How deciding to do a Ben Dunne left poor GV in a Wright mess

UNTIL this week, he’s never been much more than a set of initials, one of the many who forced themselves to accept Frank Dunlop’s largesse and a roundy face in parliamentary directories.

Right now, however, he's a lot more than the sum of those parts. Partly because someone sold him on "coming out with your hands up and doing a Ben Dunne".

It may have been inevitable, after his outing by a national newspaper. It almost certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.

To the extent that the media has a heart, it wholeheartedly approves of doing a BD. The media approves because going the BD route turns names, details, admissions, confessions and grovelling apologies into column inches and live airtime fodder. The media has a Stalinist approval of a good purge: Get it all out there, GV, you'll feel a lot better. But because the media is also a moral animal, or at least a moralising one, that Stalinist love of show-trial self-destruction is overlain with an ethical gloss. "Doing a Ben Dunne" is somehow a more honourable approach to take, when you've been caught.

Once upon a time, Ben Dunne was a grocer. Now he's a truism. Worse still, he's an unexamined truism. And if the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined truism ain't so hot, either. As GV Wright has found out, to his cost.

Look first at the elements in the original BD. Think balcony, hooker, cocaine. Think press conference. Think crutches. Think affable willingness to give landing room to all incoming accusations. Think big shovel-shaped face nodding ruefully on TV.

Then apply the model to GV Wright's situation. Starting with the third parties involved. Ben Dunne's third party was uninjured, got a lot of publicity and extra payoffs from media eager to hear more. Plus, she was a hooker, and in the hierarchy of social value, hookers come lower down than nurses. Nearly everybody comes lower than nurses. Pick on nurses and God will smite you amidships.

The Ben Dunne model also requires physical presence. Television and radio need clips of the penitent perpetrator to illustrate their story. Ben Dunne provided such clips. Because GV Wright wasn't physically present, his airtime and visual space went to others. Primarily, although not exclusively, to the nurse. Said nurse is a hell of a lot more articulate than Ben's lady of the night; this is a woman who can name and shame each broken bone and who made sure to get a screw-and-bolt-count from her surgeon.

Whoever thought up the Ben Dunne approach for GV simply didn't think the thing through. They didn't work out the cognitive and emotional impact of having your man out there. People find it harder to be nasty about someone who's right there in front of them.

GV was very definitely not right there in front of them. In his place was a vacuum. Electronic media can always fill a vacuum with bile and venom. The GV Wright vacuum filled to the brim and overflowed within hours.

Eyewitnesses portrayed him as not just drunk but combative and uncaring. The nurse's injuries festered as we listened. When that perennial voice of sweet reason Dr Abdul Bulbulia suggested on a radio programme that a double amputation in this case exceeded normal medical expectations, indeed might be a leg too far, he barely escaped with his life, because the argument had gone either/or either you were for drink-driving Fianna Fáil TDs or you were for the nurse.

With luck, GV Wright's forced confession will have killed, for all time, the widespread unthinking approval for "doing a Ben Dunne". Shifting public opinion is rather more complex. For individuals and for political parties. The most adept party-political spin doctor would be challenged by Fianna Fáil's limitless capacity for multiple disaster. Just as triplets run in some families, cluster-catastrophe runs in the Fianna Fáil family. Their stinkers come in multiples. That old saw about not crying over spilt milk develops a whole new meaning when you get into the habit of blowing up dairies.

Meanwhile, the master of the drip-feed approach to spilt milk continues to star in his own long-running show at Dublin Castle. With significant variations which should not be overlooked simply because several of his former colleagues are now standing in a souring lake of the stuff.

Given that Liam Lawlor is never as green as he's cabbage-looking, his current exit-behaviour merits examination. His past behaviour when exiting the Planning Tribunal was characterised by the plausible plaint: God love him, he was mystified up to his shiny glasses by the demands being made on him, but trust him, he was going to co-operate as much as was possible, assuming, of course, the tribunal had the right to ask him to co-operate on the matters under consideration.

These recent weeks, though, when any sensible man in the amount of schtuck Lawlor is in would come out of Dublin Castle and walk briskly to his car, shaking a taciturn head at journalists and providing as little copy as possible, the man himself has been bouncing out, brimming with brio, and taking the time to get stuck into Charlie Bird and Ursula Halligan. (The nameless journalist whose microphone got scrunched in the door of his car counts as collateral damage. Friendly fire can be hard on technology.)

Because news reporting has morphed into entertainment, the Bird and Halligan shows delight their respective stations. The reporter as star protagonist, being attacked for wasting taxpayers' money in asking damnfool questions, improves ratings. Being so attacked by someone whose commitment to the vindication of the taxpayer is kind of iffy indubitably provides entertainment of a kind no news editor who has committed a crew to Dublin Castle could be expected to resist. They have to broadcast the encounter. At best, it suggests their reporters are Ireland's answer to Woodward and Bernstein. At worst, it shows they're not cowed by Liam.

All of which Mr Lawlor will have calculated in advance, because whatever else he is, he's a good man at the calculations. This man has a masters degree in informed opportunism. He does nothing by accident. And he laughs all the way to the limo, having dictated the content of the TV news. He may not be able to dictate the content of the Vincent Browne programme or other analytical media but, significantly, the TV news is what most people see and base their opinions on. It's believed roughly 80% of people get 80% of their data and more importantly their perceptions from prime time TV and radio as opposed to serious current affairs follow-ups or leading articles in newspapers.

Therefore, at the end of the tribunal, if Mr Lawlor faces criminal charges, it is difficult to imagine the State being able to impanel a jury which is without prejudice.

Although, of course, I would not for a moment suggest creating such a situation has been any part of Mr Lawlor's purpose. Perish the thought. He's just trying to give a career leg-up to Bird and Halligan.