Ah, the fun of watching a terrified media establishment in Ireland working itself up into a panic at the prospect of Martin McGuinness being elected to Áras an Uachtaráin by the Irish people (the ignorant, lazy and mentally unstable Irish people, according to John Waters – who probably shouldn’t have a vote in the first place, hmmm, John?).
As the defenders of the Golden Circle have grown increasingly hoarse so too have their stories grown increasingly desperate. The latest, from the Herald, is a work of such tortured logic that it almost defies belief.
“MARY McAleese’s bridges with the Orange Order will be burnt if Martin McGuinness makes it to the Aras, a liberal Orangeman has warned.”
Okay, when you’ve stopped sniggering at the use of the phrase “liberal Orangemen” read on.
“John Laird said all the good work the outgoing President had done in building links with the Orange Order and other Protestant institutions in the north would be in jeopardy under a McGuinness presidency.
“He has never apologised for the past crimes of the IRA, he has not sought atonement for the murder of Orangemen during the Troubles,” Mr Laird said.
“In the past I had some trouble with Mary McAleese especially when she appeared to compare Protestants to Nazis and Catholics as Jews in Hitler’s Germany. That caused a great deal of hurt in our community. But to be fair President McAleese reached out to the Orange tradition, she invited our bretheren to Aras an Uachtarain, she visited an Orange hall near the border. There is no doubt that she tried to understand and respect our culture.”
Asked about the possibility of Martin McGuinness as president, Mr Laird said: “Those bridges Mary McAleese sought to build will be burnt. Even someone who holds liberal views within the Orange Order like myself could not bring myself in taking up any visit by a President McGuinness.”
So… According to the media establishment here, the pampered sycophants and buffoons of the Golden Circle elites, Martin McGuinness is not suitable for the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann because he is not from Ireland (i.e. the Republic), he is a foreigner, a nationalist, a member of Sinn Féin, a former Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, a sectarian bigot, an unwanted reminder of the past, and generally just everything the Establishment hates and rejects.
On the other hand, members of the British separatist minority in Ireland, British Unionists, who through violence and the threat of violence have thwarted the democratic wishes of the vast majority of people living on the island of Ireland for the last century are welcome in the Áras? Even members of an avowedly sectarian and racist organisation, an anti-Irish organisation, like the Orange Order? Seriously?
Sometimes reading an Irish newspaper is like reading some fantastical work of magic realism where things are not quite as they should be. An Ireland that you know, that you are familiar with, but somehow different. Somehow wrong.
Which really does make one ask: where do the men and women of the Irish journalistic classes come from? And how on earth did they arrive at the attitudes they have? Is it simply a case of our news media being made up of the same folk who control our political classes: the same families, the same schools, the same clubs – the same Golden Circle?
Democracy in the Saorstát? Maybe, for some: but most of us live in a Daorstát. Under-payed, over-taxed, struggling to survive, and dictated to by those who have reduced our nation to its sorry condition through their sheer bloody greed and venality.
So how will you vote? For the Golden Circle? Or against the Golden Circle? The choice is yours.
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AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Ah, the fun of watching a terrified media establishment in Ireland working itself up into a panic at the prospect of Martin McGuinness being elected to Áras an Uachtaráin by the Irish people (the ignorant, lazy and mentally unstable Irish people, according to John Waters – who probably shouldn’t have a vote in the first place, hmmm, John?).
As the defenders of the Golden Circle have grown increasingly hoarse so too have their stories grown increasingly desperate. The latest, from the Herald, is a work of such tortured logic that it almost defies belief.
Okay, when you’ve stopped sniggering at the use of the phrase “liberal Orangemen” read on.
So… According to the media establishment here, the pampered sycophants and buffoons of the Golden Circle elites, Martin McGuinness is not suitable for the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann because he is not from Ireland (i.e. the Republic), he is a foreigner, a nationalist, a member of Sinn Féin, a former Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, a sectarian bigot, an unwanted reminder of the past, and generally just everything the Establishment hates and rejects.
On the other hand, members of the British separatist minority in Ireland, British Unionists, who through violence and the threat of violence have thwarted the democratic wishes of the vast majority of people living on the island of Ireland for the last century are welcome in the Áras? Even members of an avowedly sectarian and racist organisation, an anti-Irish organisation, like the Orange Order? Seriously?
Sometimes reading an Irish newspaper is like reading some fantastical work of magic realism where things are not quite as they should be. An Ireland that you know, that you are familiar with, but somehow different. Somehow wrong.
Which really does make one ask: where do the men and women of the Irish journalistic classes come from? And how on earth did they arrive at the attitudes they have? Is it simply a case of our news media being made up of the same folk who control our political classes: the same families, the same schools, the same clubs – the same Golden Circle?
Democracy in the Saorstát? Maybe, for some: but most of us live in a Daorstát. Under-payed, over-taxed, struggling to survive, and dictated to by those who have reduced our nation to its sorry condition through their sheer bloody greed and venality.
So how will you vote? For the Golden Circle? Or against the Golden Circle? The choice is yours.
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