I have no idea what it would be like to be locked up in an Indonesian jail for 10 years.
Look, I’ve heard it’s not very nice. I imagine there are rats. And drugs. And dirt. And some terrifying people. And no Netflix whatsoever.
House arrest in tropical Bali? That sounds better. But throw in paparazzi crouched behind every palm tree and braided Aussie tourists asking for selfies every two minutes? The cocktails would have to be amazing.
I have no clue how it would feel to have your family members sell stories to the tabloids about you. Or what it’s like to appear on every magazine cover without ever having done a photoshoot.
And I’m downright delighted that I can’t begin to imagine how it feels to be standing in a customs hall in a foreign land and have a uniformed man unzip my boogie board bag to find a 4.2kg bag of marijuana sitting on top of my shark biscuit. Even if I put there myself.
These experiences are all terrifying and ridiculous.
What about if I had got myself into all of those situations, by making a deeply stupid decision when I was young? Well, I can't know how that feels either. Mortifying, I imagine.
These are the things we want Schapelle Corby to tell us.
We want her to tell us because it's interesting. Because what she has just lived through for 12 years is something that hopefully none of us will ever experience.
We want her to tell us as fuel for a cautionary tale.
We want her to tell us because, thanks to her, we all went through a phase of glad-wrapping our suitcases.
We want her to tell us because we're nosey.
And I'm absolutely fine with that.
Today there's been a lot of finger-wagging about how interested we should or shouldn't be in Schapelle Corby, the 39-year-old Queenslander who was arrested for trying to import marijuana into Bali back in 2004.
Karl Stefanovic has been at it, delivering a monologue this morning about how the media made "gooses" of themselves yesterday, and that there are many more important things going on in the world right now (if, as rumoured, Today's stablemate 60 Minutes turns out to be the show that paid for Corby's business class flights back to Australia, things could get awkward over in the Channel Nine Green Room).
There have been pleas from "serious" news outlets not to click on stories about Corby, not to reward the salacious coverage with your attention.
And yet we click. And we watch. And we read.
Top Comments
speak for yourself, I don't find it that interesting. I'm Sooo sick of hearing about it, I change the channel every time i see this stuff on the news. surely we can move on soon. Hopefully she tries to just get on with her life and we never have to hear about her again.
There's a difference between caring about Corby's story and wanting to watch the ridiculous round-the-clock coverage that we've been subjected to. When people say they don't care, I assume many of them mean the latter. I'm not particularly interested in the former either but I can see why someone else might be and wouldn't object to coverage of that.