If you have
just accidentally shot dead the woman you love, what do you do? Is it:
a) Dial 999
and summon an ambulance
b) Call your
girlfriend’s parents and beg forgiveness
c) Go to a
church and pray hard
d) Hire a
leading PR to manage your reputation.
Call me a
foolish romantic, but I would rule out “d” right away. If you were innocent and
grief-stricken, why would your thoughts turn to “crisis communications”? Yet
this is exactly what Oscar Pistorius did within hours of the violent death of
his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria.
The
26-year-old Paralympian called up Stuart Higgins, the former editor of The Sun
and now a public relations expert. Pistorius’s PR team lost no time in
relaunching his website to put the most positive spin on what they variously
describe as “these tragic events” and “this terrible, terrible tragedy”.
Looking at the website, with its stirring pictures of the Blade Runner in
action, you notice that the words murder and death do not feature. For, lo, we
have entered the soothing land of PR euphemism, where world-famous disabled
heroes do not gun down.
Among those
paying tribute to Oscar is his uncle, Arnold Pistorius. “Words cannot
adequately describe our feelings,” says Arnold. “The lives of our entire family
have been turned upside down for ever by this unimaginable human tragedy and
Reeva’s family have suffered a terrible loss.”
Observe that
it is the Pistorius family which has suffered “an unimaginable human tragedy” –
their golden boy faces a career-wrecking charge of premeditated murder. The
family of Reeva Steenkamp, the victim of the crime who appears to have been
shot three times while in the toilet, has merely suffered “a terrible loss”.
Reeva’s
irrelevance to the main event was confirmed by a tabloid headline. “Blade Slays
Blonde”, it proclaimed, not bothering to give her the dignity of a name. On
Tuesday, as a hearse took Reeva’s body to the crematorium, Oscar Pistorius
sobbed throughout a bail hearing. It was an affecting performance. One might
almost call it Oscar-winning. Commentators began to admit they felt a sneaky
sympathy for the stricken track star. Even the magistrate asked him if he was
feeling all right.
And so, very
cunningly, the tragedy is appropriated from the dead woman and becomes the
tragedy of the man accused of killing her. The fact that, according to a
neighbour, he silenced Steenkamp’s screams with two further gunshots, is of
little consequence to Pistorius’s supporters.
“I didn’t have
my prosthetic legs on. I felt vulnerable,” explained Pistorius, playing the
disability card for the first time in a life that has, until now, been
remarkably free of self-pity. He was explaining why he fired at a locked
bathroom door behind which he was convinced there was a burglar. Because
burglars always lock themselves in bathrooms, don’t they? To steal the soap and
the hand towel. Just as girlfriends always lock the door when they need a pee
in the middle of the night. And men who think there’s a burglar in the bathroom
never bother to shout out first and give their girlfriend a chance to say,
“Baby, put the gun down, it’s only me.”
Pistorius’s
story has more holes than a colander. I don’t feel an ounce of pity for him. Of
course, his PR man, Stuart Higgins, begs to differ: “Our job is to capture some
of the support that Oscar is receiving from all over the world, lots of
positive messages from people who still believe in him,” explained Higgins.
Fame – that
is, real global fame of the kind Oscar Pistorius enjoys – has its own
protective forcefield. You can believe in a star even when you no longer
believe the story they’re trying to peddle. That’s why Michael Jackson kept
selling records. That’s why, even now, there are Lance Armstrong fans who have
clung to the faith. When fans say they still “believe” in a celebrity, what
they mean is: “I refuse to let any unpleasant facts interfere with the noble
image I have of you.” Even if those unpleasant facts include the corpse of a
29-year-old model and law student who was, by all accounts, as lovely as her
face.
At the height
of the Jimmy Savile scandal, the entertainer’s niece told ITV’s This Morning
that her relatives were angry when she decided to speak out about what creepy
Uncle Jimmy had done to her. “Without his fame, they’d be nothing,” explained
the niece.
Fame can do
that. It zips people’s lips and mortgages their hearts. Only weeks ago, Oscar
Pistorius fired a gun in a restaurant. The bullet narrowly missed a friend’s
foot, but police were not called. If a complaint had been made, maybe the
testosterone-fuelled athlete might have realised he was not above the law. But
the restaurant owner was happy to accept that no gun had been fired because
Oscar’s friends lied to protect his reputation.
The obvious
comparison here is with O J Simpson, who went on trial in Los Angeles in 1995
for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. Like
Pistorius, Simpson had form when it came to domestic violence. The prosecution
thought it had a solid case. But, also like Blade Runner, O J was a
good-looking sports god who had overcome considerable odds to find fame,
fortune and a beautiful blonde. Race was a complicating factor, but it was
O J’s celebrity that turned a vicious murder case into the Trial of the
Century. Last September, 18 years after Simpson was sensationally acquitted,
Kato Kaelin (a TV personality and witness at the trial) was asked if Simpson
killed Brown and Goldman. Kaelin replied: “The statute of limitations has now
passed… so I can now say… yes, he did it.”
Asked why he
let O J Simpson get away with murder, Kaelin said: “I was too scared. I was
terrified… People hated me. I’ve been spat upon. They threw gum in my coffee.”
Fame can do
that, too. Never underestimate the human desire not to know the worst about our
heroes.
Let me leave
you with a piercing irony. Just days before Reeva Steenkamp was killed, she
sent tweets offering her support for female victims of violence. Her country
has a deplorable record in that area. On average, a South African woman is
killed every eight hours by her partner or relative.
After her
funeral, Steenkamp’s Uncle Mike told reporters that his niece wanted to be an
activist for ending abuse against women. “Unfortunately, it has swung right
around, but I think that the Lord knows that her statement is more powerful
now,” he said.
It certainly
is. When Oscar Pistorius’s case comes to court, it should be the man who faces
the murder charge, not the sporting legend. Gold medallists can be made of
baser metals. There is only one victim of unimaginable human tragedy here. Her
name was Reeva Steenkamp.
.
