Henry McDonald: If we can be generous towards politicians who have killed we can be generous towards those who have sent bad tweets

In an episode involving his tormenting twin sisters-in-laws Homer Simpson is compared to one of the worst mass murderers in human history.

His crime? Smoking in a public building which Homer only does to placate his beloved long suffering wife Marge and save the jobs of Patty and Thelma.

The gruesome twosome work at Springfield’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) vehicle/driver testing centre and have just failed their brother-in-law’s fit for driving test. In a celebration that is almost post-coital the women each light up a cigarette so pleased are they to have got one over their hated brother-in-law.

They put their fags in the ashtray just as a stern looking bureaucrat comes into the room who suggests in horror that both have been smoking in the building, a breach of public policy that could at least cost them their promotion.

Marge looks plaintively on at Homer and he acts out of love for her. Homer takes both cigarettes and nearly chokes to death when he inhales informing his sisters-in-law’s boss that they belong to him.

The DMV official lets Patty and Thelma off before slapping Homer in the face and barking out, “And you sir, are worse than Hitler!”

This hilarious scene came to mind during the week when thinking about the aftermath of the Doug Beattie tweets affair. ‘

The Simpsons’ sketch in the DMV with Homer standing accused of being more awful than the mass murdering Nazi dictator presaged where the world, particularly the western world, was going in terms of faux outrage and exaggerated comparisons with the some of the worst crimes of the 20th century.

None of this is to excuse what Doug Beattie shared in terms of a rather tacky and tawdry ‘joke’ that included a hurtful reference to Edwin Poots’ wife. Nor even does it to justify some crassly sexist and allegedly racist tweets that the former soldier sent out on Twitter years before he entered politics.

Rather the concern here is over the hyperbolic hysteria that misdemeanours on social media networks generates. Because it seems that sending out a few offensive tweets (which it must be stressed the Ulster Unionist leader apologised profusely for) or Facebook posts appears to be of far greater gravity than serious historic crimes committed in the real, three-dimensional world.

There are and have been MLAs and other elected representatives on councils who have committed far worse crimes than firing out unpleasant messages on Twitter and other social media outlets.

We have had politicians and advisers at Stormont as well as in council chambers who were found guilty of robbery, arms possession, accessory to murder and murder itself.

The contract the majority of the Northern Ireland population made via the Belfast Agreement in 1998 was to let everyone including those responsible for a great deal of the futile, wholly unjustified violence of the Troubles (republican and loyalist) move on into a new era.

This deal was encapsulated in the phrase David Trimble deployed on embracing the Agreement and all it entailed including sitting down with people who once would have been prepared to kill him and his colleagues:

“Just because you have a past doesn’t mean you can’t have a future,” Lord Trimble said just after signing the Belfast Agreement in Easter week 1998. Those politically significant and strategically sensible words about past enemies appears not to apply in the weird world of cyberspace where everyone can hear everyone else scream.

In the on-line social media universe, no past mistake can be forgiven, apologised for, or put into any context especially when it comes to politicians.

Again, this is not to ignore the injury caused to Mrs Poots over a shared joke or the offence people felt over Doug Beattie’s past tweets. However, some perspective and nuance are surely needed here.

This society especially the victims and survivors of the Troubles have if not forgiven then at least accepted the need to embrace everyone into the democratic political system many of whom inflicted so much pain and hurt for three far too long decades.

If that miraculous generosity of spirit after the 1998 peace accord can take place in the aftermath of a terrible bloody conflict, then why can it not apply to social media?

There was also another much older, intrinsically wise exhortation from the Gospels that this writer paraphrased during the week when discussing the Beattie tweets on BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Talkback’ programme.

‘Let he or she who is without sin on social media cast the first stone.’

The Green Party were casting stones in Beattie’s direction before it emerged that one of its councillors made allegedly sexist remarks about an Israeli singer’s cleavage at the Eurovision song contest.

Then came the tweets of Sinn Fein Assembly members, all women and all full of bile about “Huns” and hoping Martin McGuiness brought a gun with him when he met the Queen etc.

It was soon Michelle O’Neill’s turn to apologise profusely for the crass, insensitive, sectarian tweets of some of her party colleagues in Stormont.

Yes, it seems that in cyberspace everyone does hear everyone else scream but out there in the on-line cosmos no one is innocent and no one it seems is fit to cast any stones.