Rob Ford, Berlusconi, The Crystal Methodist: why do we love scandals so much?

Published on December 2, 2013

Politics

The mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford un­leashed a crack-fu­elled flurry of witty head­lines in No­vem­ber when he ad­mit­ted smok­ing crack co­caine after ‘sin­cerely’ deny­ing it for months. Dis­be­lief was the unan­i­mous re­ac­tion – how can a suc­cess­ful man in a po­si­tion of power and re­spon­si­bil­ity be en­gaged in such shi­nani­gans?

In some quar­ters, this dis­be­lief was of course tinged with rage, but many peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced dis­be­lief steeped in hi­lar­ity and even ju­bi­la­tion. We love scan­dals and that sweet sense of schaden­freude. But why? Why do so many peo­ple smile and chuckle rather than out­right con­demn­ing he­do­nis­tic pub­lic fig­ures? Lets take a look at a few EU epi­cure­ans in our search for an­swers.

Sil­vio 'Bunga Bunga' Berlus­coni

The names of epoch-mak­ing politi­cians are typ­i­cally syn­ony­mous with the move­ment they de­fined. ‘Tony Blair’ shouts New Labour, ‘Charles de Gaulle’ shouts Gaullism, ‘Abra­ham Lin­coln’ is equated with with the abo­li­tion of slav­ery. But what about Sil­vio Berlus­coni, the ‘great’ man who has dom­i­nated Ital­ian pol­i­tics for the last twenty years? Berlus­coni will be re­mem­bered first and fore­most not for any ground-break­ing poli­cies or in­tel­lec­tual schools of thought. Oh no, Berlus­coni’s name con­jures up one thing and one thing only- the Bunga Bunga par­ties.

He may look like a wax work model who could melt at any moment, but Berlus­coni’s sta­mina is truly re­mark­able. He rode out seven sex scan­dals, all of which would have ended a politi­cian’s ca­reer in other coun­tries. His Bunga Bunga par­ties are leg­endary. He di­rected hoards of pros­ti­tutes in nurse and po­lice out­fits round his man­sion like a con­cu­pis­cent con­duc­tor. His hu­mour is ac­cord­ingly li­bidi­nous. In April 2011 he joked, ‘When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30% of women said, 'Yes', while the other 70% replied, 'What, again?' The man is a dis­grace, but 29.1% still voted for him in the 2013 elec­tions.

His name fre­quently in­spires chuck­les rather than rage. Why is he so scan­de­li­cious? Psy­chi­a­trist Mas­simo Fa­gi­oli tells CNN, ‘It's a Catholic men­tal­ity. Sin at night and con­fess in the morn­ing.’ In other words, we love colos­sal scan­dals be­cause they make our own mis­de­meanours ap­pear rather minor, a peren­nial com­fort to the sin­ner in­side us. It is thus we may at­tain the moral high ground, at least in our mind.

The Crys­tal Methodist

Rev­erend Paul Flow­ers, 63, sounds like a char­ac­ter from some kind of Skins par­ody about he­do­nis­tic pen­sion­ers. After forty years work­ing as a Methodist min­is­ter, Flow­ers was in­ex­plic­a­bly ap­pointed as chair­man of the Co-op bank in Britain. In two years he sin­gle hand­edly brought the bank to its knees. He was called be­fore MPs in the Com­mons to ex­plain the havoc he wreaked, but this was only the be­gin­ning. In the few days that fol­lowed, holy fa­ther Flow­ers seems to have con­sumed his own body weight in co­caine and ke­t­a­mine. And that is no mean feat con­sid­er­ing he is mas­sively over­weight. In­deed, his age and his weight and the colos­sal quan­ti­ties of drugs he hoovered up beg the ques­tion, ‘How did his heart sur­vive the ram­pant gay or­gies?’

The Rev­erend told MPs the Co-op bank had as­sets of £3 bil­lion, when in fact the fig­ure is £47 bil­lion. Seen through the eyes of a ke­t­a­mine fiend, it seems a bank’s as­sets ap­pear dis­tant and tiny. The icing on the cake of this ex­quis­ite scan­dal? For twelve years Fa­ther Flow­ers headed up an anti-drugs char­ity with the motto, ‘Telling the truth about drugs.’

What seems to be par­tic­u­larly scan­de­li­cious about Rev­erend Flow­ers is the sheer au­dac­ity of the man. Com­plete dis­dain for au­thor­ity is some­thing we often ad­mire, even if we don’t agree with the man­ner of its man­i­fes­ta­tion. This Rev­erend ex­udes a cer­tain an­ar­chic ap­peal. Envy in­spired schaden­freude is ev­i­dently im­por­tant too. Peo­ple love to see more suc­cess­ful peo­ple fal­ter, and this 'hum­ble' rev­erend with no bank­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions had un­doubt­edly ex­ceeded his call­ing. But above all, what seems to ap­peal is the fan­tas­ti­cal aura of this scan­dal- you sim­ply couldn't make this stuff up.

Javier Guer­rero and the Co­caine Chauf­feur

An­dalu­cia’s for­mer gen­eral di­rec­tor of work, Javier Guer­rero was given huge EU sub­si­dies to boost busi­ness and cre­ate jobs. How­ever, his job cre­ation scheme seems to have been fo­cused on the coca fields of Colom­bia rather than the Span­ish econ­omy. Guer­rero and his chauf­feur, Juan Fran­cisco Tru­jillo, re­port­edly spent €25, 000 a month on co­caine. One re­ally has to won­der, how can that much co­caine fit up a human nose? The man must be some kind of human jug­ger­naut.

Herein lies one pos­si­ble (per­haps face­tious) ex­pla­na­tion for our in­fat­u­a­tion with scan­dals – the sheer awe that cer­tain ex­ploits in­spire. This scan­dal is per­haps as much a tes­ta­ment to the re­mark­able en­durance of the human body as it is an aber­ra­tion on Spain’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape. How­ever, out­rage gives as­ton­ish­ment a run for its money here, for Spain’s eco­nomic woes are still an open sore and Guer­rero has rubbed his naughty salt in the wound. Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dean Bur­nett sug­gests the am­bi­gu­ity of scan­dals is one cause of our strange emo­tional re­ac­tions, “like a robot en­coun­ter­ing a log­i­cal para­dox.” Ad­verse to am­bi­gu­ity, we il­log­i­cally opt for strong opin­ions.

So dis­tinctly robot like in our every­day be­hav­iour and our largely un­err­ing obei­sance to su­pe­ri­ors, the great­est de­light we take in scan­dals must surely be the plea­sure we ex­pe­ri­ence at see­ing an­other robot re­ject its pro­gram­ming and put its own idio­syn­cratic de­sires be­fore the de­mands of the pow­ers that be. These scan­de­lous scoundrels serve as proxy out­lets for our own re­pressed de­sire for plea­sure.