POL and other LOBSTER POTS by Perkin Warbeck

There is a seanfhocal/ wise old saw in Leprechaun which goes:

-Is fánach an áit a bhfaighfeá gliomach.

Literally, it translates as:

– ‘Tis a quare ould, rare ould spot entirely you might stumble on a lobster, like.

Or, as the noted epigrammatical dude, Chuck Berry, succintctly put it:

-You never can tell.

One was reminded of the proverb of Paddyland while eyeing down the POL (CORRECT) editorial in (gulp) The Unionist Times the other day. Humour is not the H-word which one normally expects to encounter in that rostrum of nostril-down nostrums. Which so likes to fingerwag at all sorts of ne’er do wells from morally deficient mobsters to Leprechaun-speaking lobsters.

-Catholic priests in Ireland: a ‘lost tribe’ – guilt by association is unfair and unjust.

Hmmmmm.

Can one detect the Alligators who allegate on the verge of sheddding a shedload of Crocodile tears ?

The kind of tears which never fail to bring tears of joy to even the grimest of gimlet eyes ? One can. One can, indeed.

Hark ! Sir Oracle is about to orate, so let no dog bark.

-Ireland’s ‘lost tribe’ of Catholic priests are traumatised. The contrast betwen the life of a priest who mostly entered more than 40 years ago and now might even be described as extreme.

Hmmmmmm. Ding.

-This is due in no small part to the scandal of child abuse in the Church and how it was systematically covered up by some bishops and religious surperiors.

Hmmmmmmm. Ding a ling !

(As C. Berry might put it- see above).

What makes that last line so thigh-slappingly hilarious is the boreen less taken, the line less spoken, to wit: not so much ‘how it was covered up’ but rather ‘how it was covered’.

As in:

-And how it was systematically covered by some media bishops and morally superior hacks and hackettes of the high moral ground.

What The Unionist Times (for it is ) has achieved in the last twenty years (in tandem with its broadcasting wing, RTE) has been a Tour de Force of Tagging , A Piece de Resistance of Pigeonholing, a veritable Masterpiece of Branding at which the Mandarins of Madison Avenue itself can only gulp and genuflect in wonder.

In short, by its systematic and selctive coverage, It has made Child Abuse synonymous with the Catholic Clergy as in a former era, the Hoover was made synonymous with the Vacuum Cleaner.

Re-spect.

In fact, re-spect is an understatement, and then some.

When one considers that while the Hoover Company had from an early stage always enjoyed an overwhelming slice of the vacuum cleaning market when it came to Child Abuse the Catholic Clergy ‘s share of that particular souk of shame was never higher in Ireland than …….?

Who knows, apart from The Unionist Times?

One suspects it differs not bigly from the statisticts in the USA.

Where, according to surveys conducted by the Washington Post of the 60,000 Catholic Clergy ordained over the last half century or so in that country , 1.5 per cent have been accused of child molestation.

That’s A for Accused.

The New York Times survey puts the percentage slightly higher at 1.8 per cent.

What percentages would they be of the geneal population ? To arrive at that figure one has two options:

-Do the Math !

Or

-Go figure !

Little wonder then that the Moguls and Mandarins of Madison Avenue get weak at the knees when The Unionist Times / RTE achievement of making Papist Priest synonymous with Paedophilia. Not least becasue this genericised trademark does not show the slightest sign of losing its potency in the near future, oops, any time soon.

Inside every other vacuum-cleaned cub-reporter of The Unionist Times/ RTE Axis there would appear to be a, erm, J. Edgar Hoover attempting to escape, bigly.

Thus do the Uriah Heaps of Hackery on Liffeyside not only give us all a hilarious lesson in handwringing but in the process by making Papist Priest and Paedophile the equivalent of each other lend a whole and unholy new dimension to the concept of, erm, The Penal Laws.

Now, where did one leave that recipe for lobster bisque?