You’re probably familiar with bear-baiting. It was very popular in England from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century and was a simple sport. In an area called a “bear garden” (no, Virginia, not a beer garden) a high circular fence was built, and then raised seating provided for the spectators. The bear would be put inside the fence and chained by the leg or neck; then a number of well-trained dogs would be set on it. A man called Robert Laneham described it: “…With tending and proving, with plucking and tugging, scratching and biting, by plain tooth and nail on one side and the other, such expense of blood and leather skin was there between them, as a month’s licking will not recover.”
Of course they didn’t have TV back then, so they had to have something to look at. Our form of bear-baiting, when clinically done, is the political interview. We had a fine example a week or two back, when Mark Carruthers interviewed Arlene Foster on The View.
Carruthers didn’t attempt to bite or scratch the DUP leader, and she didn’t attempt to bat him off the studio wall. But metaphorically, it was a very bloody affair.
Mark Carruthers wasn’t always like this. I remember years ago suggesting to him that he might be tougher in his interviews, and he responding that his milder approach was just as effective. How the passing years change us all.
The main topic into which he bit his teeth with Arlene was the Brexit money which the DUP got and spent very largely on a full-page ad in a London newspaper.
Mark: Who had supplied the money?(Pluck,tug)
Arlene: a group called the Constitutional Research Council.
Mark: And could you give us the names of the people making up the Constitutional Research Council, apart from Richard Cook, the Scottish Conservative? (Scratch, bite)
Arlene: No, because the DUP acted in compliance with the rules of the Brexit campaign.
Mark: But why not reveal the names of the other members of the CRC? (Tooth, nail) What have you to hide? (Blood) What has the DUP to hide? (Skin).
After two minutes of harrying from Carruthers, Arlene’s serenity left the building. She looked and sounded like a tired, angry, nervous woman, a woman who was doing her best to keep a smile showing but who was inwardly clenching her teeth so tight, it’d have needed a lifting crane to separate them.
Three Arlene disasters in a row: Crocodiles, Blonde, and now the Dark Money. The DUP must be giving serious thought to getting the Fermanagh woman out of her leadership position; lSinn Féin must be praying they keep her in place.
Bear-baiting: a savage activity but compulsive viewing.
To the average Norn Iron DUP/Loyalist/Bigot Crocodiles, Blondes and Dark Money are of little significance. Be sound on the constitutional question, sneer at Catholic/Republican aspirations and eschew extramarital affairs and all else is of little importance. I think Arlene has got her bases covered …!!!???
I thought Carruthers did well questioning Arlene. Let’s be honest though, it doesn’t take too much to rattle Arlene and for her intemperate side to manifest itself.
Cal ,are you suggesting she has a temperate side. All I’ve ever observed is a very bitter person with deeply ingrained bigotry and a compemptous loathing for anything and everything Irish…..I could be mistaken ?
A senior IRA man was once asked back in the late 90’s by a journalist if Paisley was ever a target for the IRA. The IRA man responded: “Are you serious? He was our greatest recruitment tool”.
Arlene is similar in many ways to Paisley, maybe not in recruitment for the IRA (which is disbanded for the past 10-12 years) but she’s a great recruitment tool for getting nationalists/republicans out to vote. The last election proved it where the shinners got to within 1,000 votes of the DUP. Let that sink in: this time 20 years ago SF wasn’t even the biggest nationalist party. 30 years ago they were tiny when it came to political representatives. But yet today they are on the verge of eclipsing the largest Unionist party for the first time in the history of this state.
Arlene, in some ways, has been key to this. Her arrogant smirk, her “crocodile” remark and her obvious disdain for nationalism has got a lot of lazy nationalist backsides off their sofas and out voting. Arlene even voiced her “concern” at the numbers of republicans getting out to the ballot box. I would have thought the leader of a party that has “democratic” in its name would be pleased with more people getting involved in the democratic process….
Will the DUP keep Arlene as their leader? I think they have no choice but to keep her unless the DUP vote falls and they lose seats. The DUP cant be seen to be bowing to Sinn Fein demands that Arlene goes, even temporarily.
Three in a row, Jude?….I hope no one has forgotten the Soot For Loot scandal, which she presided over ,that delivered everything else which subsequenrtly followed….ach sure it’s only money….