by Paul Thomas
In the matter of Aaron Smith’s toilet liaison, what should be made of the tattletales’ role?
In the matter of Aaron Smith’s toilet liaison, what should be made of the tattletales’ role?
ecause the law of defamation effectively reverses the principle of innocent until proven guilty, the British satirical magazine Private Eye became adept at coining euphemisms that kept the libel lawyers – collectively known as Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne – at bay.
The most enduring is “tired and emotional”, meaning drunk. When the notoriously thirsty George Brown became Foreign Secretary in 1966, the Eye published a mock Foreign Office memo providing translations of terms such as tired, emotional, overwrought and colourful for embassy staff called upon to explain their boss’s erratic behaviour to puzzled locals. (According to legend, Brown once mistook the Archbishop of Lima, a vision in red, for a woman and asked him to dance when the band struck up the Peruvian national anthem.)
Tawdry and stupid as it was, it didn’t involve violence or coercion.
“Exotic cheroot” was code for a joint and “Ugandan discussions” signified an illicit sexual encounter. This was widely assumed to have originated with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s contrived claim that he sacked his glamorous Foreign Minister, Princess Elizabeth of Toro, for having sex in a Paris airport toilet. In fact, the inspiration was a Fleet Street journalist who, in the course of hosting a party at her London home, disappeared into the night with a former Ugandan Cabinet minister. When asked by her husband to account for her movements, the journalist claimed she’d been “upstairs discussing Uganda”.
As All Blacks halfback Aaron Smith discovered, these days the media has no need for self-protective euphemisms: if a well-known person misbehaves in public, it will almost certainly be recorded for posterity on someone’s cellphone.
I’m not convinced this incident justifies the claims made on its behalf – that, as the sub-headline writers would have it, New Zealand rugby’s season from hell has gone from bad to worse. Tawdry and spectacularly stupid as it was, it didn’t involve violent crime or coercion. And the fact is that society doesn’t have a black and white view of the two components – brazenly cheating on one’s partner and having sex in a public facility.
I don’t recall much opprobrium being heaped on Usain Bolt as he engaged in a post-Olympic Games victory lap through the nightclubs of Rio and London, the collusive media coverage of which deprived his girlfriend back in Jamaica of the option of turning a blind eye. And declaring membership of the Mile High Club – an exclusive cohort of those who’ve had in-flight sex – is usually a boast rather than a shamefaced confession and usually meets with indulgence rather than disgust.
I also doubt the All Blacks’ main sponsors, Adidas and US insurance giant AIG, were aghast over the incident. They knew from the word go that they were getting involved with a rugby team, not the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
It seems unlikely that behavioural scientists will mull over the motivation and conduct of Smith and the young lady with whom he discussed matters pertaining to East Africa in the disabled persons’ toilet. That of the couple who dobbed them in to the media is another matter. Their behaviour, I’d suggest, is worth analysing.
From what can be gleaned from the whistle-blowers’ comments to the media, they dropped Smith in it because he’s a role model, a common justification for making a song and dance over something that would be shrugged or laughed off if perpetrated by a nonentity.
But Smith’s partner isn’t a public figure or a role model. Nor is the other woman or her partner. How much collateral damage can selfappointed moral guardians inflict before we decide that they, rather than their targets, have a case to answer?