tryst with an old flame

 

A copy of a newspaper styled the Irish Independent on a cafe table.

I glance towards it warily.

How long has it been?

Yonks.

It must be years since I've read any of their atheistic abortionist contraceptivist hedonistic anti Catholic maunderings.

Well why not browse through it today over a cup of tea?

What harm can it do?

I pick it up and begin a browsing.

An article on the inside page by one Frank Coughlan (two Frank Coughlans would be excessive even for the Indescuzzdent) lays out the case for a reassessment of some of the supposed hate figures of Irish history.

His main preoccupation is with the seventeenth century English ruler Cromwell whose reputation he says is being rehabilitated somewhat by the author of a new book. In setting his scene for considering the newly published book about Cromwell, Mr Coughlan mentions other historical villains too.

Most notably by his absence from Mr Coughlan's eclectic list of baddies supposedly held in low esteem by the people of Ireland, is William Martin Murphy former proprietor of the Irish Independent  newspaper itself and founder of the Sunday Independent edition, who in the early years of the twentieth century famously attempted to organise the employers of Dublin to starve out the city's working men in what became known as the 1913 Lockout.

No mention of him from the great Coughlan.

Shume mishtake shurely.

But I found it hilarious reading the article's list of traditional Irish villains as enumerated by Mr Coughlan and realising I knew nothing about any of them except for Cromwell and of course except for the one Mr Coughlan deliberately omitted because at the height of what may have been crimes against humanity he was the owner of the very newspaper Mr Coughlan works for today.

The article also contained a fairly standard yawn inducing Indo sideswipe at the ancient beautiful and true Catholic Church when Mr Coughlan urged his readers to bear in mind that while Cromwell was committing his depredations in Ireland, "Catholics were butchering Protestants all over Europe."

Really?

I haven't heard this contrived excuse for Cromwell's massacres before. It seems untrue to me as a general assertion and frivolous as an explanation for anything Cromwell did.

For the record the British state of the 1600s uner Cromwell and others, was inimically disposed towards Lutherans and Lollards as well as Catholics and did not regard itself as Protestant at all.

So it is unlikely that Mr Cromwell was in any way motivated by Mr Coughlans casual assertion that Lutherans and Lollards were being persecuted by Catholics in other jurisdictions.

Still opinions will differ I suppose.

I turn the page.

There is an article about Dillon Quirke a 24 year old star hurling player who a few days ago dropped dead on the pitch.

I read the article very closely.

There is no mention of Covid 19 vaccines in it.

(Heelers note: A few days later the same newspaper will carry a two page report on the star hurler's funeral. Again there will be no mention of the vaccines which are killing and maiming people all over the world. In the last two lines of the funeral article there is mention of the hurler having a bout of myerdarditis when he was a child with the clear implication that this is probably what killed him as a 24 year old adult star athlete. No need to even consider the vaccines, eh Indo?)

I turn the page.

And lo!

My eyes widen.

Not with surprise exactly but with that emotion of experiencing a new low in abjectly manipulative pseudo journalism.

Anthrax Outbreak In Siberia Being Attributed To Climate Change.

I slowly fold the inaptly named Irish Independent and place it back on an adjoining cafe table.

They have delighted me enough for one lifetime.