How to say “They’re doing well”, Sindo-style

Do you remember an election that received as little or at least as late attention as this one? It’s only now when we’re four days out from voting that the media have begun to focus.  Odd, that. Because many of us have an appetite for politics.

But here’s what  I was wondering: how will they handle the fact that Gerry Adams’s arrest seems to have boomeranged and his party is on something of a surge in the south? Well, the Sunday Business Post, to its credit, comes clean: people at their doors don’t seem interested in the Sinn Féin leader’s arrest. Some of them are even busier getting their photograph taken with Martin McGuinness, who’s been accompanying at least one southern candidate. But the Sindo  does different. It manages to concede that yes, Sinn Féin is doing well. But check their headine: ‘Adams Set For Biggest Act Of Escapology Since Haughey’.  See what they did there? They made it clear that Adams was a slippery customer, a wheeler and a dealer who deceives people the way Charlie Haughey did. All in one headline. You have to tip your hat to that.

Then we get down to it: Adams is “an old political revenant”  (it means a comer-backer, Virginia) with “a toothy grin” and  it talks about him being haunted by two ghosts:  Jean McConville and his brother Liam’s abuse. Did you think he looked haunted when he was released and gave that press conference? Have to say I didn’t. Someone – maybe Martina Anderson – spoke of it as a “Mandela-moment” which I thought caught the atmosphere rather well.

But back to the Sindo: “Even Bertie (and quite a few bishops) would be impressed by that level of Teflon” (The toilets are over there, if you feel you have to make a run for them). The public seem prepared, the Sindo  goes on, to “discount the sins of the past” the way they forgave bad debts. (No, Virginia, they haven’t got to the bit where they praise Adams’s peace-making work.) The voters, “agitated beyond reason”  have decided that “history is bunk – but only for some parties”. Unlike the Shinners, the Labour Party  are bringing such “tenacity”, “courage” and “blood, sweat and tears”, they’ve won  the praise of even their  political rivals. To coin a phrase: Wow.

And then it gets back to calling Sinn Féin names (always the mark, Virginia, of those who can’t argue a case on logical grounds). “The fanatic heart of the electorate has chosen the ‘Cinderella girl’ of Sinn Fein… while the pragmatic head is sending Brian Hayes along to do the heavy lifting”. Finally, the newspaper tries to get its post-election retaliation in first: “Sinn Fein is not at all fussy about what variation of political wife-swapping it indulges in. Just look at who its partners are in the North.”

Now. I bet you couldn’t have said “Sinn Féin look as though they may do rather well in these elections” with anything like the Sindo’s skills. But then, you weren’t expecting them to do other than what they’ve done, were you?