How's that for a title, huh? Well, off I trotted recently to my friendly neighbourhood art house cinema (QFT, this being Belfast) to watch Neil LaBute's's film 'Nurse Betty'. It's an excellent take on the role of the media in the modern world, and in particular the role of soaps, as in soap operas. 'Nurse' Betty (played in the film by Renee Zellweger) is a young woman obsessed with soaps but with a no-good husband who resultantly gets himself brutally murdered in their own house; she witnesses the killing and when the killers realise she was a witness, she becomes a target too. But meanwhile she has been traumatised by what she has seen - traumatised into a role in her favourite medical soap (thus 'Nurse' Betty), and goes off in search of her fictional true love.

Perhaps the most interesting character in the film, played by Morgan Freeman, is the hitman on the edge of retirement, showing his son the ropes (and the guns). In some ways he is urbane and 'cultured' despite his trade. What struck me most forcefully in this was the way he took pride in his job as if he wanted to be Salesman of the Month or Employee of the Year. He did have some slender justifications to himself for his occupation but in the main there was simply no connection between his 'work' and his 'private' persona, the getting on in years, fairly easy going man who liked reading. Out of self interest he managed to keep the two parts of his life totally apart. It reminded me of the time I went to a taster workshop years ago with a US ideas salesman and the only thing I learnt was the word 'schatoma' which I haven't found in any of our household dictionaries; it was defined as our blind spots, the things we can't see about ourselves which others can plainly see. Well, the hitman's 'schatoma' was that he couldn't see the brutal effect his actions had on the loved ones of those he killed. It was a job, a way to earn a few bucks.

Such im-morality at a personal level causes many problems, Such im-morality at societal level causes BIG problems. The irony of Ireland being in transition from a society which suffered from guns and weapons to being a society which partly makes a living from the export of these [see lead story this issue] to inflict uncontrollable suffering on people we don't know, and evidently don't care about, is so great as to make me think - why can't people see it??? There goes that old blind spot again. What was that old Christian adage, 'Love your neighbour as yourself so long as it does not cost you any money' - that's it, isn't it? But those who live by the sword are quite probably not the people to die by the sword so they are quite happy to let other people make that sacrifice.