Shock around the jock - disease is the defence du jour
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday December 16, 2009
Now the swelling's gone down on Tiger Woods's dented head, the campaign to rehabilitate his dented image has begun with news he may seek rehabilitation for sex addiction. Meanwhile, talkback radio listeners have the fate of Chris Smith, 2GB's former afternoon announcer, to ponder.The disease excuse is the defence strategy du jour for wayward celebrities and anyone else busted behaving badly. This is not to say it's rubbish. But its claimants might do well to think about the conditions that apply.Smith was stood down indefinitely last week following "incidents" at the work Christmas party. In what he now claims was an alcoholic blackout, he harassed, groped and tried to kiss a number of female colleagues.A couple of days later "a remorseful and emotional Smith" told The Sunday Telegraph he's a bipolar alcoholic, and that his wife had walked out with their two young children after the incident.The rising popularity of the disease excuse should come as no source of wonder. Claims of alcoholism or other addiction are rich in opportunity for the earnest and the disingenuous alike. For the former, it's a source of insight, a foundation for redemption and the change they can believe in. For the latter, it's all the rationale they need for habitual recidivism.Fans of The Sopranos will know that caper at its most comical. Cornered on his baser behaviours, drug-addicted psychopath Christopher Moltisanti would yell "I gotta disease, OK?"It's not a lie. Alcoholism has long been defined as a disease by the World Health Organisation. But it's a very tricky disease. What other disease tells you that you don't have it? It's a nasty disease and not just for the sufferer, thanks to the primary manner in which it presents: antisocial behaviour.Alcoholics are as capable as anyone of great generosity of spirit and intelligence. They're also reliably capable of childish delusion, narcissistic grandiosity, mendacity, flakiness, horrific violence and grotesque self-pity. All with a baffling inability to join the dots between behaviour and consequence, even when it's staring them in the face.And that's before they start drinking."Born two schooners short of normal, with an opposite point of view", was the way I heard one fellow intimate with the condition describe himself.All of which make perfect selection criteria for the shock jock job, which appears to require profound self-importance and self-righteousness, as well as little sense of social responsibility. When these shock jocks are not charging five or six figures a minute for mentions and endorsements, they're ripping open social wounds by pitting popular frustration against soft targets.Public opprobrium is their weapon of choice. Anyone's fair game; the more isolated their target, the more they relish the job. At the same time they can pat themselves on the back with sanctimonious rationalisations that the public has a right to know.They hammer politicians one day and toady up to those same people the next. They talk to battlers in terms of "we" and "us" and "our taxes", then retreat in large cars to expensive eateries and luxurious homes. No other job asks so little of its constituents. They have carte blanche to be as contrary and self-contradictory as they like, as long as the fires of popular indignation are kept stoked.In other words, they're richly rewarded for doing what any school bully does free of charge.Which is why, for many, a slip like Smith's represents a schadenfreude opportunity of rare richness and beauty. But such is the way of the righteous world that to indulge in this would be to diminish oneself to the level of the quarry. And there are more important things to address here.The pivotal moment in the life of many an alcoholic comes with hitting "rock bottom". This is the moment at which they land on their backside hard enough for their mind to crack open and pierce the darkness of denial with the laser light of clarity."That has happened to me a few times over the last decade - I just black out and that's what happened," Smith said. "I'm not saying by any means that that's an excuse. It's not." He'd already started making the excuses, mixing alcohol with "the wrong antidepressants". In here - possibly - lies a hint of the refusal to take responsibility for one's actions that is a hallmark of the disease to which the man is now laying claim.What Smith does from here is up to him, but a popular school of thought says his future peace of mind that will be his best protection from another drink is partly contingent on his clearing up the wreckage from his past. Smith might find useful advice in surprising places, such as a former Media Monitor employee, Brent Balinski."I'd been a bit of a dickhead. If I were my employer, I'd fire me," Balinski told the Herald after losing his job. Three years of listening to Smith - the man he dubbed "a complete hack and a dupe ... Alan Jones without the brains" - made him mad enough to embark on a campaign of email harassment. He thought Smith would see it was steeped in harmless humour.Smith didn't. He called the police, and the electronic trail led them straight to the culprit.There's a humility to Balinski's analysis from which the man he tormented could learn about his torment of others. Smith told The Sunday Telegraph it was time to "man up". Well may he ponder the true implications of that in the light of his work.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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