Up front and personal

GARRET FITZGERALD recently claimed that Irish people would become the “pariahs of the EU” should we vote ‘No’ to Lisbon; Bertie Ahern claimed a ‘No’ vote would be a disaster for Ireland; Green Party Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan drew images of the lights going out all over Europe should we vote ‘No’ because we are “utterly dependent” on EU states for energy sources and that neither climate change nor energy security was likely should we vote the wrong way.
These and other apocalyptic warnings have all been issued by the same politicians and media that have described their ‘No’ opponents as ‘hysterical’ and scaremongers. Do all these politicians and journalists suffer from IDS (irony deficiency syndrome)? The above remarks were made before the final 10 days or so of the campaign but worse was to follow and it was flagged up by Pat Leahy, Political Correspondent of the Sunday Business Post. Leahy makes for instructive reading on Government thinking as he is always on message (the only way to flush Leahy out of Fianna Fáil would be to dispense colonic irrigation to Brian Cowen) and offers real insight into ministerial strategy.
Last Sunday, Leahy warned that the “informative” part of the Lisbon debate (that’s the part where we are called pariahs and are threatened with a return to Black ‘47 should we vote ‘No’) was now over and that from now on the ‘Yes’ side will be quite rude to the ‘No’ side and their supporters.
“The personalised part is now beginning,” warned Leahy, citing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, as evidence.
I imagine that a warning by a leading ‘No’ campaigner, say Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald, that her side was going to take the gloves off and mount personalised attacks to undermine the ‘Yes’ campaigners would attract quite a lot of media attention, even indignation, of the most hysterical kind. But neither the Post nor any of the ‘quality’ media supporting the ‘Yes’ campaign appears to be at all fazed by this threat.
Sure enough, the new campaign kicked off last Monday with demented Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell demanding to know if Declan Ganley of the right-wing Libertas group, which is calling for a ‘No’ vote, is in the pay of the CIA. Remember, these are the people who have been complaining about lies and distortions in the Lisbon debate. Ganley is a supporter of the neo-con section of the US establishment and military but it is unlikely that and unproven – nor has any evidence been offered – that he is being paid by the CIA. If an Irish republican were to accuse Gay Mitchell of being a hired CIA stooge (and Mitchell’s pro-NATO rantings over several years make Ganley sound like a cheese-eating surrender monkey), there would be an almighty wailing from such as The Irish Times.
The reason the ‘Yes’ side and its media supporters have themselves become so hysterical is that they tried and failed to stampede people into a ‘Yes’ vote with two tactics: one was to threaten financial meltdown and the second was to insult the ‘No’ activists.
Selecting some of the more dramatic soundbites from a small section of the ‘No’ side – abortion, euthanasia, etc – and pretending they are central to the ‘No’ argument may have had some effect. But most people know that something more fundamental is taking place and the greater the threats and insults from the ‘Yes’ camp the more unimpressed they have become.
So concerned has The Irish Times (the real opposition) become at the ineptness of the ‘Yes’ side that it first lectured Enda Kenny for failing to whip Fine Gael into line on Lisbon and, last Saturday, Political Reporter Mark Hennessy ticked off Garret FitzGerald and others in the ‘Yes’ lobby for their efforts in trying to frighten and insult voters, which is precisely what Hennessy’s own newspaper has been doing for the entire campaign!



IMAGINE, if you will, an appeal from the IRA to join up in order to arrest “the decline of male identity”. Such a recruitment message, coupled with the inducement of “challenge, adventure, travel and, above all, camaraderie” as well as something called the “warrior ethos” would surely provoke strangled cries of outrage from the peace-loving democrats of The Irish Times.
This message was delivered from an entirely different quarter to readers of the newspaper recently at a time when – coincidentally, one feels sure – the British Army is experiencing a recruitment crisis with more young men required to express their masculinity in places like Afghanistan.
Headlined “Thoughts of a fighting Irishman as he serves the Queen” ( check it out if you don’t believe me – Irish Times, 23 May, 2008) “Wicklowman Lieutenant Paddy Bury” offers extracts from his “diary from the front... serving with the British Army in Afghanistan”.
Paddy assures readers that the “imperial experience” of the British Army unites all creeds and eliminates “any anti-Irish hostility”.
‘Strewth, Sarge, my ‘ead ‘urts. I fawt we were supposed to shoot Paddies on sight.’
You can read Paddy’s rip-roaring yarns weekly in the newspaper that has lectured Irish men and women on the evils of political violence for many, many years. THEY haven’t gone away, you know.