Connect: The Billy Bunter-ised reporting of the killing of Brian Murphy outside Dublin's Club Anabel three years ago has been alarming. Not all media opted for an unctuous treatment of a sad case - indeed some tabloids seemed maliciously gleeful - but sycophancy wrapped in solemnity provided a dominant tone. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.
The story was treated as a school yarn meets a True Crime case and, in a superficial sense, it was. But that context, though it made a populist hybrid, turned some newspapers into comics. The lads on trial and their unfortunate victim were routinely and reverentially described as members of an "elite", "privileged", "wealthy", "educated" and, at least once, "wonderboys".
Sure, they were the sons of people with some money but you could neither blame nor revere them for that. Their parents decided to buy them a particular type of secondary schooling - rugby-playing - presumably believing that was the best thing to do. At schools like Blackrock College and Clongowes Wood College, the lads would meet the sons of other wealthy people.
There are a number of ways to look at such arrangements. In one way, the concentrated wealth in such fee-paying schools helps the self-perpetuation of the social power of a limited number of families. Nowadays, this is called "networking". In another way, however, such concentration by financial class can only be limiting for the pupils involved. It's a kind of cultural ghettoisation.
Many people, no doubt some of whom are privileged, wealthy and educated way beyond mere schooling, choose not to buy secondary schooling for their children. They fear ghettoisation and resent unfairness. Others argue that they feel a duty to give their children all the "advantages" (which to some are "disadvantages") they can afford and send their kids to fee-paying schools.
It's paradoxical really. There would be less risk of ghettoisation if the child being sent to school among the wealthy came from a background that wasn't wealthy. Similarly, if the child of wealthy parents, who had themselves attended fee-paying schools, were sent to a socially broad- based school, he or she could perhaps balance the best of both worlds. It seldom happens, of course.
The risk of being ostracised and bullied because "the face doesn't fit" can be great. A poor kid among the wealthy or a wealthy one among the poor needs a desired talent - though ferocity or abject toadying may do too - to overcome the fact that he or she is not typical. Youngsters, after all, despite their elaborate claims to individuality, are usually the ultimate conformists.
Still, there's no denying that life at posh schools fascinates a great number of people. The success of the Harry Potter yarns shows that the contemporary appetite for the genre remains voracious. Indeed, it could be argued that the Harry Potter books have been phenomenally successful because they satisfied a built-up demand for the school yarn, which, for decades, had been out of fashion.
George Orwell, in an essay, 'Boys' Weeklies', published in March 1940, noted how great was demand among boys for stories set in expensive boarding schools. This was so despite the fact that almost all the readers had no prospect of attending expensive boarding schools and the few working-class characters in the stories were invariably "comics or semi-villains".
Perhaps, alongside shameless snob appeal, the central fascination of the school yarn is that it provides children and young teenagers with a safely "orphaned" context. (Harry Potter, for instance, is suitably orphaned.) Parents are alive but are seen only at holiday time. It's kids who negotiate a stylised competitive world of other kids, house colours and inter-school rivalries.
The tone of much reporting of the Brian Murphy case stressed school rivalries and assumed that snob appeal had allure.
For many, this was patronising and repellent. Some of the tabloids, presumably pandering to their readers' supposed resentment of wealth and snobbery, opted for malice. But sycophancy was the defining note in too much coverage aimed at the middle classes.
Such coverage, despite pseudo-solemn tones about rot at the top, bolstered the social status quo. Lads who play rugby, go to fee-paying schools, have money and career prospects - often through "networking" - are just another element in this society. They are neither to be looked up to nor looked down upon because both ways of looking are almost always poisonous.
Because the addresses in this trial included Foxrock, Dalkey and Donnybrook - ordinary enough places, albeit pricey for property - it attracted unusual attention. Media coverage, however, said more about the media covering the story than about the story itself. It is, after all, in the interests of dominant media elements to revere rugby-playing schools and expensive addresses. It's true that most people would like the greater-than-average amount of loot required to buy these educations and houses.
But that's about it. The Brian Murphy tragedy, like the Diana Spencer one and like most of the brawls that result in death in working-class areas, was primarily caused by drink. The rest - social class, schools, loot, rugby, competition - is vacuous decoration.