Warkworth has a complex intersection where six roads meet including two which are the Number One State Highway. No one negotiates this intersection safely, although plenty of blokes think they do, and plenty more don’t care. Coming home from 8 am Communion on Christmas Day, I may or may not have yielded right of way to some woman, possibly from Omaha and driving a lurid 4-wheel-drive battle wagon, who then flew into a road rage meltdown and tailgated me all the way to Algies Bay, gesticulating and shouting what the media call epithets. I don’t know whether she intended to garrotte me or simply drive over me -- but she called off the pursuit, did a screeching gravel-spraying U-ey and disappeared, just before I got home.
My best Operational Plan in the event of a direct encounter had been to wish her a happy Christmas. Certainly the official advice, that in the event of road rage you should give cheerful waves through the rear window, does not work very well.
Amid the usual plethora of Christmas Messages from bishops, the Bishop of Blackburn chose to leap to the defence of Steve Kean the beleaguered manager of Blackburn Rovers who have sunk to the bottom of the Premier League and face something called relegation which doesn’t sound nice. Steve has been copping much abuse it seems, with demands for his head to roll. But this is standard abusive response in the UK, and to a lesser extent here. Blind cruelty is an important weapon in the response-kit of many. Logic and rationality are not, and even less are human understanding and compassion. Most of the characters in Coronation Street, on being hurt, blamed or crossed, resort by reflex to aggression and vituperation if not physical attack.
We seem to be getting angrier just about everywhere. There are hideous reports of bullying at schools, videoed and relayed on mobile phones far and wide. Various courses tell people how to react to bullying at work. Bullies seem to be leading a charmed life. Victim Support tries to pick up the results. I would throw bullies out of the school or the workplace without question, but apparently you can’t do that.
I think it is also worth noting how public humiliation, which is another form of bullying, has become the preferred weapon of media. Of course the media have their own pious justifications, but they now routinely seek reversal of suppression orders of names and evidence, and the real reasons are the selling of newspapers and the feeding of the public prurience.
“Contact sport” as it is now called is routinely violent and abusive, and this is generally thought to be the way it should be. Injuries and worse are expected, and we get regular bulletins on the medical progress of wounded sporting “icons”. Top teams have their own doctors who wait below, much in the manner of naval surgeons in Nelson’s time, while the bleeding casualties are wheeled in. Vicious punching, eye-gouging, head butting, spinal dumps, stomping, are still officially frowned on, I gather, and penalties are applied -- but it remains more important that the offender be restored to favour and to the team without delay. “What happens on the field stays on the field” has come to be a noble and manly shibboleth. Boxing, as ever, is without excuse.
It now seems acceptable to be reckless with the sensibilities of others. When someone, often a so-called comedian, is simply rancorous and acrid about other people, it is thought cool. We don’t have decency from such people. In fact what passes now for television comedy is for the most part loud, coarse and deeply unfunny. It is fed by booze and worse. It features repellent men and women still apparently locked in battle with puberty and their hormones. So sad.
