I’m sitting here this morning listening to the Nolan Show. It started with questions about the mockery of the Irish language by Gregory Campbell, but now we’ve a woman on complaining about the role of Sinn Féin at Rose Lawn cemetery. She says she has grandparents buried there, and the thought of ‘those people’ walking about…
I’m struggling to think what purpose all this serves. Everyone knows that Gregory believes the Irish language is a joke; everyone knows that unionists are angry that there should have been a funeral procession involving thousands of people at Bobby Storey’s funeral. What is gained by having people come on and comment on it from whatever point of view? It’s been done and done and done.
There’s now a man on who says there are far more important things for Nolan to be dealing with. Which is exactly what I was saying and thinking. But that doesn’t mean the issues aren’t important.
It comes down to this. Respect from unionism is virtually non-existent, except nationalists or republicans are prepared to accept their point of view on things, whether that’s the waste of money on the Irish language or the need to talk about Londonderry or this wee country or the Province or the need for Sinn Féin to be house-trained.
If anything should feature on Nolan, it should be how unionism can be convinced that respect and courtesy are in their own interests as well as demanded by civilized behaviour. Because every contemptuous turn of phrase adds another, what, 100 people to support for a united Ireland.
And if unionism had a sea-change and consistently respected things Irish, that’d mean a central pillar would have been removed from the Nolan show. And that pillar is? Mutual loathing. The Nolan show has descended to the point where it is of interest only to the kind of people who get goose-bumps pleasure from fox-hunting, hare-coursing and dog-fighting.
Comments are closed.