great moments in popular discourse volume seven

Maisie Baines leaned across the kitchen table breathing fire.
"Well how do you know?" she cried. "How do you know Michael D Higgins was wrong to support communism? How do you know Michael D Higgins was wrong to do any of the things you claim he did? How do you know? Maybe he was right. Maybe those people needed communism. Have you thought of that? Maybe it was the right thing for them at the time. Did you ever consider that possibility?"
There's nothing like an Irish countrywoman of mature years in full flight triumphantly firing questions at you which she thinks are unanswerable, and then firing out a few more questions while you're still trying to come to terms with the sheer delusional gormlessness of the first ones in order to frame some sort of an answer to them, and then firing out a few more like slaps in the face just in case you thought you were about to get a word in edgeways because clearly she considers her questions to be rhetorical and my job is just to sit there looking flustered.
Ah yes.
The great debater in me is never more rattled than when I'm rattled.
When she ran out of How Do You Knows, I deigned to speak.
"I never said anything about Michael D Higgins being right or wrong to support murderous communist dictatorships," I told her. "I said he did it. And I do I think he was profoundly wrong to do it but that wasn't the point I made. My point was that people should have been told he was doing it. These sort of things should have been discussed with him as he was standing for the Presidency of the Irish Republic. People should have been informed of his record on these issues. I was appalled though not surprised that the newspaper, radio and television journalists of Ireland were not even asking him about his ultra leftist record of political atheistic advocacy on such matters. I thought these things should have been out in the open. My problem was that the Irish were going to elect an apologist for atheistic Marxism who had never repudiated any of the psycho regimes he had endorsed over the past fifty years, and that the Irish were going to elect him, without knowing what they were doing, simply because our newspapers and broadcasters didn't think it was worth mentioning."
Maisie left.
When Maisie had gone, I recalled my own brief encounter with Michael D Higgins.
It happened fifteen years ago when he was just another radical atheistic abortionist about town apologist for communist dictators worldwide.
Ireland had, and has, a lot of them.
Though they are rarely exposed outside of this website.
At the time I interviewed him, the Presidency must have been a distant dream for Michael D Higgins.
He was then just a callow youth of 77 years of age.
There or there abouts.
He's older now.
As are we all.
I am still chilled by one of our exchanges.
I had challenged him on his suport for the Sandinista communist dictatorship in Nicaragua. I had asked him what he thought of the Sandinistas closure of newspapers in that country and the arbitary incarceration of journalists there.
And Mick Higgins had answered me matter of factly while taking a bite out of a queen cake: "It's war."

heelers is dee leader of dee anc freeeeee heeler da peeler

The White Water shopping centre in the town of Newbridge.
Breaking bread with the Clerk of Works in the Costa Cafe.
A rather fetchingly blonde Polish woman streels by.
"Do you see her?" says the Clerk of Works.
"Do I ever," sez I.
"Mick Baines saw her here one day," sez the Clerk of Works. "She works here as Head of Security. Anyway he was completely bowled over by her. So he went into one of the shops, bought her a card, and wrote a message on it for her with his phone number. He just walked up to her and gave her the card right here in the centre. And afterwards she actually phoned him and they went out a few times. But he had nothing in common with her. When he sat down with her, they had absolutely nothing to talk about. It couldn't last. He wasn't able to find any common ground with her at all."
"I have nothing in common with Mick Baines either," muses the mighty Heelers. "Maybe she'd have something in common with me."
"Mick found the whole experience a bit overwhelming," expostulates the Clerk of Works.
"I'm not surprised," sez I. "If she's head of security in an Irish shopping centre, she's going to be fairly tough. Imagine trying to stare her down in a clash of wills over who's going to pass the salt. I mean you might as well be dating a teacher or a nurse or a corrupt cop. You wouldn't be having the best of many arguments with any of those I can tell you."
My gaze shifts to another of the White Water's much vaunted beauties, a certain Miss South Africa who is selling calendars in the walkway near the cafe.
She has a disquieting beauty.
An ethereal elegiac almost wistful sadness that makes me think of eternal things.
I've bought quite a few calendars off her during the holiday season bold readers.
For one reason or another.
Ah.
She is a honey to behold.
More beautiful than your dreams.
Spirit smitten into form.
All that jazz.
With her mane of dark hair and sylph like etc etcs.
She is, in the best sense of an old fashioned phrase, an Arooga.
You know what folks.
There are things known.
And things unknown.
And in between there are the sexors.
Or as the ghost of Jim Morrisson once assured me: "You know the day divides the night. The night divides the day. You try to run. You try to hide. Buy another calendar from that sexy ride. Buy another calendar from that sexy ride. Buy another calendar, wooooh, from that sexy ride. Ner, ner, ner, ner, ner, ner."
He was right too.
A thought strikes me.
"Hold on a moment," I tell the Clerk of Works. "I think I need another new calendar."
I stand up, take a deep breath, and hurry over to Miss South Africa.
I buy a calendar.
One with sheep dogs on it.
I pay for it.
Then I say: "How about a coffee some time?"
Miss South Africa smiles and holds up a Starbucks coffee carton.
"I've already got one," she says sweetly.
I return to the Clerk of Works.
My facial expression combines a number of the rummer emotions.
"How did it go?" sez the Clerk of Works.
"Not as well as I hoped, Clerky," I reply cheerily, "and not as badly as I feared."

obitcheries

Mary Raftery is dead.
She was in her fifties.
The Irish Times, RTE and Independent Newspapers are currently printing rave reviews of her life, masquerading as obituaries.
Even so their fathers praised the false prophets.
Perhaps a more critical assessment of her accomplishments is in order.
In the interests of balance.
Mary Raftery was a key figure in the orchestration of the current culture war against the Catholic Church.
She accomplished her aim of alienating significant segments of the Irish populace from the faith through the manipulation of public perception on sex abuse cases.
She was a liar.
A grotesque liar.
But she never told a single lie.
Her multifarious lies were predicated simply on ignoring 99.99 percent of the truth.
Mary Raftery pretended to be concerned about sex abuse victims.
She championed, steered and promulgated various televisual documentaries and print journalism pieces investigating the tiny minority of overall sex abuse cases which arise within the Catholic Church.
She ignored the 99.99 percent of cases arising in the general community, among families, in hospitals, in health board care, in sports clubs, and in schools, at the hands of randomly dysfunctioning indiviuals, at the hands of devil worshippers and at the hands of paedophile rings.
Ah yes.
All victims are important.
But some victims are more important than others.
The only victims that mattered to Mary Raftery were the miniscule percentage of victims who were useful to her in propagating an organised societal wide pogrom against the Catholic Church.
Mary Raftery deliberately concealed the truth about the broad nature of the tidal wave of sex abuse engulfing every sector of society in Ireland, and indeed the world.
Mary Raftery deliberately ignored the most extreme cases of child abuse in Ireland which were of no use to her because they had nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
Mary Raftery lived and perpetrated the most malign malicious mendacious falsehoods solely because she despised Christianity more than she cared about the truth.
May her soul rot.

eventide

footballers cheer a score
pat carroll shoots rabbits in the gloom
children steal crab apples
and farmer byrne calls the cattle home

perhaps this chaotic place
is not kilcullen in the present time
but a dusty frontier town
at the heart of ancient palestine

the sounds dissolve
into a muted half felt bliss
fluted by fond memory
and a strange provincial holiness

touchable

Maisie Brogan, a sixty five year old woman in her prime, entered my kitchen, kissed me, and then let fly with both barrels about this website.
She told me in no uncertain terms that she considered The Heelers Diaries to be nothing but wall to wall hate.
I was astonished.
For the first time in a long time, a citizen criticising my writings gave me pause.
Normally I take criticism as flattery.
If they love me or if they hate me, it's all good.
Indifference is the reaction I can't stand.
But this hit too close to home.
Actually because it was in my own home.
And also because I had heretofore held the woman in some regard.
I ask you, gentle travellers of the internet, to consider a most telling moment in the overly violent, though sometimes effective, Brian De Palma thriller called The Untouchables.
Yes the gangster film with the self parodaical music score by Ennio Morricone.
It works, doesn't it.
The Untouchables are a crime fighting team consisting of Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin and Ron Baines.
As soon as I saw that Ron Baines was being teamed in the Untouchables with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, I thought Mr Baines might as well have been wearing a target on his back.
I felt he was not long for this world.
(cf: The old Star Trek television series. Whenever Captain Kirk ordered Mr Spock, Lieutenant Uhuru, Doctor McCoy and Ensign O'Toole down to check out the planet surface, you knew it was time to say goodbye to Ensign O'Toole.)
So it proved in The Untouchables.
Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Alec Baldwin soon found their colleague the unfortunate Mr Baines shot most bloodily to death in a lift.
On the wall of the lift, his murderer had scrawled in blood the word Touchable.
Back to my kitchen.
Maisie Brogan is holding forth about such subjects as: Heelers' inhumanity to O'Brolchains, Heelers' inhumanity to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Heelers' inhumanity to the Irish Police Force, Heelers' inhumanity to Irish parliamentarians, Heelers' inhumanity to the banks, Heelers' inhumanity to... but you get the idea.
My jaw had dropped.
I let her speak.
A part of me marvelled at such free expression.
A refined, respectable, charitable, community minded, countrywoman, giving me what for.
She was eloquent, I give you that.
It was a spectacle to behold.
Rum and rummer.
Half of these people are terrified of their own husbands and of their own children but they feel free to speak their minds to me.
There's a compliment for me in there somewhere.
Her words were ringing in my ears.
Now she upped the ante.
"There's no economic collapse," she cried. "The only thing causing an economic collapse is people like you claiming there is one. Look at us. We're all alright. Nothing has collapsed."
And finally I raised an admonishing hand.
"Listen," I said quietly. "A few weeks ago in this very town a man poured petrol over himself and set himself on fire. He self immolated. He burnt himself to death. Do you think he did that because there's nothing wrong with our country? Because there's no corrupt bullying thug police? No recession? Really? You know, they heard his death screams at both ends of the town. But of course it wasn't reported in any of our newspapers. Now, a man burnt himself alive in Tunisia last year after being hassled by a bitch police officer and you know what happened? The government of Tunisia fell. The people tore it down. A man burns himself alive here in Kilcullen and what happens? Our newspapers, our televisions stations, our radio broadcasters, all of them collude to conceal it. Along with nice civilised people like you. All of them deliberately ignore it. All of them pretend it never happens. It only happened a few weeks ago but to this day the people of Ireland don't suspect a thing about it. You think speaking the truth is hateful. But I'm telling you what's genuinely hateful and hate filled is concealing the truth."
She stood up and made for the door at warp speed.
I followed.
"I'm a bit suprised at your attitude," I addressed myself to her fast disappearing form.
From my front garden she called back: "Well James, what did you expect?"
"I expected you to thank me," I stated without rancour.
Back in the kitchen I sat down in a pool of great sadness.
Touchable.

waiter pardon me but there's an irish times in my chateau

Wandered into the Chateau late of an evening.
Doctor Barn had been visiting.
When I entered, I found the goodish doctor ensconced in an armchair in the television room.
A copy of the Irish Times was draped over the wing of his armchair.
A copy of the Irish Independent was clutched in Doctor Barn's hand.
This was too much.
A brace of anti Catholic newspapers.
In my own home.
This was much too much.
Even for an easy going preraphaelite poet like myself.
The Irish Times is famous as an anodyne atheistic Bolshevick mouthpiece which spent the Cold War rooting for the Russians.
There are not unreasonable postulations that it was being run at one stage by the KGB.
The Irish Independent is a part of Tony O'Reilly's Independent Newspapers group and although far from Bolshevick, it joins the Irish Times in an ad hoc alliance militating for abortion culture, contraceptivist culture, and life in test tubes culture.
In addition Independent Newspapers advocates an idolotrous worship of the O'Reilly family along with a hedonistic sex and drugs lifestyle to keep the citizenry quiescent.
While the Irish Times seeks to hand Ireland over to the rule of Communists or like minded rebranded atheists, or failing that Jihadi's, the Independent Group seeks to establish a return to feudalism, fostering a neo feudal level of influence for the O'Reilly family and reducing the rest of us to farm animals.
In the glorious society envisioned by the Independent group, the citizens of Ireland will have bread and sex, and will be perpetually ruled by Tony's progeny.
Both the Irish Times and Independent Newspapers are waging a kulturkampf war to destroy the Catholic Church in Ireland.
They view the dechristianisation of the nation as an essential prerequisite for the ultimate enslavement of Ireland to their own atheistic barbarisms.
But I digress.
My brother looked up as I entered the room.
I stared at the loathsome objects he was perusing.
Quickly and correctly interpreting my gaze he announced cheerily: "You can't beat the oul anti Catholic propaganda."
I nodded all grim reaperish.
"I will never understand," I told him bitterly, "why you insist on feeding the hand that bites us."

the monica leech bank in

Question: What is the difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael?
Answer: The famously corrupt and corrupting kleptocratic Fianna Fail party bankrupted the nation in order to bail out Fianna Fail's personal gangster bank, an entity styled Anglo Irish Bank. Anglo Irish Bank had gone bust with world record losses, losses exceeding the losses of the most corrupt American bank Citibank. Anglo Irish Bank went bust because Fianna Fail members, supporters and their allies in the gangster business sector, along with individuals on Anglo's board and in its employ, were giving themselves thousand million dollar loans which they could never hope to repay. Here's how it worked. When a bank official gave a loan of a thousand million dollars to a Fianna Fail supporter, the Fianna Fail supporter would then give the bank official a hundred million for himself under the table. When the bank finally went bust through this institutionalised and systematic thievery by its own Board of Management and employees, and their allies in Fianna Fail, the ultimate coup de main swung into play. Fianna Fail Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan bankrupted the nation and the next fifty generations of Irish people in order to keep this defunct gangster bank in existence. It is interesting to note that Brian Lenihan who died shortly after his treasonous hijacking of the future of our nation, was married to Circuit Court Judge Patricia Ryan. Other Judges we might mention here are Judge Eamon DeValera a direct descendent of Fianna Fail's founder who was also called Eamon DeValera, and Judge Leonie Reynolds in the High Court who is a daughter of former Fianna Fail low life Prime Minister Albert Reynolds. Clearly the corrupt kleptocratic Fianna Fail party has attempted to insulate itself from public outrage about its theft of the nation, by colonising the Judiciary. The current parties of government in Ireland, who style themselves Fine Gael and Labour respectively, have also loaded the Judiciary with their supporters. The only difference then between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is that Fine Gael having been elected to repudiate Fianna Fail's bailout of worthless Fianna Fail gangster banks, immediately compelled the citizenry to bail out a worthless Fine Gael gangster bank called Allied Irish Bank to the tune of virtually immeasurable billion dollar sums of telephone number borrowings. Having bailed out Allied Irish Bank for virtually limitless amounts of comically and cosmically unrepayable money, Fine Gael proceeded to purchase this worthless gangster entity styling itself Allied Irish Bank for an additional ten thousand million Euro which they again borrowed against future generations of Irish people. You gorra larf. Coincidentally, Allied Irish Bank's Board of Management includes an individual styling himself Lochlainn Quinn, who is a brother of the current Irish Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, a lifelong self confessed atheistic apologist for the most invidious communist regimes worldwide. Lochlainn Quinn is famous for buying a French vineyard a few years ago for thirty million quid. Yes he had thirty million quid in his back pocket for buying vineyards even though there is nothing he can ever have done in his incomptent and corrupt career causing the collapse of Allied Irish Bank, nothing he has done I say, that would entitle him to be paid anything, let alone be paid so much that he has thirty million in loose change to be throwing away on French vineyards. These people should be in jail. Ruairi Quinn's Labour Party is in coalition with Fine Gael. And Fine Gael have proved themselves endlessly generous in bankrupting the citizenry in order to keep Lochlainn Quinn and his brother in the vineyards to which they have become accustomed. So the sole difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is the difference between the word Anglo and Allied. The parties are of course united by the word scum.