zorgs on the forward scanner captain

Coffee with the Duke of Earl.
"Well Heelers you've done it again."
"What have I done?"
"The Drama Group met yesterday and they've decided that from now on there will be no programme brochures produced to accompany forthcoming plays."
"What's that got to do with me?"
"They decided it because of you."
"You're joshing me."
 "No, I'm serious. Do you remember you wrote a programme note for them a while ago?"
"It was like two years ago."
"Still being talked about. Whatever you wrote about has now led to them cancelling not just programme notes, but the programmes themselves, for all future productions."
"What did I say?"
"Apparently you didn't restrict yourself to theatrical fare. Apparently you brought your notions about the cultural implications of abortion, contraception and divorce into your assessment of whatever play was being produced at the time."
"Oh right. That sounds like me alright."
"How do you plead?"
"I'd say I was trying to make the thing meaty. If someone asks me to write a piece for them, I try to give em something to read. I want to reach them."
"You reached them. No more theatre programmes Heelers. How does that make you feel?"
"Alexander looked on the borders of his empire and wept. For there were no more worlds to conquer. Hans Gruber too."
"What are you on about?"
"I suppose I'm feeling a sobering sense of my own power."
"Are you angry?"
"I'm not really angry. But it's a bit Irish. I mean, you know, if some members of the Drama Group don't like my programme notes, why not write a programme note in reply? Why not write expressing your point of view to the local magazine? Why not shoot me down on Brian Byrne's Kilcullen blogspot. He's a sneaky little shit. (cf Niedermeyer in Animal House and imagine me saying it in Dean Wermer's voice. There you go.) He'd just love a controversy like that with me on the receiving end. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone who had a problem with something I wrote in a play programme, would respond to it by abolishing the whole concept of play programmes in perpetuity instead of robustly making their case in the public square. Was it for this the Wild Geese spread, the grey wing upon every tide? For this something something something? For this Edward Fitzgerald died? And Robert Emmet. And Wolfe Tone. All that delirium of the brave. But let them be. They're dead and gone. They're with O'Leary dating Neil Leslie the investigations editor at the Sunday World. Well you know what I mean. What is happening to people? If I started playing rugby for Old Kilcullen, would rugby clubs everywhere simply abandon the sport? If I flung off my disguise and declared for the Gay Rights Movement, would all the homosexualists simply opt out of the lifestyle with a cry of "this is no fun anymore," and start riding women? Or what if I joined the Rah? Would Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness give up mentoring drug dealing people trafficking murder gangs all over Ireland and say: Terrorising human beings, enslaving children to poisons, and subverting the nation via the trade union movement and a corrupted judiciary is suddenly profoundly immoral since Heelers started doing it... We'll all be ruined sez Hanrahan before the night is over. Ho hum. No more theatre programmes, eh. Well I never. I mean hardly ever. But where will it all end!"