You know that vignette in the opening titles of The Simpsons where Bart is writing out lines as punishment on a blackboard? It’s been going through my mind all week as a memo to myself: You shall not write about the stupid portal. You shall not write about the stupid portal.
And then the onlyfans girl got her boobs out, and my resilience wilted.
In some ways, I confess, I think the “aren’t we only making a holy show of ourselves” stuff is badly overplayed. The Irish psyche always seems to me to contain two entirely contradictory imperatives: On the one hand, we have a national imperative to be gas craic altogether. On the other, an all-encompassing national terror of what the neighbours might think. This latter instinct is undoubtedly magnified when the question becomes “what might the New Yorkers think”, given that New York for decades has been the by-word for international sophistication in Ireland.
And we’ve over-reacted as a result: The problem with the Portal was always going to be the “gas craic” merchants rushing to be the first to do something “gas”. If we’d just given it a few weeks, rather than rushing to shut the portal down, getting your baps out for the New Yorkers (or indeed the Dubliners) was going to move swiftly from being “legendary” to being plain old “yeah somebody already did that mate, it’s just boring now”. The problem is that by over-reacting, we’ve only encouraged more such behaviour. The correct reaction was an eye-roll by the authorities, and to let things settle down. But we’re so concerned about regulating public behaviour that common sense has gone out the window, I fear.
Press release of the week award: Seamas Hanratty, a local election candidate for Castleblayney-Carrickmacross in County Monaghan, reckons that there should be an IQ test for people seeking election. Says the candidate himself:
I believe that political candidates should take some type of IQ test to demonstrate that they possess at least some basic levels of intelligence which extend beyond mere cute hoorism and trying to buy votes. I’m advocating Mensa level stuff. Basic levels of intelligence and common sense that you might find with your average person on the street or in your local bar.
A prerequisite should be that political candidates should be able to dissect the political machine. Excavate into the engine. Understand the mechanics, the nuts, the bolts, the wiring rather than elect someone simply because they’re the best at jumping up and down beside the political machine and smiling like some kind of circus monkey. Or hiring them simply because you know them on a personal basis. You wouldn’t hire your friend to wire your house, who hasn’t a clue about electronics, simply because he needs a few quid. Inevitably, the house would go up in smoke.
This is where politics has gone wrong. Style over substance. Candidates should be hired on merit and not due to cronyism.
I’m afraid, Seamas, that the logic of your (presumably jocular) press release is unfinished: If there were to be IQ tests for candidates and politicians, why shouldn’t the same apply to voters? Confine the vote to people who can solve a Rubik’s cube in six seconds I say: That would give us an electorate of Virgin Media’s Gav Reilly (he’s a whizz with a Rubik’s cube) and about six others.
Evidently, such a move targeted at either voters or politicians would be anti-democratic. Besides, I’m not sure you’d find it all that easy to find 180-odd intelligent people who wanted the hassle of being a politician, these days.
Still, props to Seamas for the entertaining and thought provoking press release, even if it is a joke. I think.
I might write more about this next week, but prepare for fireworks over RTE’s EU election debate series. The broadcaster has announced the criteria it will use to include people in the television debates it will host for each constituency, and those criteria heavily favour established political parties and sitting MEPs. On my reading of the document, both Independent Ireland candidates heavily favoured to be in contention for a seat – Niall Boylan in Dublin and Ciaran Mullooly in North West – will be excluded from the main debates, while relative no-hopers like Brid Smith of people before profit will be included. Of course, most of the candidates running on the immigration issue haven’t a hope of getting in. There’s good news for two of them though – Peadar Toibin and Michael McNamara, as sitting TDs, make the grade. Peter Casey, who came fifth in a four-seater last time out, probably doesn’t. Odd choices.
Have you heard of the “Bear test”? It’s the latest front in the culture war: Eight women in America were stopped on the street at random and asked whether they would rather, alone in a dark forest, encounter a bear or a man. Seven of them said “bear”, which has sparked a round of commentary as tiresome as it is predictable.
On the one hand, the answers clearly reflect modern attitudes towards the battle of the sexes: Many women are conscious of the sexual and physical threat posed by men, too many men are unconscious of it or offended by it. But on another level, the answers just reflect the culture of our era: Lots of women think “bear” is the answer expected of them by their peer group, thus that is the answer that they gave.
Let’s flip the script: What do we think the answer would have been if the question had been “would you rather meet a bear, or a black man?” How many women would have felt comfortable saying “bear” then? What would the reaction have been to those women who said “bear” in that circumstance? How many of them would still have jobs?
And of course, statistically, there are no greater or lesser dangers from meeting a man of any race, if skin colour is all you know about that man. The point is simply that the “bear” test isn’t really what it pretends to be at all: You’re not addressing your true fears, but instead making clear that you understand who you’re supposed to be afraid of.
Speaking of psychology, I was intrigued by Tanya Sweeney’s reaction to the Rory McIlroy divorce in the Irish Independent: Divorcing after less than a decade doesn’t mean it was a failed marriage, says Sweeney – just that the unhappy couple might have thought it better to quit amicably than to fight on. This, I’d argue, is overthinking it somewhat: If you get married to someone and then find after seven years that the marriage is no longer tolerable or desirable, the marriage has de facto failed. No disrespect to Tanya, whose article is well-constructed, but it bugged the hell out of me because it speaks to a modern fad I cannot abide: The re-casting of everything in life as an “experience” from which we must take some deeper meaning. It has the smack of healing crystals and scented candles therapy sessions in an eight-hundred dollar an hour shrink’s office in California.
Some things are just flat failures: Business endeavours, political movements, marriages, Manchester United managers. The only thing you learn from mistakes is not to make them again. Re-casting them as a positive is foolish, because you’re only encouraging others to make them.
Finally for this week, I want to mention the Aurora Borealis. You know what nobody tells you about the Northern Lights? That they’re overblown – that’s what.
I happened to be taking the dog out for a wee at about 11pm last Friday night when I noticed that it was bright. Looking up, I could see streaks of greyish-white light across the sky. It looked weird enough that I took out my phone to photograph it and show it to Orla – and it was only then, through the camera, that I realised what I was seeing.
My aforementioned wife is a keen amateur photographer, and she tells me that this is normal. Something something about the spectrum of light and the human eye. In any case, it seems all those fancy-dan photos the Nordics have been using to lure us into the Arctic circle to see the Aurora have been tricks of a camera.
Anyway, I’ll go now, before I start sounding like Abe Simpson shaking his fist at the sky. Thanks as ever for reading, and I’ll see you all Monday.