Is it not amazing that certain people are deemed to be beyond being human and possess a quality that not even the purest of cherubic angels could possibly ever own?  Not just most times, but twenty four hours seven days, and over their entire lives. There was Justice Einfeld being caught speeding and telling a porky that most of us are more than capable of and probably doing most of the time. Yet, he was jailed for being what we all are, fallible human beings. The fact of being a retired superior High Court Judge, a former President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a Unicef Ambassador for children did not stand in the way of his punishment.  In fact, that was precisely why he was given such a harsh sentence.

There we are all cheerfully filling in our tax forms telling lies that will probably give us a nice little earner in refunds, hiding a few grand here and there in dodgy trusts or splitting income with our friendly stumpy Cattle dog  ‘Bitem’. All very legit, as they say.

 Good onya mate, Bob’s your uncle.  But for a mere bagatelle of a porky, poor Marcus in jail, hopefully with enough wisdom in contemplating the irony of it all.

Lately there has been remarkable diligence on the part of a blood hounding mob of do-gooders sniffing out scents in the discarded underpants of ethics, never of just ordinary folks like us, but only of those in the public eye.

Some time ago, the minister for Defence, having enjoyed a paid trip to China, compliments of a friend, apologizing for his lapse of memory or simply having forgotten it all, was being pursued by batteries of video cameras raised and aimed for his face from journalists with the well practised sensitivities of belt sanders. 

Where do the expectations come from that people in the limelight or of high position are somehow better or above the rest of us? There is the French President, divorcing his wife in full flight, taking a new one and being rewarded by a surge in popularity.  At the G8 Summit Conference he was allegedly filmed drunk. Such panache!  Are the French so much more sophisticated and tolerant and we in Australia so hypocritical?  Could a prime minister have gotten away with the’ flair and nous’ what the French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have managed so far?  Remember the uproar about young Kevin at the nightclub incident in the US? Where was our pride in our PM being one of us?

Is it also perhaps a fact that others elsewhere are more capable than us, of allowing even people in high places still to be human? The French President, after all, divorcing, taking another partner and sometimes getting pissed is what most of us intrinsically do as well.  Why the hypocrisy here when it involves only people in the limelight?
 
Those that get caught with child porn on their computers are also invariably ‘normal’ as well. From ABC employees to judges and magistrates, police officers, priests and prosecutors, and even ‘stranger danger’ educators. They all line up, worldwide, being charged, with having downloaded and/or spreading child porn. Now, if ‘normal ‘people are all so feeble and weak to fall prey to doing bad things at times, why are we always pretending those things are being done by others? Is it not true that we are all capable by just a hair’s breadth of doing unacceptable things? We can’t say that people caught are all seemingly respectable  pillars of society and absolutely ‘normal’ and condemning them, without also allowing and accepting that we are all capable of doing those bad things as well.

In the period of Queen Victoria, there were estimated to be over a hundred thousand child prostitutes in London alone. It is a fair bet, that those that abused children then were the judges, teachers, religious clergy, cabinet ministers, and regarded then as ‘normal’ as those now that are now caught with kiddie porn on their computers. Not that long ago, we stood by with terrible things being done to refugees, for years on end. The indefinite detention without trial of one of ours for many years, D.Hicks. The humiliation of Dr.Haneef and Cornelia Rau.  Basic and blatant breaches of human rights. All evil things done under our noses and with the apparent approval of most of us ‘normal’ people, without as much as a single prosecution so far. Where were the bloodhounds then?

Next time we hear or read about bad things, small or large, it is more likely to be ’us’ rather than ‘them’. We are ‘normal’.