If the question of whether or not Ireland should rejoin the Commonwealth is to be decided by the Commonwealth Games, the answer is: not. Membership of the Peoples' Republic of North Korea or the Democratic Republic of the Congo is preferable, if the issue is to be decided on our participation in the dullest, most sanctimonious sports contest in the world, writes Kevin Myers
It wouldn't be so bad if television ignored it, but it doesn't. BBC television is showing over 12 hours a day from the games on both its networks, and since the only part of my house which can receive an RTÉ signal is a corner in the ceiling of a guest bedroom, this means at the moment I have the joys of just three televisions channels: TV3, Channel Four and Channel Coronation Street.
The real measure of the games was provided by an opening ceremony which featured two of Coronation Streets' "stars", actors with names like Norman Clodd and Sandra Nerd. No doubt Iceland television also has it stars, but as Iceland has the good sense not to host athletic competitions for the third rate, at least we are spared their Minge Fittedottir and Glum Ulfson.
The friendly games
The Commonwealth Games are also known as the friendly games, which is otherwise an admission that they don't really matter. They never have; and the decision to grant identical gold medals to winners of events for the disabled and the able-bodied alike merely confirms the lack of seriousness of both the games and the Commonwealth.
The games organisers have assumed a po-faced priggishness on the issue of the competitions for the disability, as if it were discrimination not to have the disabled competing. But, of course, the discrimination is the other way round. It's inverse discrimination to allow less capable athletes to compete in the games merely because they're disabled; and it's certainly discrimination to have special rules for the disabled that are so complex that no one watching can understand what is going on.
Because there are so many categories of disabled, it is not possible to have an event for each category, so athletes with their varying disabilities will compete in the one event. For example, athletes with a leg missing, or an arm, or both legs, or who have cerebral palsy or are blind, would all compete together in (say) the 100 metres; and the winner is not the one who comes first, but the one who competes best against the world record for athletes with his or her disability. So they're not competing against one another, but against different times in the record books.
Not merely is this ludicrous in itself, but it presupposes that disabilities are standardised: that one case of cerebral palsy, or Down's syndrome or amputation, is pretty much the same as another. And this is even before we remember that mental disability qualifies for participation. Consider if the US were part of the Commonwealth: a very large proportion of American footballers are stupid enough to qualify for events in the disabled games, but athletic enough to win gold in the able-bodied events as well. So all things considered, it was jolly decent of the US to leave the empire when it did.
Moral blackmail
Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the integration of the able-bodied and disabled events is the coercive, gallery-pleasing moral blackmail that is intrinsic to it. And I confess, when I consider the opening ceremony which featured a terminally ill, six-year-old child with an oxygen tank on her back and a flaming torch in her hand, words fail me - which no doubt was the intention.
Moreover, long-distance competitions without the Moroccans, the Tunisians, the Ethiopians, the Algerians, explosive events like the 100 metres without the US and the West Africans, gymnastics without the Russians, the Japanese and the Chinese, and wrestling or weight-lifting without the Turks or the Bulgarians really don't count a great deal; and the guaranteed presence of Malta hardly compensates. Sorry, Valetta.
But the larger question is this: what is the Commonwealth? Former membership of the British Empire is not automatic qualification, nor even a condition. Mozambique is in the Commonwealth, but was never in the empire. Burma, the US, Sudan all were in the empire, but are not in the Commonwealth.
Stultifying competition
Apart from an entitlement to participate in the most stultifying athletics competition in the world, does membership of the Commonwealth actually mean anything? Would we lose anything by joining? Well, if RTÉ had to show the wretched games for hour after hour after hour every four years, and our unfortunate sports writers had to write solemnly about the single-synchronised swimming contest, we unquestionably would. Maybe we could apply for non-athletic membership only.
Would we gain anything with such membership? Would the balm of communal love spread along the Border marches if we revoked John A. Costello's impetuous and vainglorious departure from the Commonwealth? Possibly, but I doubt it. Two Commonwealth countries - Pakistan and India - dedicate most of their GNPs to developing new ways of cremating each other. Does membership of the Commonwealth cause Tamil to love Singhalese? Kashmiri to love Punjabi? Cypriot Greek to love Turk? Ibo to love Hausa-Fulani? Boer to love Xhosa?
The only thing to be said for rejoining the Commonwealth is that our ambassador lays a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday; which means that I'm in favour of it - provided we don't have to compete in those utterly purposeless games.