If everybody’s a judge, then nobody’s a judge
IGOT a text from a friend: “Liam Neeson — he had a good run all the same.” It could mean only one thing. I went to Twitter straight away, wondering what Neeson could have said or done, to have my friend thinking that it must be all over now for the big man.
Arriving a bit late on the scene, I could see that Neeson was indeed under tremendous attack for something so serious, there was already a clip of the former Liverpool great John Barnes on Sky News, speaking about it with barely suppressed rage.
Except it turned out that Barnesy, most unusually for an angry man in these circumstances, was actually defending Neeson. Moreover, not only had his anger not maddened him to the point of derangement, it was working as a fine energy which concentrated his mind so precisely, he was even able to conclude his liberation of Liam Neeson with a blistering attack on Winston Churchill — as if, with the result wrapped up, Barnesy was banging in another one for the goal difference.
Neeson had had these disgraceful thoughts... he’d been conditioned by society to have them... but now unlike so many others, he was telling the truth about it, confessing that he was ashamed and horrified by the way he felt — and that he had learned from it.
Barnesy had nutshelled it so quickly, and exonerated Neeson with such obvious moral authority that you felt he had instantly emerged as a vital force in our virtual lives — a bringer of justice, a judge, if you like.
There is no system of justice on social media, because everybody is a judge — and if everybody is a judge, then nobody is a judge. And man, it can make you weary, all that judging.
Indeed, when my friend’s text sent me off to investigate whatever atrocity had just taken place, I felt that weariness deep in my bones — I would now be required to weigh up the evidence and to judge Liam Neeson, and to judge others who are judging him, and frankly, I need a day off now and again, from all this judging.
Enter John Barnes, to do the job for me. Indeed, even as he was delivering his verdict with such panache, I felt a twinge of sadness that he couldn’t be there every day, handing down decisions on whatever controversies may arise.
Because his expertise was clearly not confined to the narrow issue of Liam Neeson, this was Barnesy making a statement that was most righteous in its nature, about a whole world gone wrong, a world full of people who CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.
And his magisterial powers are especially needed in these cases in which a good person may or may not have done a bad thing — Neeson indeed had been breathtakingly unwise, but he is not a bad actor, as it were. I was relieved that I did not have to judge him, and send him to the proverbial Van Diemen’s Land.
So these are the big calls that I, and many others, at this stage, would prefer to leave to a man with an obvious gift for it — our Lord Chancellor John Barnes. But of course there are times when we can make our own minds up, because usually we are not looking at good people doing bad things, we are just looking at the likes of Daniel Kawczynski, the Tory MP who tweeted in the maudlin style of the Brexiteer that Britain had liberated half of Europe, yet there had been “no Marshall Plan for us, only for Germany”.
Immediately he was informed by about half the internet, that this was deeply wrong, that Britain had actually received far more from the Marshall Plan than did Germany. Yet he did not take down the tweet — and in fact he hung up on a radio host who challenged him about it.
Which might be regarded as remarkable, until you realise that anyone putting out totally false information on Twitter can look to the daily output of the US president, and figure that if he’s not taking back any of his garbage, then so be it. Leave it out there!
You can judge Kawczynski all day long, for his outright opposition to the truth, which is even worse than not being able to handle it — though the Brexiteers couldn’t handle it either, when it was coming out of Donald Tusk.
His “special place in hell” speech cried out for a special sitting by John Barnes, warning the Brexiteers that if they even tried to pervert this into an attack on everyone in Britain who voted Leave, he would go after them like he went after the white supremacist mass murderer Churchill.
Instead, there was Leo Varadkar standing beside Tusk. Leo, who is usually no more than an amused observer when this truth thing is going down.
Not judging him, mind.
‘Frankly, I need a day off every now and again, from all this judging...’