This weeks LawSoc debate returned to the more comedic side of things, with the house considering the motions ‘This house would rather be witty than pretty’. The speakers truly embraced the laughable nature of the motion, taking regular pot shots at one another (and the audience) and earning themselves more than a few laughs.
Cliodhna McHugh the L&H correspondence secretary who was on loan to LawSoc for the night was first up for the proposition and launched straight into a bout of self deprecating humor saying she first wanted to speak for opposition ‘but it would be tough to stand here and defend being pretty when I’m not’. She was ensured by LawSoc correspondence secretary and members of the audience that she was in fact very pretty. She defended side proposition by claiming that the people we truly remember and admire throughout history are the witty ones, point to such characters as Gandhi and Winston Churchill. She also pointed to our own dear President ‘Miggeldy Higgins’, whom she said no one was voting for because he was the best looking candidate. McHugh also attacked the fact that societies obsession with whether you are pretty or not has had a negative effect of the mental health of young woman who are made to feel as if they need to be pretty. Continuing along her attack she said the word pretty had in fact been weaponised by some parties, with men on tinder regularly insulting woman by saying ‘you aren’t pretty anyway’. Finishing up McHugh said that at the end of the day wit was just better because ‘prettiness won’t fix your horrific personality will it?
Responding to McHugh’s blistering attack on the pretty folk of the word was Hannah Egan one of LawSocs Moot organisers, who admitted outright that she was unsure if her speech would in fact be funny. She quickly dissuaded the audience of this notion by saying ‘she wasn’t here to be funny, she was here to be good looking’. She would argue that her side would be arguing being prettier is better as you can just do more in life. Egan argued that that it wasn’t always appropriate to be funny (such as in a job interview), but being pretty was never a disadvantage. Continuing down this line of thought Egan spoke of how pretty people could just get away with more, either as children who were just too cute to actually give out to, or adults who could just play dumb. This was as opposed to witty people who were typically the trouble makers in any given situation. Wrapping up her speech she finally spoke of the benefits of being pretty is all situations, and the witty side just needed to accept that.
Oisin Magfhogartaigh was up next for the proposition and regretfully informed the audience that he had missed the memo about this being a joke debate. He did however claim he could creditably take either side of this debate, a statement greeted by a marked silence from the audience. Magfhogartaigh went on to speak as to the stagnant nature of beauty, using the example of a beautiful statue, you can keep staring at it, but it doesn’t change and becomes boring. He would go on to say that relationship based on beauty also go this way and stagnate quickly. Defending the value of witness he said that by its nature it was dynamic, meaning that any relationship based on it would of course be dynamic. Additionally he said repeated what Cliodhna McHugh said about how we only remember the witty people in history. Finally he asked the audience ‘would you rather be Dara O’Brien or Melania Trump?’
Emman Idama was the oppositions second speaker and decided he would rephrase the entire motion by asking ‘would you rather be witty, or happy?’ stating that is what the motion was really asking. Returning to the cute baby analogy he said that while everyone love a cute baby, we all hated witty ones as the were little devils. Continuing to explain why all people prefer to be pretty, Idama pointed out that all night clubs were dark for a reason, to give the illusion that everyone in there was better looking. He said that at the end of the day what we were all looking for was someone who was good looking, not some creepy with dodgy jokes.
Cian Higgins was the final speaker for proposition and also on loan from the L&H for the night. Kicking off his speech he also engaged in a bout of self deprecating human saying ‘sex is a lot like laughs, I’m not getting any tonight’, to a round of thunderous laughter. Seemingly forgetting he was meant to be supporting the witty of the world he actually agree with opposition speaker Hannah Egan saying that being pretty does make life easier. He would however go on to say that being pretty and witty both sucked, just the ‘witty was less bad’. Going on Higgins said that beauty was only really good for romance, wit can find a use just about anywhere.
Finish up for opposition and the debate as a whole was Madeleine Long who struck out at Higgins first saying it was ‘unfair to make fun of of Cian cause you shouldn’t make fun of the elderly’. Long spoke of how there were a number of allegedly ‘successful’ people throughout history such as Hitler and Houdini who were neither witty or pretty, but clearly they would’ve gotten a lot further if they were pretty. Long also compared the level of work that needs to go into being witty and being pretty. She spoke of the amount of work she had to put into writing her speech (hours) versus the amount of time she put into looking good (minutes). Long also worked along the idea of how pretty people just got away with more. Finally she came ended her speech by responding to Higgins somewhat desperate statement that ‘wit is all we (proposition) had’ by saying ‘just because it is all you have doesn’t mean that it is worth much’.
The final straw poll from the debate saw the house falling on the side of the witty. Next week’s debate will consider if the house would legalise euthanasia.
By Aaron Bowman – CoEditor
