These days one is supposed to greet any freak show with an outburst of cloying sentimentality.
The sight of a double amputee racing around the track on two futuristic blades is expected to fill spectators with pride about the indomitable human spirit overcoming adversity.
And so it probably would, if the poor chap did it in private. Done on an internationally televised show, the performance evokes the county fairs of yesteryear, with bored yokels paying to see a bearded woman or a pregnant man.
One woman apparently charged admission for the pleasure of watching her standing knee-deep in faeces. One kind soul told to her to stop humiliating herself that way and find something better to do. “What,” replied the woman indignantly, “and quit show business?”
This story is probably apocryphal, but the sight of Pistorius bouncing on his blades is there for all to see on YouTube. In both instances, made-up and real, one wonders about the performer’s mental health.
One may also wonder about our times, when a quest for cheap notoriety overrides any notion of taste, decency and self-respect in the performer and viewer alike. But this is a separate subject.
More immediately, I’d suggest that any cripple eager to put himself on display in this tasteless fashion has to be insane. Perhaps not much, but noticeably.
This, one would think, could constitute a plausible defence strategy: diminished responsibility due to temporary insanity, or some such. It probably wouldn’t be sufficient to get the killer off, but it could be seen as an extenuating circumstance.
But Pistorius and his team wouldn’t take this line. Nor would any judge (no jury trial in South Africa) accept starring in Special Olympics as prima facie evidence of insanity. The modern ethos wouldn’t let him.
Instead Pistorius maintains this was all an unfortunate accident. “I am not pleading not guilty because the scene was contaminated,” he stated. “I am pleading not guilty because what I’m accused of didn’t happen.”
Didn’t he shoot and kill Reeva Steenkamp, guilty only of poor judgment in choosing her bed mates? Yes, he did. But he didn’t mean to: “I made a mistake. My mistake was that I took Reeva’s life.”
This courageous admission of mistakes is accompanied by an unseemly spectacle of Pistorius refusing to look at photographs of his butchered girlfriend, weeping, sobbing and in general putting on a show similar in terms of taste to his Olympic feats.
I’m not going to second-guess the judge or his verdict. Just consider Pistorius’s version of the events.
Awakened in the middle of the night by a noise coming from his bathroom, Pistorius reached across the bed to grab his pistol. Somehow he failed to notice that Reeva, supposed to be asleep next to him, wasn’t there.
He then hobbled into the bathroom, gun at the ready. On realising that there was someone in the lavatory cubicle, Pistorius instantly fired four times through the door. Three of the bullets hit and killed Reeva who, amazingly, was the person inside.
Now as someone who used to own similar (legal) guns, I can tell you the story smells to high heaven. No one keeping such sophisticated kit at home would fail to get some training with it.
This would go beyond learning how to slam a magazine in, pull the slider back, release the safety, aim and fire. It would even go further than going to the range regularly and practising one’s accuracy.
The most important part of the training is learning how to keep the gun at home, when to fire and – most important – when not to. The training doesn’t have to be formal: anyone going to the range and hanging out with fellow shooters would pick it up from ambient air.
For gun enthusiasts are a talkative bunch, and the experienced ones will always insist on imparting their knowledge to a novice. I used to be such a greenhorn, so I know this for a fact.
But perhaps Pistorius just bought the gun and forgot all about it, until he was reminded of it by the noise? Maybe he never went anywhere near a shooting range?
Alas, he did. Regularly. Here he is, in a YouTube video, blowing a watermelon to bits, then telling the cheering and laughing onlookers, “It’s a lot softer than brains but f*** it’s like a zombie stopper.”
It is indeed. A 9mm pistol sensibly loaded with hydroexpansion rounds does have a lot of stopping power.
Such rounds are sensible for the purpose of self-defence because one doesn’t want the kind of bullet that can go through the intruder – and then hit an innocent party who happens to be on the other side of the window (or a flimsy wall).
And no gun owner who knows such arcana, buys an expensive 9mm automatic, loads it with expertly chosen ammunition, then practises on a range in the company of fellow sophisticates, would under any circumstances blindly shoot away through the door of his lavatory cubicle without first ascertaining that the person inside is a criminal intruder capable of doing him harm.
Such a scenario isn’t just unlikely but impossible. There are only two plausible versions here.
One, Pistorius is mad. Two, he quarrelled with his girlfriend, she tried to get away from him by locking herself up in the lavatory, he followed her there and, in a fit of criminal rage, shot her four times through the door.
I hope the judge won’t be swayed by the spectacle put on by the defence, showing how vulnerable Mr Pistorius looks on his stumps, claiming he was traumatised by his deformity, understandably feeling oversensitive about protecting himself.
My heartstrings refuse to be tugged in such a manipulative manner. As far as I’m concerned, a man who parades his disability in public forfeits any claim to sympathy even under normal circumstances. And murder doesn’t qualify as such.