Humbly, the Perkin has an admission to make.
But first by way of a context : one of the most spectacular natural views afforded to the human eye on the island of the Ancient Order of Glibernia is one’s first glimpse of the Kingdom of Kerry.
The glimspse one gets after negotiating the endless, pentitential slope of the road from Abbeyfeale, West Limerick. Assuming one manages to escape the clutches of the local villain from Sive by John B. Keane:
-He’s as greedy as a sow
As the crows behind the plough
He’s the black man from the mountains, Seaneen Rua.
And after one takes one’s first lingering and awe-struck gawk at the distant, dreamy spire of Carauntoole one’s seoncd gawk might well be of a far more mundane sort , down at the sign below the car park of the vantage point, inicating: Crag Cave.
There be trogolydes. Indeed, Perkie’s inner trogoldyte feels as if he poking his head tentatively above the parapet for the first time in yonks to look southward at the distant, dreamy spire of Carauntoole in order to register his (gulp) agrement.
But, first, one needed to summon up the courage, that would be the MORAL courage (we’re very big on MORAL courage down here south of the Black Sow’s Dyke) , to do so. This quality one evenually managed to muster while undergoing a process of osmosis.
Which involved the immersion of one’s self in the subservience sauna of , say, the servile rugga hack about to write his latest sicko piece of forelock tugging on Drico, aka BOD who rhymes with GOD
A piece of a piece with all the fawning of a gaunt rickshaw wallah pulling the reader off on a free jaunt through the inner mindscape of BOD’s brobdingnagian brain.
In a word, the Perkin’s impertinent bog-standard trog (gasp) is in agreement with the latest homily from the highest and finest intellect in the Free Southern Stateen:
-WE ARE UNDOCCUMENTED BUT THEY ARE ILLEGAL !
There is a tacit racism in this appeal toTrump to make Irish migrants a special case.
When are immigrants illegal and when are they undocumented? Answer: they are undocumented when they are Irish and illegal otherwise.
This is a crude generalisation. But if we take speeches in the Dáil and Seanad as a sample of official discourse, “illegal Irish” has been used 120 times and “undocumented Irish” 491 times – more than four times as often.
Journalists tend to call anyone in Ireland without the proper papers an “illegal immigrant” while an Irish person in exactly the same situation in the United States is “undocumented”. Most of this is unconscious – but then racial prejudice usually is. And in the current climate we must honestly acknowledge that there is a tacit appeal to racial prejudice in the way we talk about this whole subject – and in the way the Taoiseach may well talk about it when he meets Donald Trump in the White House for St Patrick’s Day.
This use of language has always mattered because it exposes a double standard. The 50,000 or so “undocumented Irish” in the US are human beings. They have lives and families and friends. They phone home and our hearts lift at the sound of their voices. They work hard. They contribute to the economy and society. So what if they entered the US on a tourist visa or a student exchange and just forgot to leave? What harm are they doing anybody? They are Us. But all those other millions of shadow people? They are Them. At best, they are anonymous, interchangeable figures, seen out of the corner of the eye as they pick up leaves in a suburban garden, push trollies down hotel corridors, or gather our dirty dishes in diners. At worst, they are “bad hombres”.
We are not worthy.
Re-spect.
In a previous existence Fintan O Toole (for it is he !) wore the cloud-capped hat of the liteary editor to the Abbey Theatre (1990/1) . He left a Fine Gael, oops, fine legacy of lofty standards which were of an unusually high altitude: precisely 3,406 FOT high, indeed. FOT prints which can still be traced today:
Consider the following, from ‘Observe the Somme-odawns of Ulster’ by Frank McGuinness, a touching, feeling tribute to the Northern Yunes by a Southern Yune:
Pyper: Couldn’t watch them. Fenians, Gaelic speakers. They get everywhere. Even in the German army.
McIlwaine: No way. Not even the Germans would have them. Did you hear about this boy Pearse? The boy who took over a post office because he was short of a few stamps?
Millen: He did more than take over a post office, thebastard. Show down our men until he got what he was looking for.
McIlwaine: Let me finish. He was a Fenian, wasn’t he? No soldier. He took over this big post office in Dublin, kicks all the wee girls serving behind the big counter out on to the streets. When the place is empty, him and his merry men all carying wooden rifles land outside on the street. Your man reads the proclamation of an Irish republic. The Irish couldn’t spell republic, let alone procalim it. Then he’s caught, him and all land in gaol. He starts to cry, saying he has a widowed mother and he had led the only other brother astray. Anyway, he didn’t plan to take over this post office. He walked in to post a letter and got carried away and thought it was Christmas. Nobody believes him. They’re leading him out to be shot. He’s supporsed to see the widowed ma in the crowd. He looks at her and says, pray for me, mother. The ma looks back at him, looks at the Tommy, he’s guarding Pearse, the old one grabs the Tommy’s rife. She shoots Pearse herself. She turns to the Tommy and she says. ‘That’ll learn him, the cheeky pup. Going about robbing post offices. Honest to God, I’m affronted;. So you see, Fenians can’t fight. Not unless they’re in a post office or a bakery or a woma’;s clothes shop. Disgrace to the sex, the whole bastardin lot of them, I say’.
The above is an extract from the, erm, CENTRE PIECE of the Abbey Theatre’s commemoration of the 1916 Risible and we are indeed indebted to the then Bud Abbot, Fiach Mac Conghail, for this inclusive, nuanced and non-sectarian choice of a Major Dramatic Masterpiece.
But then, An Seanadóir Fiach Mac Conghail,Uasal would not have picked up his penchant for the Arustocracy from the box office:
-Maurice McGonigal, landscape artist and President of the RHA, begat Muiris Mac Conghail, Airbrush Stroker and Head of GIB (Government Information Bureau which later changed to Goverrnment Information Service for some feather-soft reason) who begat Fiach MacConghail.
Oberve etc was the august bench mark set by the Abbey Theatre in the month of August, 2016: can the same be said of the A La Cartistic Menu on offer in the Abbey Theatre for 2017?
Expectations had been so high when the Successors of Fiach Mac Conghail had been announced; as high as Ben Nevis itself. For the twa pair of wee bonnie laddies, who were picked to fill the seven league shoes shoes of FMC, Graham McLaren and Neil Murray, came trailing McCleods, oops, clouds of glory from the National Theate of Scotland itself, wha’ hae.
Clouds, in all probabiltiy, which used to drape the slopes of the Cruaghgorms themselves. Alas, how expectations have fallen, from the snowy summit to the labyrnthine depths of Loch Ness itself.
Consider it one will the progamme of 2017 recently announced by the Abbey Theatre.
- PERFORMANCE
3 MARCH – 11 MARCH
18 MARCH – 1 APRIL
30 MARCH – 15 APRIL
31 MARCH – 13 APRIL
1 APRIL – 14 APRIL
7 APRIL – 15 APRIL
22 APRIL – 20 MAY
30 APRIL
PANTI: HIGH HEELS IN LOW PLACES (THE LAST HURRAH)
22 MAY – 23 MAY
DUBLIN DANCE FESTIVAL 2017: SUNNY
26 MAY – 27 MAY
DUBLIN DANCE FESTIVAL 2017: DEEP DISH
26 MAY – 27 MAY
DUBLIN DANCE FESTIVAL 2017: DISPLACEMENT
1 JUNE – 3 JUNE
RTÉ ALL IRELAND DRAMA FESTIVAL 2017
10 JUNE – 17 JUNE
14 JUNE – 24 JUNE
24 JUNE – 22 JULY
5 JULY – 15 JULY
29 JULY – 19 AUGUST
1 AUGUST – 12 AUGUST
21 AUGUST – 26 AUGUST
R.U.R. – REASON’S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS
28 AUGUST – 23 SEPTEMBER
9 SEPTEMBER – 16 SEPTEMBER
THE SHITSTORM (DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017)
21 SEPTEMBER – 23 SEPTEMBER
TOMBOY SURVIVAL GUIDE (DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017)
3 OCTOBER – 28 OCTOBER
11 OCT – 21 OCT
JOSEPHINE K AND THE ALGORITHMS
25 OCTOBER – 4 NOVEMBER
7 NOVEMBER – 18 NOVEMBER
20 NOVEMBER – 6 JANUARY
30 NOV – 23 DEC
3 MARCH – 11 MARCH
There is, of course, one,erm, Monster-sized omission. Clearly then, a case of Them and US.
Yes, US. Have we compelled the wee new co-directors to conform to our own narrow-focused vision of life as we know it on Liffeyside? Have we compelled the twa bonnie laddies to ditch their most cherished artistic dreams and ambitions. Their inner US, as it were:
-Their Ulster Scots.
Clearly this is a question of such quantity that it would take only a quality mind to query its full implications.
Time, perhaps, to call upon the Lionel Nessi of Liberal Thought in the Free Southern Stateen to take a suitbaly aerial view of this matter from the aerial heights of the eponymous (a daarlin’ word, Joxer) Caraountoole.
But first:
Cliché Number 467 of Classic Movie Clichés, goes as follows:
‘A cop calls his superior officer on the phone and will say ‘I think you’d better come and look at this sir’;, without telling him what he’s found. The senior officer, despite being three hour’s drive away, won’t ask what it’s all about, but will instead, say, this: ‘I’d better be worth it, Makowski’
The Perkin’s inner Office Makowski modestly requests of Superior Intellect Commisioner O Toole to come and take a look at the above Abbey Programme and divest it of its any cultural shabbiness.
Now, this Look-see might take a wee mickle and dime more than even our ain folk might expect. After all, it is a guid bit syne since FOT donned the motley. Besides:
Confucius say: Three minute journey can take longer to make than three hour journey . All depend upon Destination. If, say, Destination is Dolly P. then three hour journey a doddle; if however, Destination is the late, grating A. Dworkin, whose displacement was reckoned to be equal that of of Titanic (52, 310 tons) then three minute journey take longer, much longer.
Nonetheless , the wait will be well worth it. And the Perkin will be more than happy to wet his thrapple with a wee dram or three in celebration.BALLYTURK
-A wee deoch an’ doris all roond, Harry !
-LAUDER !
-A WEE DEOCH A’ DORIS ALL ROOND, Harry !
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