Is merciless treatment of Ming just schadenfreude?

THE excoriation of Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan has been a thing to behold.

He gave the media the stick and they happily battered him with it.

He shot off his mouth about “Garda corruption” and denied having penalty points removed. He went on Vincent Browne and offered pathetic justifications in an excruciating display. He refused to consider resignation when Chris Huhne got jail time. His background as a pro-waccy-baccy campaigner added juice to the coverage: it could be slyly implied that Ming’s brains were too addled for him to know what he was doing.