watching the defectives

I came across a few copies of the Leinster Leader recently and leafed through them for old time's sake.
You should know gentle travellers of the internet that I am not an objective judge of this particular publication.
I was fired from the Leinster Leader a few weeks before Christmas of 2007 by the new owners Johnston Press.
Since then things haven't gone entirely swimmingly either for the Leinster Leader or the Johnston Press or the management, journalists, advertising executives and janitors at either organisation.
The firings became wholesale.
Even the Chief Executive was forced to take a "long planned" retirement.
Then the editor who'd fired me was canned. (For firing me.)
Ha, ha, ha, as we do say in the trade.
The blood was on the dance floor.
It was like the French Revolution at the Leinster Leader.
Once they started firing people they couldn't stop.
It wasn't too clever getting rid of the advertising staff though.
Those guys used to bring in quite a bit of cash in between boozing sessions.
The shares of the Johnston Press have collapsed since then from £4 a share the night they fired me to a few pennies a share today.
I wonder.
I wonder were the wrong people getting fired.
Ho, ho, ho, as we do say in the Dole office.
But it's interesting to see how the old rag is holding up.
So I had a look at the copies that chance had placed before me.
An article about a church burning in the town of Athy caught my eye.
Not bad.
Some of the salient facts were there.
A person or persons unknown had attempted to torch the church in Athy.
Of course the Leinster Leader abjectly failed to report that the same week a similar church burning had been attempted in a neighbouring town.
Hardly worth mentioning, eh Leinster Leader?
Probably means nothing.
A second church burning in the locality isn't really news, is it?
And then a third one.
Probably no connection.
You unutterable clowns.
And how are your sales figures and advertising revenue holding up?
Sun still shining for you all is it?
I heard the viewership figures had risen for your internet publications.
Been pressing a lot of refresh-bars on your own computers lately?
The refresh-bar records a new visitor to your website every time you hit it, doesn't it?
Work those index fingers baby.
Work em.
Yeah baby, yeah.
Your readership among fingers must be in the millions by now.
Hilarious.
I scanned on.
My eyes alighted on an editorial.
The identity of the present editor of the Leinster Leader is unknown to most of us.
A total of four separate idiots, I mean individuals, have held that poisoned chalice, I mean job, since the Johnston Press individuals, I mean idiots, fired me.
But no one knows who the hell the present guy is.
He must be someone, mustn't he?
The bally thing could hardly be editing itself.
There's an editorial in it anyway.
But you know folks the presence of an editorial does not conclusively prove there really is an editor.
The atheistic scientist Richard Dawkins maintains that the Leinster Leader was created by a non existent blind watchmaker with an index finger fetish.
I kid you not.
If he was blind Richard, he was also thick as a plank.
And his index finger has no taste.
The standard of English in this editorial is woesome.
I'm betting they got the cat to write it.
The editorial did have quite an interesting slant on one of the great issues of the day.
It suggested that the Irish government was wrong to try and ban Head Shops.
Head Shops are the drug dealing shops (referred to as head shops by their owners and by those who advocate on their behalf) which have been opened by crime gangs simultaneously in every town in Ireland.
The editor of the Leinster Leader quoted a front organisation established by the drug shop operators which endeavours to pose as a legitimate traders group.
I don't know why the editor of the Leinster Leader thinks any of us are interested in what drug dealers have to say about their drug dealing shops.
There were no quotes from the millions of people who want these drug dealing shops shut down.
The editor of the Leinster Leader asserted that the government policy of closing the drug dealing shops was an example of "the road to hell being paved with good intentions."
Bless.
Really hitting the zeitgeist there aren't you Leinster Leader?
Really in synch with your twelve remaining readers on that one!
Lovely lovely people.
Going in to bat for drug gangs.
You unutterable clowns.
Hilarious.
Some months ago after I began referring openly to head shops as drug dealing shops and after I pointed out that the drug dealing shops had been established simultaneously in a coordinated move by drug dealing gangs, no less a publication than the Daily Mail began to investigate my postulations.
The Daily Mail discovered that the gangster behind the drug dealing shops was an IRA terrorist with links to the Russian mafia and other organisations worse than the Russian mafia.
Hoo boy.
Incidentally, my information is that the drug dealers behind the drug dealing shops include certain fun loving Muslim organisations with a marked propensity for self detonation.
Ireland's Al Qaeda groups are up to their neck in the drugs trade.
The Leinster Leader really knows how to pick em.
What next?
An entertainment special on Osama Bin Laden's new pop group?
Allah U Want Some Drugs, as we do say in the Leinster Leader canteen.
Hilarious.
I found another article.
It was by Baldy Meara.
The pithescene sports journalist.
Let me this way put it.
He's less literate than the cat.
His sports articles are wearisome extended exercises in saying one thing, then saying the complete opposite, then coming to absolutely no conclusion in a welter of inchoate misspelled cliches.
The present Meara article held to that tried and tested formula.
Whatever you say, say nothing, eh Baldy?
Interestingly enough the present article was not sports related.
Apparently the Johnston Press consider his talents are so great that he can turn his hand to just about anything.
For lo!
The present article was an attempt at feature writing.
The article asserted that recently released figures for complaints against the police in Kildare were exceptionally low.
The police.
My old pals.
The institutionally and individually corrupt police force of the Republic of Ireland.
The police force which styles itself An Garda Siochana.
Guardians of the peace my Aunt Fanny.
Now recruiting.
Come one come all.
The Irish police force is an equal opportunities employer.
But favour will be shown to candidates who are murderers, rapists, and/or drug dealers.
I kid you not.
And now the Leinster Leader is going in to bat for them.
Say it ain't so Baldy, say it ain't so.
Arghhh, arghhh, oh sweet mercy, no, no, nooooooooo, as we do say while being beaten to death in the cells.
Badly Meara's article didn't question the official complaints figures.
The article didn't suggest any alternative explanations as to why the complaints figures might be so low.
The article didn't mention that people had been discouraged from complaining about the police because out of thousands of complaints last year only five got any redress at all.
The article didn't mention that Conor Brady the former Irish Times editor who heads up the Ombudsman organisation charged with investigating complaints against the police, had explicitly appealed to people last year not to complain at all unless the complaint was really serious.
The article didn't mention that our corrupt kleptocratic Fianna Fail government had cut funding for the investigation of complaints against the police by 25 percent.
The article didn't mention the two people who died recently in the cells at Naas Garda Station.
The article didn't mention the person who died at the side of the road a few years ago while in conversation with police officers based at Naas Garda Station.
The article didn't mention allegations forwarded to me that Gardai in Athy have been colluding with drug dealers.
The article didn't mention the Garda in Kilcullen who violently compelled a young man to leave a bus after the bus driver accused him of stealing a wallet, and then violently searched the young man, and then called a female Garda to search the young man's girl friend, and then looked a bit sheepish when the bus driver found his wallet. (The young man was paid twenty thousand Euro in compensation by Bus Eireann the State run bus company. That is to say, you and me paid the compensation for the corrupt cop and the clown bus driver out of our taxes.)
The article didn't mention the teenager who phoned Kilcullen Garda Station one afternoon to warn of burglars he could see casing houses across the river, and who was then himself arrested by the police for drinking alcohol at the riverside, and then threatened with a beating by the cops, who so put him in fear that he risked his life to leap from their vehicle and then too terrified to go home, spent the night in the open air.
The article didn't mention the Kilcullen police officer who has built his house on land belonging to an elderly relative of mine who lives in vulnerable circumstances.
The article didn't mention the corrupt Sergeant James Dominic O'Mara who threw a photo on the ground from my wallet, attempted to terrorise me at the side of the road, compelled me to stand in the rain in a tee shirt while he shouted in my face "You should know that light is broken," accused me of stealing my own car, and engineered a trumped up court appearance for me before a Lebanese thug judge called Desmond Zaidan where I was fined 200 quid for the vile crime of allowing a light on my car to fuse in a downpour.
The article didn't mention the profound disquiet among people living in Kildare and elsewhere at the sheer unmitigated thuggery and incompetence of the police force.
The article didn't mention the death of an honourable and decent police officer who was found dead at the side of the road near the town of Naas, and who my sources in the police force tell me had recently had a "run in," ie some sort of a dispute, with police officers with a reputation for corruption, and whose death has been dismissed as a hit and run accident, and is not being investigated further.
Baldy Meara didn't mention any of these things.
Badly Meara probably doesn't care to know any of these things.
Baldy Meara is not that sort of journalist.
The article was a confirmation of Badly Meara's career long mediocrity as a reporter of events.
Let's be clear.
Baldy Meara is someone who has worked in journalism for twenty years.
In all that time he has only ever said or written one interesting thing.
Even the cat or a thick blind watchmaker would have a better strike rate.
I tell you again.
Baldy Meara has only ever written one insightful sentence.
In his whole life.
It happened like this.
A decade ago Baldy Meara was writing about the Kildare football team whose nickname is The Lily Whites.
Badly O'Meara in using this nickname, hit the wrong letter on his keyboard and so his article as published in the Leinster Leader contained the gem: "The Lily Shites will have to train hard for their next encounter."
It's the only time he's ever been right about anything.
It's the only interesting thing he ever wrote.
And it was a misprint.
Oh pale Johnston Press, how thou hast conquered.
Seriously though, they're doing a wonderful job.