Art, media, opinion and ideas
And so, it begins. The annual exercise in counting our national blessings, looking ourselves up and down, and concluding that Ireland, all things considered, isn’t a bad old place. Except, it’s not beginning, because it never really stopped.
State enters Appearance on 17th January 2012, originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp. One of the more perplexing questions arising from Sean Sherlock's efforts to ram a law he, by now, knows to be bad into force is why he hasn't just taken the time to get things right. The screen shot above gives the answer.
Hey, you. Yes, you there. No, not that woman over there.
For a couple of centuries, New York City was politically dominated by the Democratic Party machine known as “Tammany Hall”. All-powerful and frankly corrupt, Tammany was the machine through which immigrants, particularly the Irish, rose through the ranks of New York politics. You could almost call it the Fianna Fáil of old New York.
On the 26th November in 2009, the Murphy report into the abuse of children by Catholic clergy was released. The country was convulsed and repulsed by the clear description of decades of cover-ups, lies, deceit, and misbehaviour by the Church.
Hand in your coats, turn right and you'll come to the Yeats Rooms. The two paintings hang side by side on your left. One, The Liffey Swim, is probably one of the most famous modern Irish works.
The following is the text of a message I sent to the 4,205 members of the Expel the Papal Nuncio Facebook Group. I'm posting it here so that Non-Facebookers can also read it and, hopefully, take the moment to click the link and send their message to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I'll write more about the experience of this campaign when the dust has settled.
Last week, a Judge in Louisiana refused a marriage license to a mixed race couple. In the ensuing furore, he was careful to make clear that “I’m not a racist, I just don’t believe in mixing the races”. To which one can really only respond, “But that’s what racism is, Jackass.
I was an audience member for RTE’s Questions & Answers on two occasions. I can remember almost nothing about either program. The first time, I think Mary O’Rourke was a panelist.
Going to a Labour party conference, as opposed to just hearing about one through the press or the web, is a strange experience. You arrive and find yourself in a bustle of bodies, huddled in quiet clusters or laughing and relaxed in the bar. There's a touch of a big country wedding, with the same mix of ages and people catching up who haven't met in person all year.
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