AS you all know, I have always been of the view that popular culture is useless. Rock music is a tuneless, repetitive irritant, recorded by people who can t play and listened to by people who can t hear. Cinema is a playground for perverts and fools. And as for cartoons? Nothing could be more puerile and irrelevant.
Well, now I m not so sure. Back in 1983, in New Mexico, Judge Jackie Love was indulging in a little bit of boyish fun, reading his Spiderman comic, when a very artistically drawn, if somewhat baroque light bulb went on over his head. Why not apply some of the tactics adopted by the forces of law and order in the story he was reading to real life? Judge Love was a modest man as well as a comic fan. He could have claimed the stroke of genius which followed as his own but he didn t. When he designed and applied the initial pilot scheme for electronic tagging, he was more than happy to acknowledge its source. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, can I have a big round of applause, please, for a cultural visionary, an outstanding hero and a role-model for us all: Mr Spiderman.
So you see popular culture does, indeed, have a value if you apply it properly. Sadly, however, it has taken some time for Judge Love s Spiderman-derived initiative to reach these shores. It has certainly caught on in the land of the free and the home of the brave: already 50,000 people have been tagged in the United States, and the number is growing. But on this side of the Atlantic it s been slow so far. However, fans of Spiderman will be pleased to hear that electronic tagging could indeed be next year s thing.
You ll all have read, I m sure, about the enthralling debate that s currently taking place in England about raising moral standards among the youth of the country. Well, with a general election looming in 1997, it s a debate that s likely to gain in both momentum and intensity. In fact, this might just become the key election issue, because the strategists in the Conservative Party know that it s one of the few grounds on which they might be able to trade punches on relatively equal terms with a Labour Party which is currently odds-on to romp into government. And so the Conservatives are getting their retaliation in first, bringing a new Bill before parliament which would give courts the power to impose a curfew on offenders, and to enforce it through the use of electronic tagging. In itself, it s an impressive foray in the direction of Judge Dredd-style justice. But what s especially heartening is that it will be used immediately, if the Bill goes through parliament, on offenders between the ages of 10 and 15.
Now we all know what an appalling bunch of ingrates kids in this age group are. If they re not down looting the video shop for black market copies of the latest pornography just in from Amsterdam or Copenhagen, then they re smoking crack cocaine and mugging our senior citizens for the money they need to support them in the self-indulgent lifestyles to which they ve become accustomed. It s quite obvious: kids between the ages of 10 and 15 are determined to unravel the precious fabric of society as we know it, and they will achieve precisely that unless we as Concerned Parents and Citizens do something to stop them. I think that it s only fitting that we should take a leaf out of a comic hero s book in order to do so: I say tag the bastards.
At the moment, the Conservative Party are coming on just a teenchy bit sensitive on the issue. The Bill will allow only for the tagging of offenders. My own prescription would be more radical: why not tag every single goddam little menace, male or female, immediately they arrive at their 10th birthday. Monitoring centres could be set up all over the country, which would have the beneficial side-effect of putting a few thousand able-bodied men back to work, and hey presto! There wouldn t be a moment during the day or night when the authorities wouldn t know where the wretches are. Just catch them trying to let the air out of some law-abiding citizen s tyres while they re under surveillance. BAM! They d be manacled and hauled off to Wormwood Scrubs before they could say DOH!
I m optimistic that my radical new scheme might in fact be pioneered in Ireland. There s a general election coming up here next year too, and I m sure that my good friends in Fianna Fail and the PDs will be only too happy to take it on board. Everyone knows that law and order is the only issue that matters, and Fianna Fail already have an excellent campaign on the go, about putting everyone who doesn t vote for them behind bars. And at the PDs inspiring annual conference in Clare last week, we were treated to calls from delegates for a return to the old-fashioned law enforcement values of respect and discipline, in streets, schools and homes, as well as blood and urine tests for suspected drug users, eviction orders for anyone who ever spoke to anyone who ever saw someone who d once experimented with Paracetemol and cue roll of drums and the sound of trumpets the renewed use of garda fists.
All excellent suggestions, I know, which I am looking forward to seeing put into action if Fianna Fail and the PDs end up in government together. But, between now and the election day, I ll be working on them to go one step further.
If the Conservatives can do it in the UK, have no fear Fianna Fail and the PDs can do it here, with knobs on. Anything Spiderman can do, John O Donoghue can do better. Now there s an election slogan. Liz O Donnell! You d make a glorious Spiderwoman.
Destiny awaits. Which of you will be our Judge Jackie Love?
Niall Stokes
Editor