The Island of Sheep and Suckers

What’s more depressing about the #IrelandInspires video that’s so popular currently on You Tube? The very fact of its being there, or the fact that people seem to be taken in by the thing?



Hasn’t anybody read the titles on the film? Does anybody think about what those titles are saying, or what a strange way this is for Bord Fáilte – of all state bodies – to communicate? Or, in an age of six-second attention spans, is this the 21st Century’s iteration of Juvenal’s bread and circuses – the distractions that keep the masses entertained while the Government does what it damn well pleases?

The viewer who has learned the price of naivety the hard way starts getting suspicious when he or she notices that #IrelandInspires has miscounted the Irish Oscar winners who were born here (as opposed to being Irish), and the number of Irish Nobel laureates (ten, not nine, by my count).

OK – we Irish aren’t known for being smart, are we? How would we be able to count anything other than potatoes? But all bets are off when #IrelandInspires gets to its piece about Italia ’90.

The summer of the 1990 World Cup was definitely a turning point in the nation’s history. But that watery line about Bonner suggests that the people who made the #IrelandInspires video don’t truly understand the importance of that World Cup, and that’s unforgivable in a film that is meant to celebrate Irishness.

Con Houlihan, God have mercy on him, said that he was disappointed to have missed Italia ’90, having been in Italy at the time. That’s the kernel of what happened during the 1990 World Cup.

The 1990 World Cup is significant because, for the first time, it gave Irish people a sense that we had just as much right to the world stage, to the best things in life, as anyone else. That there was to be no more doffing of caps or tugging of forelocks before our betters. Without Italia ’90, could there have been Roy Keane? Without Roy Keane, could there have been Brian O’Driscoll? That’s the significance of Italia ’90. Italia ’90 made the Irish believe in themselves.

What film clip should #IrelandInspires have used instead of Bonner? John Healy, a big, fat, bald man, the greatest journalist of his generation, weeping with pride after Ireland won that game against Romania. You’ve seen it on Reeling in the Years, and you can now see it every week on TV – it’s part of the Second Captains opening sequence.

The Second Captains know Healy weeping sums up Italia ‘90. Why don't these lemons?

And why is #IrelandInspires so taken with the dismal science of economics? When Leonidas and his three hundred guarded the Pass of Thermopylae against Xerses and the Persians, did he inspire his men by quoting Sparta’s year-on-year GDP? When Wolfe took Quebec, did he inspire his men by telling them that house prices in Montreal had show year-on-year increases for six consecutive quarters, when adjusted for inflation? No, he did not. Wolfe recited Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard instead, and said he’d sooner have written that poem than win the coming battle. Wolfe was a man.

There is no poetry present in #IrelandInspires, but economic detail is packed into every minute. “Ireland’s the first Eurozone country to successfully exit an economic assistance program,” trumpets #IrelandInspires. Which means – what, exactly?

That Ireland is the first of the Fort Knox bullion robbers to get time off for good behaviour? That Ireland is the first husband on the street to stop beating his wife? That Ireland is the first cook to see the advantage in removing the egg from the boiling water with a spoon, rather than his fingers?

Besides. What is all this economic material doing in a Bord Fáilte video? 1,033 companies choose Ireland as their European base? Ireland has the most adaptable – whatever that means – workforce in the world? What’s any of that got to do with going on your holidays? Shouldn’t that be in an IDA video? When you buy your Rough Guides or Lonely Planets, do you see much mention of the adaptability of the workforce in Corfu, or the quality of scientific research in Marbella?

And why does Haiti get a mention, of all places? It’s four thousand miles away. Are there long and historic ties between Ireland and Haiti? Of all the disadvantaged countries in all the world, why choose Haiti?

#IrelandInspires tells us “our culture and music have reached the world,” while showing performers performing the ancient and traditional Irish art of fire-eating. #IrelandInspires was published during Seachtain na Gaeilge. Any mention of the first language over the three minutes? God between us and small farms.

Seventy-one years ago today, in his St Patrick’s Day address to the nation, Taoiseach Eamon De Valera said “the Ireland that we dreamed of  … [was of] a people who … devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit.”

#IrelandInspires isn’t buying any of De Valera’s old blather, whoever De Valera was. Getting time off for good behaviour when we’re caught with our hands in the cookie jar is inspirational now. Not having any understanding of the tide of history, not just long-term history, but the history of the current generation, is inspirational now. And most of all, the Ireland that we dream of has an eager willingness to lie down with every single multinational that pulls into the quay, without ever stopping to wonder what will happen when the multinationals move on to the next service provider.

At the last election we were told that the crisis would damn a generation. Now, three years on, we’re all on the pig's back? Who’s fooling whom this St Patrick’s Day, Ireland? Who are the eejits here?

Those St Patrick's Day Government Drinking Arrangements in Full

A source close to the Government has reacted with shock, horror, outrage and disgust at the suggestion that it was good times all around for St Patrick’s Day as the cabinet jetted all around the world to drink Irish porter on foreign soil. The junkets seem especially excessive in the light of the program of austerity currently being implemented by the Government. Is there not a certain irony in the cabinet fiddling while Ireland burns?

The very suggestion was hotly denied by the source close to Government, who responded to a series of questions from the assembled media. Asked if the nation should buy shares in the Molson Brewing Company on the basis that the Minister for Keeping the Best Foot Forward was going to lorry back a small sea of Bass during his St Patrick’s Day trip to London, the source hotly retorted that the very suggestion was a sentiment held only by corner-boys and anti-national interests.

The Minister for Keeping the Best Foot Forward was going to London by ferry to Holyhead and then by bus to the great city. Once arriving in London he was going to sign on straight-away, as every penny counts when you’re working for Ireland.

If, from time to time during the execution of his offices, the Minister’s hosts thought to offer him a libation, it would be just as rude for him to refuse as it would have been for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II to ask President McAleese why she didn’t put down more spuds for that dinner in Dublin Castle. This was something the Minister himself wondered at the time, and often meant to bring it up with the former President before her own recent run for the Papacy, the source pointedly added.

The source condemned as a “dirty lie” propagated by “bowsies and communists” a rumour, persistent in Dublin media circles for a number of days, that the Minister for Belt-Tightening has arranged to have his tab temporary transferred from Kehoe’s of South Anne Street to O’Donoghue’s of 156 W 44^th Street, New York City, for the duration of his visit to New York.

The source told the assembled media that the Minister for Belt-Tightening is a gentleman and a patriot, a man who has done more for his country than a lot of people the source could mention, and is now sacrificing himself once more on the mean streets of Gotham that Ireland might take her place among the nations of the Earth.

The source didn’t expect the “gentlemen of the press” to know it, as if any of them were to even think about going onto American soil they’d be wearing the orange jammies beyond in Guantanemo before you could say Jack Robinson, being a notorious pack of ne’er-do-wells and good-for-nothings, but the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade starts at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 44^th Street, a five minute stroll from O’Donoghue’s.

If the Minister were to entertain prominent businessmen and members of the Irish-American community, each more eager than the last to invest in the dear little island of green, wasn’t a house near the start of the parade only ideal? No, he didn’t know how Kehoe’s got dragged into it. No, he did not know who ran a tab in there. The source expected that, if anyone had a tab in Kehoe’s, it would be the gentlemen of the press but then, what sensible landlord would ever trust the likes of them to pay it?

The media quizzed the source close to the Government on plans for a trip to Doha. The source smiled widely and spread his hands, like the pope at the balcony of St Peter’s. “Lads,” he said, “what can I tell you about Doha? We’ll be staying the hell away. The flesh is thrilling but the spirits are weak.”

The thaw quickly melted at the bon mot. He was always a gas ticket, the journalists nodded knowingly at each other. The source glanced at his watch, and looked up at the media. “Palace?” he asked. “Palace!” they all chorused happily, and made their way to Fleet Street, arm-in-arm, contented and happy.

Finglas in Flames, Nation in Denial

The St Patrick’s Night festivities in Finglas, where gangs of feral youths saw fit to commemorate the arrival of Christianity to this island by burning out cars and rioting con brio, are covered in all this morning’s newspapers. An Spailpín couldn’t help but smile to himself when RTÉ’s Valerie Cox, presenting It Says in the Papers on Morning Ireland, reported that The Sun's editorial is thundering this morning that the good citizens of Finglas, rightly disgusted by this behaviour, are considering moving somewhere else.

Ms Cox didn’t have space to say where these good citizens are expected to move to, but for anybody who doesn’t take The Sun of a morning, like An Spailpín, I believe that Shangri-La is quite nice this time of year. Tír na nÓg has been popular for some time. For those thinking of a rural idyll, Percy French had great faith in many places on this green isle, such as Drumcolliher, Ballyjamesduff and those Mountains of Mourne that sweep down to the sea. Or, for those sick of rain, the Beach Boys had great faith in a spot called Kokomo back in the eighties, which is a bar somewhere in the Florida Keys I believe. Very specific bucks, those Beach Boys.

One of the foundation myths of the Irish property boom is that one can pogo from area code to area code, until eventually reaching the prefect peace of a Georgian domicile in leafy Dublin 4. Well, if any of those citizens of Finglas are thinking of making the move from Dublin 11 to Dublin 4 – and it certainly seems like a good idea right now – they’ll have to find someone to buy the current house first. Someone that doesn’t read the papers, or listen to the news, and who thinks that their Hyundai Tuscon will be exempt from the periodic torching that is part of the local charm.

The Examiner’s editorial is on the button this morning. The government has been talking about “zero tolerance” for eleven years. The ASBO was introduced last year, but not one has been issued. And here’s the kernel of the matter: “This is not just antisocial behaviour, it is serious criminal behaviour and should be regarded as such.”

And it is clearly not regarded as such. The Irish Times reports that Fine Gael, with the flair for practical politics that has made the party such a viable alternative Government, has called for the introduction of “special night courts” to deal with the problem.

Special night courts. So you haul a guy with twenty prior convictions up before the Beak and now he has twenty-one convictions. Does anybody really think that’s going to make a difference?

The tireless campaigner Father Peter McVerry is quoted in that same report in the Irish Times as saying that “nobody seems to have any answers to try and deal with this particular problem.”

An Spailpín Fánach has two suggestions.

The first suggestion is that if someone is indulging in criminal acts, he or she is imprisoned, and kept there until they stop. This is seems simple enough, but with fellas running around with multiple criminal convictions, putting criminals in prison and keeping them there is something we as a society don't seem to quite understand.

On the broader social issue, Carl O’Brien is correct in today’s Irish Times in saying that sustained funding and early intervention can alleviate the problem. But An Spailpín is not sure that we as a people fully realise what early intervention means. If you’re dealing with parents who think it’s ok to have ten-year-olds drunk and rioting then a finger-wagging from a social worker or a civvy-wearing padre isn’t going to do it. Besides, at ten it’s too late; those young fellas' only hope is to join the British Army, and hope that the Queen can do for them what their own State has failed, and give them some purpose in life. The British Army has been doing it for their forebears for hundreds of years, after all.

And for the younger children, for whom there is still hope, if you are going to intervene that means that you have to take children off their parents, who are clearly a bad influence of them. You have to write off one generation in order to save the next. This means you have to build many orphanages, and staff them with trained professionals. And if you’re going to do all that, you have to write big, fat cheques and raise taxes in order to pay those professionals. You may say foster homes are better than orphanages; fair enough. The problem is that the cheque for the orphanages will be big enough; there’s no way there’s enough money to pay for better care. There just isn’t. This is the price we pay for long-fingering the problem for so long. Shame on us all.

Someone in the Irish political landscape will want to be come down with a very virulent case of vision before any of this happens, of course. An Spailpín shan’t be holding his breath.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin, hooliganism, anti-social behaviour, crime, Finglas, St Patrick's Day

Irish Movies on St Patrick's Day

An Spailpín notes with interest that RTÉ, in their wisdom, have decided to show Into the West as their St Patrick’s Day feature. Ellen Barkin makes for a rather glamorous travelling lady, although Gabriel Byrne is mistaken if he thinks the coveted title of King of the Travellers is won as easily as rubbing one’s face with ashes. The face of the regent generally suffers a greater buffeting for that signal honour.

During An Spailpín’s urchinhood, of course, the Irish movie was de riguer on TV for the National Holiday. It seems strange now to be without them, not least as Irish movies are now like midges on the mountain, whereas back in the 1970s and 80s they were much rarer creatures. So rare, in fact, that they were Irish only in nominal theme, being made in either England or the US with a very stage-Irish sensibility. In the 1960s Disney made a movie called The Fighting Prince of Donegal, a biopic of Red Hugh O’Donnell, “a reckless young rebel who rocks an empire.” Aodh Rua himself was played by Peter McEnery, a matinee idol of the day whose hair was dyed sufficiently red to make a carrot look like a parsnip if placed next to his blazing barnet.

The Flight of the Doves was made in 1971, and was a staple of St Patrick’s Day for many years. Or so it seems in retrospect; don’t forget, RTÉ has been committed to recycling long before anyone knew what a greenhouse gas was. The Flight of the Doves was one of those stories that are especially terrifying for children, as it featured children who had to run away from a guardian who was all set to do them in. The fact that the malevolent guardian was played by Ron Moody, Fagin in Oliver!, made it all the more worrying to the infant Spailpín. Not as worrying, however, as the song sung by Rabbi Noel Purcell in the movie, called “You Don’t Have to be Irish to be Irish.” Even at six years old, your correspondent was a hopeless pedant.

One magical St Patrick’s Day in the 1980s RTÉ decided to treat the nation to a whole Barry Fitzgerald season. They gave us Going My Way, of course, and The Quiet Man (still An Spailpín’s favourite Irish movie ever), and even a edgy noir-ish policer called The Naked City. The naked city in question is New York, not technically in the jurisdiction of course, but once it had Barry Fitz in it that was good enough for us.

But of that Barry Fitzgerland season, the picture that’s stuck most firmly in An Spailpín’s mind is a movie that I have not seen or heard of since, and that an hour’s furious googling is only generating some very sparse results indeed. It’s a movie called, variously, Happy Ever After, Tonight’s the Night or O’Leary’s Night, and it’s a black sort of farce. It’s about a village not one hundred miles away from the one in the Quiet Man where the local squire dies and his only living relation, a distant cousin, arrives over from England to take over the place. The thing is that while General O’Leary is down with the locals, drinking the hard drop and not being too bothered about the rent, the young lad is an utter swine and starts evicting people and going Lord-of-the-Manor straight away. The locals decide there’s nothing else to be done except to bump him off, and complications ensure.

One of the reasons the movie has stayed with me so long is because it stars one of my favourite actors, the great David Niven, as the squireen, Jasper O’Leary. Niven makes no mention of the movie that I can recall in either of his volumes of auto-biography, so it’s fair to presume that he hated it. And the reason why, perhaps, is because Niven is cast against type as a cad. To An Spailpín’s mind though, this is what makes the picture so fascinating, like Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West. I wonder if it really was good, or is it just memory playing tricks, as memory does?

It’s fashionable now of course to sneer at The Quiet Man and the Paddy-whackery school. Well, if sitting down this evening to a TV version of Eugene O’Brien’s play Eden (a “trudge through domestic purgatory [addressing] such discomfiting issues as impotence and pervasive alcoholism,” according to the Village Voice. How jolly) is your cup of tea then go for it, but An Spailpín will pass this time, thanks. I’m off to the end of the rainbow where the crocks of gold are stashed by the fairy peoples, where you must be careful of red-haired women, where your mind is addled by strong mountain poitín, and where even the hardest of men, even Jamesh Bond himshelf, can’t help but break into song, in light lyric tenor. Happy St Patrick’s Day, from 007 and An Spailpín Fánach.







Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, movies, St Patrick's Day