When is a nasty scum-sucking cunt not a nasty scum-sucking cunt?
When he’s addicted to heroin.

You might think that I have a serious problem with punchlines when you read the above – perhaps that I don’t “get” the art of comedic closure, maybe that I’m highjacking an otherwise snappy retort with my social conscience (which, let’s face it, is the size of a month-old pea and of no fixed abode). But I’m not trying to tell a joke here, or even trying to ape one. Well, maybe trying to ape one; there are points to be proved, and blogging agendas to tip one’s hat to. Either or. What’s particularly bothersome here is that the statement above could pass as just that; a statement, and a contextually legitimate one.

We’re fucking obsessed with excusing drug-using people with anti-social attitudes as drug addicts, even if their behaviour has fuck all to do with their intake. Which, in general, it doesn’t. It’s just a handy way of explaining away the rotten apples.

Take yesterday’s story about Wayne McNally, who was sentenced to thirteen years for shooting bouncer David Gilsenan in the face after he was refused entry to a nightclub.

Reading the facts of the case, and of McNally’s background, it’s pretty easy to see he’s a thug with absolutely no interest in fitting into society. He had fifty-five previous convictions, including one for cutting the a young woman’s throat at the age of nineteen, a crime he was sentenced to four and a half years for. He assaulted two gardai when they tried to arrest him for the shooting, he was carrying two screwdrivers (which were unlikely part of a mobile cocktail bar enterprise), and he attempted getaway in a stolen car (here’s one I swiped earlier). In short, the man is an absolute dick. He’s a one-man fucking Dick Pride parade with lashings of extra fucktard. But wait! There’s more!

He’s a drug addict.

Well, boo fucking hoo! Boo hoo for a society held to the whims of the dastardly barons, boo hoo for lack of opportunity for the self-medicated … boo hoo for bouncers trying to do their fucking jobs. McNally likes heroin. Have-a-snooze Heroin, the Great fucking Waster. Fabricating violence in the innocently impoverished since 1898. Big bad heroin, the root of all evil.

Drug addict who shot bouncer in face jailed for 13 years.

Why bother headlining the bollocks as a drug addict? What has that got to do with the price of barbiturates? It would be just as valid to say, “Career criminal who shot bouncer in face jailed for 13 years” or “Father of two who shot bouncer in face jailed for 13 years” or “Early school-leaver who shot bouncer in face jailed for 13 years” or “Dub who shot bouncer in face jailed for 13 years” – all of these apply, and none are any sort of excuse. A love affair with drugs – particularly heroin, with which we have an undeniable but not easily-explained-away problem in this country – can make you a desperate individual, can rip all sorts of decency out of you, and yup, it most certainly is a factor in many petty crimes, mostly involving desire for quick cash … but it can’t make you a bad-minded thug with no interest in empathy other than whether or not it’s a noun you can snort. McNally’s longtime skiddadling in and out of prison cannot be attributed to his track marks – his actions go above and beyond what could reasonably be accounted for on the smack ticket. The man needs removal from society. The man is broken. No rehab programme will rescue the rest of us from a prize cuntpallet like him.

Bringing heroin into it, at headline level no less, does no one any favours. I could go deep and dark with this one, and examine where exactly the fault lies when someone decides to banjax everything around them for the sake of the heroin kiss, but it’s Friday, and I really wouldn’t like to bore the few of you left reading after my first joke-free paragraph (sorry, y’all). It’s a debate for another day, and possibly another website. But I’m so cranky over this! I’m fuming! I don’t like the Irish tendency to blame inanimate objects for the wrongdoings of other Irish people – we are more likely to blame heroin than the community/State failures evident when someone like McNally cuts swathes through the lives of innocents. We don’t do heroin ourselves, you see, but we do make up the State. Therefore, we shall blame heroin … And Big H takes another for the team.

I knew a girl, years ago, who was facing her day in court over various petty crimes she’d hoped no one would notice. Without a decent excuse for being such a thundering bitch, she pulled the old “woe is me and my heroin habit” out of her arse, which came as a surprise to everyone who knew her and her strained waistband. Read the local Irish papers for their court reports and every second gobshite has a drug-related sob story. Ecstasy made me kill my neighbour’s dog. I stole that chequebook coz I was stoned. I have a drinking problem, so you’ll understand why I raped the babysitter. McNally himself offered up the excuse that his drink was spiked … that a subconscious necking of a funny pill was what lead this professional psychopath to shoot another man in the face. It’s all codswallop, empty statements to throw out in place of admitting you’re just an arsehole who wronged the poor cunts around you.

Taking drugs doesn’t make you a bad person, but bad people enjoy taking drugs as much as the rest of us.

Now, having said all that, in McNally’s case it was fairly obvious that no heroin horror story would convince a judge to suspend another sentence. Our media’s shoving the drug issue to the forefront in his case seems to be more about isolating him from the rest of us – making him the bogeyman – than about drumming up the sympathy.

Which is alarming, because reading about McNally’s past, and especially about his criminal record, you’d have to wonder whether it was the State, the Law, and all those other niceties with optional capital letters, that failed David Gilsenan.

What a spooky psyche we’ve got, fellow Paddies. Yeah. Happy Halloween