I was walking along the Lisburn Road yesterday morning when I heard my name called. It was a heavily-bearded young man who clearly knew me but I couldn’t think who he was. He identified himself – Brian John Spencer – and I then remembered him as the man who sat in front of me during last summer’s ‘West Belfast Talks Back’, sketching in cartoon form the panel members. He asked me if I’d sit with him and his friend at the outdoor café while he sketched me. Suitably flattered I sat. As he worked at lightning speed he talked, mainly about his work and his admiration for Ian Knox, whose cartoons are still, I gather, the best thing in the VO each week. The young man with the artist was an Alliance councillor and I chatted with him about his work with Naomi Long. Brian confessed that he too didn’t share my political outlook. I made the mistake of laughingly quoting Oliver Cromwell to him (“Paint me, warts and all”) and the result you can see above.
In the afternoon, I checked Twitter reaction to my blog of the day, in which as you’ve probably seen I quoted the RTÉ interview with the lawyer Peter Madden and his views on the comments made by the Taoiseach and others about his clients. I suppose you’ve heard of night and day? Well, day was chatting to the young Mr Spencer and his Alliance Party friend about painting and politics, the second of which we disagreed on. It was a civilised chat, and if there was detestation of me and my thinking it was confined to the cartoon (I swear, my ears and nose aren’t really that big). Night was Twitter, where I was called every name in the limited vocabulary of those who disagreed with me – venom heaped on venom, rage heaped on rage. Solely because I had reported Mr Madden on the Cahill case and noted that, for once, I appeared to have got it right.
Odd, isn’t it, how some people can disagree and yet remain friendly and articulate, while others meet argument with name-calling and tweeted yells. But maybe I shouldn’t complain. Brian Spencer and his Alliance friend made good company for half-an-hour; so too in a weird way did the tweeters. The difference between the two groups of people is that the Lisburn Road duo could cope with difference, the tweeters couldn’t.
But as I say, I’m not complainng. I enjoyed the Lisburn Road exchange, and there’s also something funny about people who foam at the mouth and shake their fists when you don’t fall in line behind them. Sure it’d be a dull world if we didn’t have the eejits too. (Shut up, Virginia. Just shut up.)
Jude – one thing I’ve noticed that since the upsurge in social media, idiots are given a public platform to espouse their irrational, uninformed, bigoted and hateful opinions – if you somewhat don’t agree with these people or have an altered viewpoint, your subject to character assassination albeit any rationale critic of your argument or stance. I recall an old proverb that would be appropriate, “When arguing with fools, don’t answer their foolish arguments, or you will become as foolish as they are.”
The Hist
My late Father was having trouble with a neighbour, he went to a solicitor to seek advice.
This was his answer :
If you start arguing with a fool, then it will be hard to distinguished which one is the fool.
Dear Jude,
Let me be the first to say the cartoon bears an uncanny resemblance to an aging Prince Charles, rather than any living person here.
If that was unintentional, how would you interpret the Freudian slip of pen, as it were?
Let me be the ninety-second to say your piece on Mr Madden and the Cahill case could not have been more relevant to a debate on Pistorius or Dewani conducted in this column the day before — or any other similar debate on slander.
I had been at wits end to explain to my fellow Irish that evidence is needed to pass judgments that incarcerate or otherwise interfere with peoples’ lives, not sentiment or layman’s (layperson’s) thumbsuck.
What has not emerged so far in the Cahill roadshow is whether the ventriloquist’s parrots are protected by parliamentary privilege there, as in many western democracies?
I do know I’m entitled to believe that the repeaters of unevidenced, and in fact scandalous, rumour are either extremely nasty or extremely stupid people, or both.
If only because voters tend feel sorry for a victim.
And vote for them.
Anthony, you and others seem to ignore the main point of the case. Mairia has alleged she has been raped, GA and others within SF have accepted that this happened. She withdrew her evidence under intolerable pressure, and the defendants were acquitted, they were not found NOT GUILTY. Madden and Finnucane are chasing the £££ and nothing else, and to hear Madden bleat about his clients human rights make me want to puke. I’ll be interested in seeing how the case against the BBC goes, at a guess, nowhere.
Last time I checked William everyone is entitled to human rights, including Madden and Finucanes clients, regardless if it wants to make you “puke”. Actually, I think that’s why human rights of people are strongly enforced, William, because of people like you and the dangers you pose. You mentioned these people were not found “not guilty”, well they certainly weren’t found guilty either. And last time I looked in the eyes of the law everyone is deemed innocent till proven guilty. Its obvious you don’t share this view William.
Whatever do you mean you were at your wits’ end, Anthony? You didn’t come close to your end of wit, surely . You made your points well and your points of view were taken on board in relation to Mr Pistorious and the death of his girl-friend. . It’s just that few beyond that courtroom believe in his innocence even though his lawyers proved otherwise. Hardly anything for us to get too excited about , surely? Reality and the law are not necessarily the same thing. That’s why lawyers have such a wonderful reputation….
Is fior duit, Jude. Ni aontaim leat i gconai ach bainim sult as an alt agus ta meas again roimh na tuairimi a nochtann tu.
Go raibh maith agat, Brian…
oui, Brian, et peut-être que vous pourriez être un peu plus respectueux des autres et de parler dans une langue que nous comprenons tous
Sweet William – I didn’t know you were French! Allez les bleus!
William, mon ami,
From French Park in County Roscommon to Spanish Point in the County of Clare or Scotstown itself in the County Monaghan and at all points in between down here au sud de la frontiere, you need never fear being disrespected for any lack of knowledge regarding the lingua franca of the leprechaun, aka, laughingly as Irish.
Here’s how things operate in the Free Southern Stateen.
Imagine a room. And in cette chambre are any number of folk yammering away in the l. f. of the leprechaun. Enter a person (all it takes is one), of either gender, homme ou femme. Imagine, for argument’s sake, she’s female, and her name is, choosing one at random, say, Heather.
Now, imaginez that this new entrant hasn’t got two words of Irish to scrape together, despite/ because of having survived the 11 years endurance test known as the FSS Education System.
It is not necessary for her to announce this fact by holding a placard with a message which reads in dayglo colours ‘Hi, guys ! It’s me the Monoglot from Monaghan ‘ (one mentions Monaghan as a county at random though of course it could be any) as the company in situ automatically senses this and so instantly, en masse, switches over to the Q’s English.
How to explain this, this – one searches for le mot juste – phenomenon? No need, it’s just a miracle of nature, wrought by instinct, akin to the uniform wheeling in flight of a flock of starlings in the, in the – entre le loup et le chien – crepuscular light.
The gas thing about it is that this display of communal good manners is universally known in the FSS as – Compulsory Irish.
‘ Compulsory’ and ‘Irish’ being two words which are as inextricably glued together as, par example, ‘raison’ and d’etre’ or ‘la plume’ and ‘ma tante’ or even Charles Trenet and ‘Boum!’:
‘Boum !
Quand notre coeur fait boum !’,
Bonne chance.!
Jude, welcome to the small world of the “troll”!
I can see from the tenor of your blog that you have not had much experience of ‘trolls’.
If ever in doubt check out their previous comments, you will find them diametrically opposed to the current peace process and vociferous with it!
Ignore them, most people do!
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
That is so true Jude, we should be civilised and be able to listen to the other persons point of view.
I enjoyed reading this blog, you did not make my hackles go up.
As Van the Man would say, ” there’d be days like this”!
Don’t you think the English are so tolerant, polite, and civilised. Maybe we could do with taking a leaf out of their book.
I shall watch out for you on the Lusburn Rd, so you tell me the ears won’t be an indicator to look out for.
Norma
Nice work from BJS there Jude….I can’t be arsed with Twitter myself. Sometimes you have to just turn all that static off. It’s a fact that most people will only ever hear exactly what they want to hear anyway…especially if it’s complicated…
paddy
Not for the first time I agree with you. I would go further and include facebook and other related social media as “static”.
I barely have the will to come here and poke Jude a bit, then I need to get out for a nice commune with nature. “Peace comes dropping slow..”
The first line of today’s posting, Esteemed Blogmeister, carries a relatively uncanny echo of the first line of the Paul Simon Community anthem: ‘You can call me Alms’.
A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
The one which segues into the next verse, thus:
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard, Bonedigger Bonedigger.
Thank your lucky s. in any case that it wasn’t a cube by the moniker of Senor P. Picasso whom you encountered on the Lisburn Road or you might well have ended up with two eyes on the same side of the one nose.
Instead of the rather more appropriate two eyes in the back of one’s head, which is de rigeur these days of not only Medicins sans Frontiers but nearer home, much nearer home, Doctors with Orders. Specifically, Spin Doctors with Orders. The same shadowy dudes with laminated name badges around their necks where stethoscopes used to dangle, who come up, oops, craft lines like the following:
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot of redemption.
The results of a Millward Brown poll conducted as a consequence of said photo opportunity were published today by the cult which sponsored the poll, to wit, the Sunday Independent Cult. And the way the results were dealt with by RTE in their ‘What it says in the Papers’ slot is as ample an example of how these Spin Doctors with Orders operate as one could ever hope to cope with.
The hint lies in the colour of the poll-conducting company. Having read the results, the responsible RTE readerette rather unsurprisingly chose to brownnose the sponsoring cult by emphasizing the red faces of the Embarrassed.
Meaning, the Fire Engine red faces of the Sunday Independently Cult ? The same cult which had swallowed hook, line and s. certain words which had emanated from a certain cherubic mouth? Or rather, hadn’t, but had instead dressed up said words in such a way as it expected its readers, vast, gullible and thirsty for truthiness, to swallow. Or else. Or else Babe Ruth will be lurking in the background with a baseball bat borrowed from the Boston Red Sox museum behind her back.
Now, this SIC (sic) is a cult ( a darling word which even the Frutti Fintan of Tuttiness Unlimited has taken a shine to) which has mastered and mistressed the curious act of swallowing words. It dates, perhaps, from the infamous occasion when a reputable though minor cult leader called C. Manson was arrested as a teenaged tadpole and frogmarched into an interrogation center in LA. Charged with being caught in possession of a forged check.
With Charlie M on one side of the table and two detectives on the other side of the table, Exhibit A sat on the table. When an unexpected knock came to the door the attention of the two detectives was momentarily distracted. Long enough, however, to enable quick thinking Charlie M to grab Exhibit A, roll it into a ball and swallow it whole. Chuckie ar LA !
So it was the Fire Engine Red faces of the Embarrassed Cult members which the RTE readerette chose to highlight? Er, no. Not exactly. Rather was it the faces of the Sinn Fein sinners who had tweeted on Saturday night in anticipation of a negative poll, a poll they had yet to see. Yes, those faces, those faces pale pink with embarrassment, though not, one is careful to point out, not Panty Bliss Pink, not quite that shade of pink.
Yet sufficiently pink to warrant highlighting over the Fire Engine Red of the Embarrassed who had spin doctored the photo opportunity involving that Embrace. Red, incidentally, is the colour next to orange at the end of the visible spectrum.
The Salmon of Knowledge, a sobriquet which causes the modest cheeks of the preternaturally embarrasable Perkie to turn a salmon shade of pink, and then some, would like know to end on an Enda note:
‘Embrace me, my sweet embracable you
Embrace me, you irreprelacable you.
Don’t be a naughty baby
Come to Papa, come to Papa
My sweet embracable you.
Give the woman in the bed more Cole Porter.
Jean-Paul et Claudette dans le jardin avec le ballon, cuid beag fraincis don daoine nach bhfuil gaeilge acu!
After reading this article Jude, the first thing I of thought of was the notorious “fleg” episode of the Nolan TV show, where, im sure everyone can remember, the show was dedicated to the removal of the Union flag at Belfast city hall, with Gerry Kelly, Jeffrey Donaldson, Conal McDevitt and David Ford in attendance along with an audience of loud, rowdy loyalists.
During that episode anyone with a differing opinion to the loyalists was shamefully shouted down with jeers and yells coming from the audience. At one point Gerry Lynch in the audience even pointed out this fact and called it “disgusting”. Chris Donnelly the republican commentator, also in the audience, said that DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson was “playing to the gallery” (surprise, surprise).
It seems those rowdy and undemocratic people are not only confined to the TV studio of the Nolan show (and the radio show too) but they can also be found on social media sites where they vent their anger and hatred towards people of differing opinions by shouting them down and calling them names and even going as far as to issue threats.
In the case of loyalists, if u go onto one of their Loyalist facebook pages, if you share a different opinion, no matter how moderate, you can be sure you’d be banned from commenting again within 2 minutes.
The reality is we live in a democracy and people who cant handle other peoples opinions have to live with that. Tough luck. That’s how the cookie crumbles and no amount of threats or abuse will change that.
“The difference between the two groups of people is that the Lisburn Road duo could cope with difference, the tweeters couldn’t.” To cope or not to cope, that is the modem question. Well done professor.
If I might add, this ability to cope can be seen in men and women who engage with an opponent as if they were a critic rather than an enemy.
Again, nice.
Are you well Jude, it`s just that you look a little drawn…..sorry. No point in getting animated……
Hi Jude. Jude, I wonder if you would agree that the sketch above looks like Eric Waugh?
Kieran
“Une bonne piéce de théatre doit poser les problémes et non les résoudre”. (Sartre 1948)
NI (or indeed just ‘I’) could use a few more people like Brian John Spencer; articulate, driven, open minded, judges a person by the content of their character as opposed to their collection/preference of flegs.
He’s a creature that unionism just can’t fathom and I wonder if this induces fear?
He was spot on with my caricature though…
All I can say is you didn’t see how unflattering Brian’s portrait of me is. He’s a very articulate commentator, well worth following.
I know.Actually I’m much uglier than his sketch…
No need for false modesty Jude ; )