Labour Pains

Bertie Ahern will never have any conviction as a politician unless he gets three to five in Mountjoy. On the bright side, the Labour Party's Kathleen Lynch will give him a letter of recommendation for his parole board. Sure, she’d do it for anyone. And that’s what makes me sick.

If you’ve never heard of her, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, or the sheriff of Nottingham, you’ll soon hear of her in song and legend. The TD for Cork North Central wrote a letter vouching for the character of constituents of hers, the parents of a convicted rapist. The son, Trevor Casey, was sentenced on Friday to 13 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of the two teenage sisters of his former girlfriend.

Kathleen's brain must have been totally scrambled. On one level, sending a letter to a Judge who is sentencing a rapist of young girls is stupid, ill-conceived, and insulting. On the other hand it's even worse. It's dangerous, meddling and seditious, and it seriously compromises the separation of the legislative and executive powers of the state and it jeopardizes forty years of progress in women’s rights and the rights of victims of sex crimes.

Given her fame as a pop star Women's Libber and darling of the Irish Left, Ivana Bacik’s silence is notable. Her silence, however, is nothing when compared to the deafening screech of nothingness coming from Labour boss, Eamon Gilmore.

Labour is the oldest party in the state. It’s the one not borne out of the arbitrary lines drawn in the civil war. It has an ideology. It’s the party of James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson, that guy from the Phoenix Park scandal...okay, so they’re not perfect, but at least they could pretend to know right from wrong.

As usual, there was no demand for Kathleen Lynch's resignation. No public example making. No press conference saying that Labour doesn’t tolerate its TDs being dumb shits. The Labour leader couldn't even manage an angry note scrawled on the back of a beer mat from Toner’s Pub. Everybody wanted the issue to go away, just like Bertie wishes Des O'Neill would vanish.

By behaving like all the other hard-necked chancers in Leinster House, Kathleen Lynch, lobbed a grenade at her own party's already wobbly credibility. The Gilmore gang are now in serious danger of a second rate rehash of Ahern and his ten years of Shyster-ism . Right now, too many politicians behave with the moral instincts of a sewer rat. A Bit of straight thinking from them, before it's too late, might just trick us into thinking they stand for something resembling decency.

Besides, this is a clear moral issue. Do those who committed the worst of crimes deserve to be “got off the hook”? Or should the legal system be let do its work so that rapists will get their comeuppance.

Olympia

The Olympics look as failed as a Ben Johnson dope sample. Fact.

Wrestlemania has more credibility than the Olympics, and unless drugs tests and fatalities are televised there'll be no reason for us to switch off our reruns of CSI. But I've come up with an idea to rescue the Olympics and make us sit up and take notice - let's get the games some much needed credibility and make Hulk Hogan head of the International Olympic Committee.

Desperate times do call for desperate measures. The sheer volume of gaudy glitz and cringe-inducing kitsch that 'Olympics-incorporated' has generated needs the dignity that only a bald fiftysomething in day-glow yellow speedos can give. It's all in the name of humanity's best interests.

The modern Olympic Games are hair-pullingly awful. From the opening ceremony, where athletes dress like low class estate agents to the pointless end ceremony, no-one should watch this rubbish without being sectioned.

It's dire, on and off the athletics track. VIPs attend the opening ceremony in Beijing, the ranks of scumbags and gangsters swell massively. World leaders, with the exception of the Dalai Lama, cozy up to corporate fat cats in the reassuring glow of the Olympic flame. The spectacle leaves a foul taste in the mouth. It's like watching your parents snogging, but with Jimmy Magee providing the commentary.

Past Olympic Games are like a rogues' gallery of disasters in putting mankind's best foot forward. The games of 1920, 1936, 1948, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004 were all charged with chauvinism, racism, stupidity, opportunism, incompetence and dishonesty. Each one revealed our worst characteristics.

So why can't I despise and dismiss the Olympics, and simply take up gardening for the summer? The reason is, the original intention is unmistakably noble: that people stop being nasty to each other once every four years and do something pure and simple to express the goodness we aspire to - to push our limits and become stronger, faster and higher beings.

Sadly, this Olympic 'spirit' is so brazenly pimped out and debased by the organizers and their corporate playmates, that it shatters the dreams French academic Pierre de Coubertin had, when he organized the first modern Olympics in 1896.

Over a century later, how would de Coubertin have reacted when his countrymen attacked the Olympic flame as it passed through Paris on its way to Beijing? There have been protests everywhere the flame has passed through. But when the French go on the offensive, they do it with gusto. They extinguished the Olympic flame twice, despite strong arm tactics from annoyed Chinese and French officials.

The French love big gestures and make them with flair. Eric Cantona and The Sarkozys support my little hunch about our continental cousins. When the shit hit the fan at Crystal Palace, all those years ago, Eric’s ‘Gallic temperament’ was to blame for doing to a yob, what most of us can only dream of, and left a generation of youngsters with injuries caused by trying to copy his trademark kick.

Twelve years on, the Sarkozys visit London, and Madame Sarkozy appeared from her jet, every inch a playful Marlene Dietrich. The fearsome din of drooling Fleet Street paps scrambling for a front row seat at those photo-calls with the Queen, echoed all the way from London to the mangled Mercedes in the Alma Tunnel in Paris. Royalty as tabloid Gold returned revamped and ravishing.

As big and loud as the protests are, they’re hypocritical, snooty, and wrong. The Olympics don't need to be perfect. They just need to happen. If the world wants the Chinese government to get the message about everything we don't like about them, then let the Chinese have their games. Let them have what they wish for.

We'll just sit back and sip a glass of sparkling, vintage 'I told you so'. We'll have a hearty chuckle when the Chinese leaders go purple with injured pride, just like Hitler did when he tried to hijack the Olympics in 1936 to promote his Aryan racism. His plans backfired spectacularly and the puffed up nastiness of the Berlin Games bestowed on us an icon of poetic justice, America’s black sprinter and longjumper, the great Jesse Owens.

The Munich games saw a hostage drama and the tragedy of murdered athletes. The corporate toadying to Coca Cola when Atlanta, Coke's global HQ, got to stage the 1996 Games made many want to drown the International Olympic Committee in their soft drink of choice.

The odds may be stacked well against the Olympics, but it always finds a way to redeem itself. Its good intentions shine through, justifying its miserable existence. And it does this despite the best efforts of the worst kinds of people. Allowing these corrupt, embarrassing, tedious, sometimes despicable games to go ahead, is the correct and only option.

Munich witnessed the swimming phenomenon of Mark Spitz. Atlanta was the scene of the emotional reconciliation with Mohammed Ali and the USA, 26 years after the former Cassius Clay threw his Gold Medal won in Rome in 1960 into the Ohio River, in protest at the vile racism of 1960's America.

The Chinese can spin the news, control the internet and walk out of meetings where their excesses are highlighted. It's no use. Between Beijing's blanket smog and bloody tyranny in Tibet, the Chinese PR train has seriously derailed.

That's how it is. The Hulkster isn't needed just yet, even though it's appealing. I can't live with the Olympics, but we can't live without them. In the meantime, we can go back to CSI, and have some peace from the routine strangeness of the Olympic rigmarole.

Ristorante Italiano - What's Italian for 'shut up, dumbass'?

I can't adequately express my disdain of lazy commentary, but the world is so often filled with inane, fatuous, trite drivel that ignores the difference between opinion and fact. I read too much of it in the papers every day. So when this absolute dickhead loudly described the Pope in terms of the Nazis, I was well beyond my stupidity quota for the weekend: I felt the most wonderful release when I realised patience with tossers is by no means necessary. Quite the opposite...

I spent the day prancing about town like the boulevardier I wish I was, meeting up for a pint in Neary's with a friend of mine, with whom I had a short story-writing race. We went to my favourite pizzeria, Pizza Stop, which is down a seedy little lane behind HMV on Grafton Street and anticipated an evening comparing stories and talking in lofty terms about our work. How were we to know that the occupants of the table next to us were full of finger-clicking-for-the-waiter's-attention gaucheness? It wasn't as if they had t-shirts to let us know. When their starters came out, one man's man's talk had already intruded our airspace . Then his pasta starter came out as a main course portion. His fingers clicked loudly as he squared up for a fight with a whispy Italian waiter who couldn't stop laughing at the sheer awfulness of this man. Well, there was drama, and 'it's just not good enough' - just short of 'do you know who I am?' No was my silent answer, and my world is certainly better for it.

My friend and I were dumbstruck. We strained to evesdrop, but the place was so small, we kept retreating to our corner with Parmesan in our ears. Their conversation started into the Pope and his predecessor. I could feel my stomach sinking with disappointed expectation. One of the occupants of our neighbouring table was Italian, and our loudmouthed 'Mr. Somebody' was clearly looking to impress him with his witty take on the state of the Papacy. 'We loved the old guy [cue John Paul II impression], but the new guy, we don't like him. He's got SS written all over him'. I knew he was going to say this. I just knew he was going to say something brash, boring and utterly offensive. And what's more, I carry a German bloody passport. 'I don't agree with that', the Italian politely mumbled.

Over at our table, I was incandescent, my friend just looked at me as if waiting to see if I would stick a fork in our neighbour's fat head or cry like a baby with frustration. Unfortunately for the entertainment value of this story, I'm more repressed emotionally than that. Definitely a westbrit, if ever there was one. In our tiny eatery, I got up noisily, banging my cutlery against the plate like my Da would do when I was a kid, before bollocking me out of it for talking back to mum. I asked the manager if there was another table we could sit at, and grabbed our coats before he could say a thing. Their conversation stopped dead in its tracks when we moved down to the other side of the restaurant. Our displeasure had been noted, and I could hear his plaintive 'whaat?'

The current Pope was twelve when the war broke out. He was 18 by the end of it. He is a man of certain conservative views that I don't agree with, even if I do go to church. He was liberal, then got old and with it, very conservative. He was God's Rottweiler for an age and a bit, and then had to play the fisherman once J.P. II's superstar Papacy came to its strange, sad end. And what's more, he's German. In the British and Irish media, that carries a whole load of baggage that makes it too easy for lazy journos and even lazier readers to make assumptions about people.

I wish I had the guts to tell him as such, to reason with him, or simply to tell him to shut up. But, hey, I've better things to do, and our pizzas - the best in Dublin - were getting cold.

Bertie and his rubber duckie

Of all the things Bertie Ahern has been credited with, healing lepers, translating the bible into Icelandic and discovering a cure for Westlife are only a few of the more believable acts from this most improbable statesman. The timing of his leaving was magnificent and all of his own making; he deftly grabbed the news cycle this week, receiving the plaudits and kudos of his peers. Robert Mugabe is also grateful, because our guy’s stolen the limelight, so the least talented liberator in the history of Africa the chance to shuffle off the political stage himself, maybe making off with a few quid and some diamonds. Who knows, but maybe the French will give him a cosy villa like they did when Mobutu left Zaire with all the diamonds.

Bertie saw the writing on the wall. Going was just about the only option, and as the dogs in the street were noticing change in the air, Cowan had to bite his lip harder and harder, hoping not too many Fianna Fáil councillors from some swamp or another would demand Ahern’s resignation ‘for the good of the party.’

This platitude cracks me up, ‘for the good of the party’. Why would anyone want to do anything for the good of their country, when a bunch of greasy county councillors and Neanderthal developers could be there for consideration in the national pecking order? It had been the same thing when Charlie Haughey had been booted out. The party comes first. What becomes abundantly clear is that for someone like me who watches the West Wing each night (I’m on to season 5), nothing in that series resembles in intention or design or manner how Irish politics is conducted: small time turf wars, low politics which, frankly, is embarrassing for it.

And after ten years of Bertie behaving essentially like Ernie from Sesame Street, to Enda Kenny’s Bert, maybe having a Taoiseach for the first time for, well, at least two years, will be a welcome change. To date, Brian Cowan is the only guy in the running. He’s got a different style to Bertie. Hands on, knows his brief, Gordon Brown without the hubris, and wit way more sex appeal. Things are about to change. As for Bertie, Abraham Lincoln said we will be remembered in spite of ourselves, so there may be hope yet for him.

PC Whirl

As Ireland revels in having nearly caught up with the 21st century, man's latest developments bring us one step closer to the clinical 'superfuture' we saw in 2001: A Space odyssey, 1984 and Spaceballs: For what the founders of our state had fought, bled and died for was that we could enjoy freedom's bounty in outlet shopping centres with PC World, Harvey Norman, maybe a Reids furniture place, Woodies and of course, the obligatory KFC (only the hi end ones have Cost-lotta Coffee, and the majority of the great unwashed think ristretto is Italian for 'restrainng order' anyway).

I got a laptop last July, which reminded me that hell is the impossibility of reason. I could be one of those guys sitting alone in pubs that have wireless, because, hey, there's a whole bunch of money to be made by someone demanding solitude and nursing a Cappuccino for three hours, and I wanted in on the ground floor. Initially, it worked like a dream. Until I had to go to a conference where I was in charge of the registration. And guess what? It wouldn't detect the cable, couldn't be charged up and hey presto, I had a pretty big, cool looking paperweight, which looked like someone had taken Darth Vader to a scrap yard, crushed him into a cube, before glossing him with the sauce from a Sweet and Sour Chicken.

I brought it into a computer superstore which will remain nameless as PC World. The IT guy (who really looked like one), wouldn't take it to be repaired. It had to be taken to the branch it had been bought in, he mumbled, like Marlon Brando, with half a Breakfast roll between his teeth. That inevitably meant a leisurely jaunt down the M50 in 1st gear.

It was left in the shop in December. By February, I had their phone number off by heart, several times being 'put through' to someone, before the line mysteriously went dead, as if I was being hung up on. Finally they decided it couldn't be fixed, and I should come in and get a replacement. Even this I had to fight for. It took serious negotiation and more rage than I have ever felt to get it, and at least one employee is seeking therapy from the ordeal. I discovered the man I had spoken to had left, and was at the Customer "Service" Desk for several hours, whilst they looked for, and then fondled, my laptop in the most suggestive manner possible. Suggestive, that is, of their not having a breeze as to why a 29 year old ginger guy was rocking back and forth on the floor of a PC World crying, to the strains of a dance remix of the Birdy Song over the PA system.

I got a replacement eventually, but not on the day I described above. Still, it's all worth it for access to the internet and a solitary Cappuccini (that's like, the proper plural, OK?!).

There is, of course, a little postscript. Last week I got a phone call. "Hello Mr. Morgan , you're laptop's been repaired and is ready to be collected. "

The line went dead again.