáil, dismissed it outright.
Presumably they and everyone else who shares their disdain for the Wagatha Christie saga – believing that the girls would be better off settling their differences over a glass of Chardonnay than holding up the legal system with their squabbles – would have no problem whatsoever if someone who ran in their circle started tipping off the Sun newspaper about their private lives.
WHAT other conclusion can be drawn from their open contempt for a court drama that’s receiving wall-to-wall coverage on mainstream and social media?
True, it may not be edifying to hear people air their dirty linen in public but Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney are far from the first to take that route. They are just the first to encounter a rollercoaster ride of ridicule, snobbery and mockery for their pains.
Public fascination for tell-all exposés, celebrity trials and gossip – with all their attendant emotions from paranoia to jealously and violence to betrayal – shows that voyeurism is part of human nature.
It kept us glued to Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s courtroom battles. The former couple tore strips off one another in court, with allegatitions of brutalities, cruelties and indignities that put the WAGs’ foul-mouthed and moronic WhatsApp messages in the ha’penny place.
In the process, they aroused a myriad of emotions in us from pity to disbelief and a sort of scandalised sadness at how two damaged people’s relationship could sink to such degrading depths. But they never aroused the contempt that Wagatha Christie has.
Similarly Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. The celebrity royals aired their grievances against the British royal family, charged them with racism on the basis of a convoluted account of their son Archie being deprived his birthright , the title of ‘prince’ and claimed that Meghan was abandoned by her in-laws when her mental health deteriorated.
The sensational series of ‘truthbombs’ produced a mixed global reaction from admiration at their leaving a dysfunctional family to despair at their tormenting Queen Elizabeth as Prince Philip lay on his deathbed by turning her life’s work into a cheap soap opera.
Yet nobody tried to distance themselves from discussing the farce of a 37-year-old prince who had inherited around £35million and was complaining about being financially cut off by his family.
Even ardent republicans didn’t say that discussing the latest tempest to engulf a family whose wealth and power are based on inequality and inherited privilege made them feel defiled.
How could they? The royal family is socially speaking the top of the tree in the UK, protected by its ancient lineage, ancestry and massive wealth.
Similarly, Johnny Depp has the protection of Hollywood as well as the talent and charisma which helped make him one of its most bankable stars.
But what pedigree have Rebekah Vardy or Colleen Rooney to shield them in the court of public opinion ? Nothing.
They are just two ordinary girls from the wrong side of the tracks with no particular gifts and whose only claim to fame is falling in love with overpaid soccer players and having their children.
In a world in thrall to class and talent and the glamour of Hollywood A-listers, Vardy and Rooney are nobodies. They have no currency so it’s easy to sneer at them, to subject them to finger-wagging lectures about their having more money than sense and admonish them for making a show of themselves in Britain’s high court.
REBEKAH Vardy’s agent, who is too fragile to give evidence in court and has been blamed for planting stories about Coleen in the media, begged her not to go to court. She was probably right that squandering millions on a show trial about who gossiped about who and where, with expensive lawyers as ringmasters and a self-righteous public hanging onto every word, would be a folly and lower Vardy’s already threadbare reputation.
But the decision was no more a mistake than Johnny Depp’s to proceed with a defamation trial against Amber Heard, which has done extraordinary damage to both their reputations, or Prince Harry’s hotheaded attempt to resolve a family conflict in a public arena, which only caused further distrust and pain in his family.
But as always, it’s ourselves we reveal most in our reactions to the behaviour of others. When Prince Harry and Johnny Depp lifted the veil on their private lives, they caused public shock, outrage and censure but never condescension. Yet that is all that the Wagatha Christie trial has produced.
And it tells us this: of our ability even in 2022, in the age of inclusion and diversity and of shiny ‘woke’ ideals, to look down like Downtown Abbey dowagers on the overdressed lower orders and sigh at their bad behaviour and vulgar little ways.