One of the problems for the political and media class, when it comes to the video footage of Leo Varadkar engaged in a deeply passionate kiss with a fellow other than his publicly identified partner, is simply that almost everybody has seen it. It has, thus, become almost impossible for the media to cover up, such is the power of social media. And make no mistake: Had it been in the power of the media class, and the politicians, to cover it up, then it would have been buried so deep that it might only have been discovered by an alien paleontologist, several million years hence, as evidence of the late-stage evolution of human civilisation.
But sadly, such burial proved impossible. And so it is that almost everybody now knows that one of two things must be true about the soon to be Taoiseach: That he is either a person who has been shamefully unfaithful to his partner, or that his partner and he have some kind of arrangement where such behaviour is okay, and indeed tolerated. The former explanation reflects poorly on Mr. Varadkar’s personal character. The latter will strike many people, correctly, as deeply unorthodox, and evidence that Mr. Varadkar does not share their values, or their way of living life. There is no good explanation, and certainly none that is a net positive for Mr. Varadkar.
As such, distractions have had to be created. First, there has been the absurdity that the attention on Mr. Varadkar’s video is in some way “homophobic”. This is an absolute nonsense – if anything, the reverse is true. I would suggest to you, for example, that if Mr. Varadkar was straight, and in a relationship with a woman, then his indiscretion with another woman would have received vastly more coverage and provoked much more anger from the matriarchy that dominates Irish newsrooms. In fact, Mr. Varadkar has benefitted here from being gay. The media squeamishness (including, I admit, my own) about talking about this issue has flowed almost entirely from a real or imagined fear of being seen to engage in a bit of casual gay-bashing.
Second, there has been the nonsense about “privacy”. Simple rule: If you want your infidelity to remain private, then conduct it in a private place, not a public house. This is the Prime Minister of Ireland, or the person about to be so, slobbering over somebody in the plain view of the public. And we are expected not to notice, and to “respect his privacy?”. Come off it. Taking the video may have been a questionable act, but it’s not as if anybody peeped through Mr. Varadkar’s curtains.
Now, we have a new proposal, from the Tánaiste’s ally, and outgoing Taoiseach, Mr. Martin: Because this story could not be buried, we need laws, it seems, to permit the state to bury a similar story, next time one emerges:
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has warned a new era of stricter rules around social media is imminent.
He was speaking in the wake of the controversy surrounding Leo Varadkar being covertly recorded in a nightclub….
….He said there was legislation pending relating to the country’s first social media regulator and that forthcoming EU directives would also introduce stricter rules for tech firms that operate the online platforms.
However, he said social media users also needed to be held accountable for their behaviour.
Perhaps, to be the most charitable one could possibly be, Mr. Martin did not intend to link the issue of social media regulation to Mr. Varadkar’s indiscretion. Perhaps, like any media-trained politician, he simply saw an opportunity to pivot from an awkward issue to a simpler one, and to talk about social media instead of, you know, infidelity.
Even that charitable interpretation, though, does not wash. Because clearly there is a link in the Taoiseach’s mind between the media not being able to bury a story, and the need to empower somebody else to bury it for them.
This is part of a legislative pattern: The Government’s most abiding fear, at this moment in time, is that you the public are seeing things and hearing things that it does not wish you to hear. That is why it is so focused on hate speech legislation, which – as gleefully admitted by one politician last week – might deter people from raising concerns around immigration. The State is determined to control the flow of information, and the ideas that might be expressed. The proposal for state funding of the media should also be seen in this light – get someone addicted to the heroin of public funding, and then threaten to withdraw it if they do not toe the line.
So it is with social media regulation. The Government, the Taoiseach admits, is determined that you should not see things it does not wish for you to see, like, in this instance, politicians acting like teenagers at their first disco.
This entire programme of legislation – which we at Gript will ignore, and bugger the consequences – displays fear, not confidence.
Put simply, the Irish state appears to believe that if you see the things and hear the arguments it does not want you to hear, then you, the voter, may well turn on the Irish state. That is one reason why, in 2022, we are drifting away from freedom of speech into an open, and openly admitted, era, of state censorship.