John Howard’s request for privacy for his wife, Janette, must be respected, but, unfortunately, the request is likely to backfire, and therefore the request should be questioned.
In the past week, I have been party to half a dozen or more conversations about it, with people imagining that because I am a journalist, I will know something not in the public domain. That is often the case, but not on this occasion.
What troubles me, though, about these conversations is that after drawing a blank from me, the people actively engaged in speculation about Mrs Howard’s illness, some from their own medical experiences or that of others or on wild guesswork, based on the few slight bits of information available.
Those bits of information are: a major operation; the requirement for post-operative pathology tests, the results of which would not come through for a few days after the operation.
Those titbits almost invite speculation and gossip. And virtually everyone in Australia must have either been party to that or could not help but be at least a passive observer of it. It is human nature to be curious.
So what possible aim could be achieved in the Howard family seeking privacy? It certainly could not be to prevent speculation and gossip. The seeking of privacy if anything has increased speculation and gossip.
The best way to avoid speculation and gossip is to tell all. That is what Ronald Reagan did, for example, when he had an operation on his colon. Sure, Mrs Howard is not the nation’s leader, John Howard is. There is no question of “”the public’s right to know”. Mrs Howard’s illness has had some minor effect on affairs of state because it resulted in her husband cancelling an overseas trip, but what ever it is, it presumably will not affect Mr Howard’s performance in his job to the extent where it becomes a public issue. The vicissitudes of life are such that whomever Australians elect as Prime Minister, they can expect that person to have some personal crisis during office.
There are more advantages to telling Australians the full nature of Mrs Howard’s illness than just the prevention of speculation and gossip.
Empathy, sympathy and understanding can only come with knowledge. It is impossible for people to give expression to the best of human feeling without knowing to what it is directed. And illness usually brings out the best in people for support and understanding. Usually that is confined to the immediate family, friends and workplace colleagues of the person with the illness. It is not because it is none of the business of anyone else; no man is an island. It is because, if they do not know the person or know of the person, there is no knowledge from which sympathy and understanding can spring.
In many respects, the Howards’ workplace is the whole of Australia. Everyone at least knows of them.
The Howards may like to think that Mrs Howard’s illness is a matter for their family and immediate acquaintances. In some respects, that is a pre-television view of the world. Television has stripped away a lot of social capital in Australian society because people spend so much time in front of it that they have less time for community organisations and activities. On the other hand, it has replaced it with a new social capital (albeit an inferior one) of shared national experience, ranging from sport to politics and trivial discussion of plotlines of sit-coms. At least they are shared and discussed, even if not acted upon. To some extent Mrs Howard and her illness is part of this social capital. People’s gossip and speculation is evidence of that. It shows concern. But it would show far greater concern and in addition sympathy and understanding if they knew more detail of what they were being concerned about.
(Incidentally, the social capital of television perhaps becomes more important in a society where other forms of social capital are being eroded. We should resist its further splintering with hundreds of pay television channels and the destruction of a national broadcaster, lest we have no shared experiences to talk about. The cause of reducing television watching and increasing community activity is probably already lost, alas.)
The other difficulty about confining the details to close family and friends is that inevitably the details will come out. They always do; people always talk, especially about other people. And professional confidence cannot always be relied upon. It would be far better for the Howards to make their own announcement than go through the pain and folly of reactively neither confirming nor denying.
This is not a question of “”if only the grubby media would leave things alone all would be well”. Rather it is a natural human curiosity and often the media follow rather than lead it, as evidenced by the numerous conversations that have gone on around Australia in the absence of any speculation of a specific nature in the media.
There is a further reason for the Howards to give more precise information. These days virtually every affliction bar the common cold has a support group of one sort or another. These groups do an enormous amount of good in Australia, especially for the people they support. They can do so because of the knowledge (medical, practical and emotional) they have of a large number of people who are coping with the affliction … knowledge that family and friends (important as they are) cannot have.
In this circumstance, if appropriate, the Howards would benefit and so would the support group and others sharing whatever experience Mrs Howard is having.
There are good precedents with other family members of public office holders in Australia and the US.
I have no idea what illness Mrs Howard was treated for, but I think she and her family could only benefit by sharing it.