king pilchard the snurd

(A newly discovered Shakespearian tragedy which scholars believe must have been written after the bard, aka the swan of Avon, aka Sir Francis Bacon, heard Christian commentator Mary Kenny assert that her friend Irish Presidential candidate Michael D Higgins, is deeply spiritual.)

Act 1.
Scene 1.
A pub.
Enter Saint James of Gout, stage left, carrying a taper.
He addresses the assembled burghers thusly.
Saint James:
"Friends, Morons, Irishmen,
Lend me your beers.
I come not to bury Michael D Higgins
But to praise him.
The evils that men do live after them.
The good is oft interred with the bones.
Let's do the exact opposite with Michael D Higgins.
When the poor hath cried
Higgins hath wept
Particularly when the poor were his immediate family, friends or political cronies.
In that case invariably he would lavish them with free money, patronage and positions from State coffers
But I digress
When the poor hath cried etc etc
And when the atheistic communists hath taken over Nicaragua and imposed a thug dictatorship on that beknighted country, imprisoning the opposition and shutting down all the newspapers
When that hath happened
Michael D Higgins hath cheered the commies to the echo
Just like he cheered them in China, Poland, Hungary, Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and anywhere else they were enslaving populations and committing mass murder
Did this in Higgins seem spiritual
Yet Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And sure Mary Kenny is an honorable man
As are they all, all honorable men
Mary Kenny, John Waters, David Quinn, Breda O'Brien, all
All
All the token Catholics hired by Europe's most bigoted atheistic anti Catholic media groups Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times to furnish those invidious media scoundrels with plausible deniability while they pursued their odious kulturkampf against the Christian faith in plain sight
Oh Michael D Higgins is a spiritual man alright
For when his friends in the Marxian Galway Irish language movement demanded a television station of their own, Michael D Higgins forced the citizens of Ireland to finance it through compulsory taxation
That took spirit
Well neck anyway
And when his atheistic drug taking Marxian friend Niall Stokes wanted public money to keep his readerless Hot Press magazine in canabinoids, Higgins hath given him more of our money than he knew what to do with
And when the clueless Niall Stokes wanted limitless sums of public money to set up a white elephant visitorless popular music museum, Higgins gave him from the State purse all the cash he could carry
And when his friend the invidious Niall Stokes wanted to have the power to stop Christians from setting up television or radio stations, Michael D Higgins appointed Niall Stokes as Chairman of the Independent Radio and Television Commission an organisation Michael D Higgins had set up to prevent Christian broadcasters emerging in this country and with Niall Stokes in charge it did just that
And all the while Michael D Higgins was contributing anti Catholic articles for Niall Stokes' readerless Hot Press, thirty years of sneering at the ancient and beautiful Catholic faith, on my dime, that's some corruption right there
But Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And Mary Kenny is an honorable man
Didst not Michael D Higgins while in government pack the Arts Council with his friends
Deed bedad he didst.

And when an Irish Film Board was established by Ministerial writ, to pour exchequer funding into films made by Michael D Higgins' friends including the American exploitation movie director Roger Corman  who hadn't had a commercially viable film in three decades,, didst not Michael D Higgins make himself the Executive Producer on fifty loss making films made with public money and remunerate himself copiously for the privilege

Of course he didst

Who wouldnst
And when the muse of poetry struck Michael D Higgins didst he not use the same Arts Council to publish his maudlin maunderings financing his woeful attempts at versification as usual with public money
You bet your bippy
Hoo baby
And didst he not fail to address allegations that he had committed crimes of sexual molestation against unspecified victims
Like just last week.
He sure didst just as the Irish police sure didst initially refuse to even listen to the allegations and then sure didst go through the motions of investigating them and finally and inevitably sure didst dismiss the allegations as something they called "third hand" without ever informing the general public what the hell was being investigated or where the hell the allegations had come from.
Didst he not spend forty years sneering at America, Israel, the Free World, Mrs Thatcher and Pope John Paul the Great
Didst he not mendaciously and arrogantly champion the Soviet Union as a model of freedom to little boys and girls unfortunate enough to be attending his college lectures
Didst he not shamelessly and shamefully spend fifty years propagandising children against the Catholic faith in the guise of delivering sociology lectures
Didst he not guilefully seduce those children from the faith of our fathers by giving them higher marks in their exams the more they were willing to betray the truth that sets us free
Didst he not
He sure didst
And were these not the very children who had most need of the Catholic Church
Weren't these the generation of children being rendered sexually incontinent before our very eyes by the cult of pornography sweeping through western society
Wasn't the Catholic Church the only thing that might have given these children the merest vocabulary to know what was being done to them
Wasn't the Catholic Church the only thing that might have saved the lost generation from porno culture, drugs culture, condom culture, atheism culture, communist culture, divorce culture, suicide culture, Michael D Higgins culture, and all the other snares of satan
All those vapid idolotries so championed in his classroom by Michael D Higgins
All those venal nothingnesses sung from the roof tops by Michael D Higgins and his friends Mary Kenny, John Waters, et al (Particularly Al. I hate him.)
Truly they destroyed much and created nothing.
And yet Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And Mary Kenny is an honorable man
And I'm the Archbishop of  f---ing Canterbury
Judgement thou hast fled to brutish beasts
I die
I die pronouncing it
This Ireland that was never really bothered conquering anyone else
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself
Oh my poor country
This land of ours
This dear dear land
This emerald glistening in a mystic ocean
This womb of faith
This dwelling fit for a consecrated tribe of the Hebrew God
This Cathedral of mountains, rivers, forests, fields and stars
This idyll of rills watered by cataracts of grace
This glory writ in joyfulness
This Celtic onyx polished nay cherished by Yahweh's kingly sun and holy moon
This vault of poets, minstrels, prophets and of love
This anointed temple of the one true God
This people gentle as a kiss, noble as truth, strong as prayer
This sainted race who brought light to other nations and welcomed all men as their brothers
This land of women more beautiful than your dreams
Women more holy, more powerful, more royal, more rejoicing than their men
This dear dear land
I die pronouncing it
This gift
This wonder
This magnificence
This prism of light
This holy of holies
This earth
This heaven
This realm
This spirit
This... Ireland


(The Burghers are hushed. The French fries remain restless. James switches off the tape recorder.)

***
(First published April 2012)