Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Why bother being famous in Ireland?

I often don't see the appeal of fame, especially being Irish.  We Irish are notorious for being a nation of begrudges, in fact we even begrudge ourselves for our only superlative of being the most begrudging nation.  But perhaps our cynicism, when it comes to famous people, is well founded.  When you observe the great Irish institutions such as government, RTE and the GAA, what can be seen is a wall-to-wall cesspit of talentless narcissistic windbags.

However not all are that bad, sometimes a simpleton makes it big in the Irish celeb culture, one such cretin is Dáithí Ó Sé, I remember Ó Sé being on TV a few years ago whining that the Irish language isn't modern enough, and there are no Irish words for sex toys.  At one point he suggests a word for dildo; bod bréagach (lit. false penis).  Despite his best intentions, what our hapless cretin failed to realise was that there is already a word in the Irish language for dildo which we are happy with, that word is Dáithí Ó Sé.
We are however fortunate this summer, Ryan Turbridy got himself a summer job with the BBC, hopefully the Brits will fall in love with him before they realise the reason why we were so disillusioned with him as soon as he made the move to TV.

But our TV often takes bizzare format with even more crap prizes for the "lucky winner".  Once upon a summer, Marty Whelan presented a lottery gameshow called "Come fly with Marty", where the jackpot was a holiday...... with the presenter and his wife.  Sometimes I don't know what these producers are smoking to think such pulp would be a worthwhile distraction from the mundanity of everyday life of a licence payer.  Whelan was later replaced by a serial granny molester called Derek Mooney, though they still do occasionally exchange slots as I'm led to believe.

We Irish are often percieved to being good craic and having the gift of the gab, but it's evident with the state of our economy, currently and historically, our best and brightest have left these shores to find greener pastures.

I could go on all day about more, the likes of Amanda Brunker, Jedward, Fair City, Fade Street  but I'd rather have a nice cup of tea than switch on the tele and drink the Kool-Aid.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Norris withdraws from the Áras

I was quite disappointed to learn that David Norris has quit the Irish presidential race, to be honest he was leagues ahead to the competition.  Given his personal life, there are those who would, and have done, strongly oppose his campaign purely based on what he gets up to in the privacy of his own home/car/park-bench with another consenting adult
The anti-Norris campaign page can be read here.

It was obvious from the outset that there would be fascists out there out to character-assassinate Norris, and are claiming victory as I write this. Although it must be said, this scandal is only significant of a certain few people.

Though the pederasty of a former partner might dent a high-profile political campaign, Norris got involved by writing to the Israeli authorities begging leniency, which in my view was stupid anyway.  Ignoring the nature of the crime, Norris undermined the Irish diplomatic corps, on his own accord interfered with criminal proceedings in another sovereign territory.  There is no code of practice or indeed legislation preventing elected representatives from using their status overseas, something I do think should be the sole job of the department of foreign affairs.
 
But Norris is not the only Gay presidential candidate to have done such a thing, in 2004 Mitchell called Florida governor, Jeb Bush (yes, Jeb is Dubya's baby brother) pleading against the death sentence of Paul Hill.  The "Pro-Life" campaigner, Hill, shot and killed a man, purely because the victim was a doctor who performed abortions.  Human Rights campaigners oppose the death penalty the world over, but when persons of some status get involved they seem to support the individual more than they oppose the death penalty.

US presidential elections almost always get nasty, which makes them way more entertaining, and exposes the candidates for what they are; petty little children who shouldn't even be let use a scissors unsupervised, let along lead the free world.