The little two-horse race for the Politburo Vision Contest 2017, aka The Blue Note Blue Shirt Liedership, would appear to have been whittled down to one: Leo Varadkar is odds on to become the numero uno of the Neo-Ireland with Simon having no hope now of ever rhyming with Prime Min.
Especially with Simon Harris rowing in behind Simon Coveney: that was the final cough in the ailing campaign of The Covey from Cork . The Simon Community resembled nothing so much as a a soup run for soupers, an oxtail race to the bottom of Fine Gael rather than a genuine hop, step and hump the rump to the Top Spot of Fine Gay, aka Na Léinte Gorma Nua.
The healthy, w. and w. Dr. Leo was very early out of bed in the Politburo Vision Contest all of two and a bit years ago when, on the two-bit Mimsy O Call-Again Radio Show on RTE, he, without a yea, nay or fey came out of the Closet which had been thoughtfully positioned in the Donnybrook studio, unknown to an oblivious listnership. Not so much Bush House, as Ambush House.
To the evocative and discreet strains of Dmitri Shoshtakovich’s masterpiece, Romance from the Vradfly, did Leo essay this political gesture of rare political courage, a gesture virturally unknown in the public life of the Free Southern Stateen
For he did so, in the full knowledge, that said egocentric exit from the Closet placed him in the eyes and ears of the commentariat of Neo Ireland above and beyond criticism. He knew, by doing so, he would be a shoo-in in the event of any race to replace the boyish face of – the anchor aweigh ! – Enda K.
For in the FSS there is a tacit agreement among the Basset-hounds of broadcasting, those watch dogs of the fourth estate, that Closexiteers are exempt from all sneers, jeers and clunky changes of gear and deserving only of hear, hears, cheers and an endless supply of free craft and draught beers.
In this particular instance, immunity from random badmouthing from the mono-minded media travels in tandem with utter impunity for any Vradmouthing which Leo himself might choose to,erm, utter.
Thus, south of the Black Sow’s Dyke one is likely to find that words such as heterophobe or misandry are about as sparse in the parsed pages of the pluralist press as, say, pioneer pins and Fáinnes are in these latter days on the saintly yet tainted lapels of them boys with no a. in their corduroys.
Populism in the FSS is actually a pronounced fopulism: whch is a synonym for popinjayism. For the best defintion of the latter it only takes a sneak peak at this piece of out-speak from the hotshot Hotspur in Henry 4 Part 1 by the Great Shakes:
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new-reaped
Showed like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
He was perfumèd like a milliner,
With many holiday and lady terms
He questioned me; amongst the rest demanded
My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold —
To be so pestered with a popinjay! —
Out of my grief and my impatience
Answered neglectingly, I know not what —
He should, or should not — for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman
. . .
So cowardly, and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier
Leo’s partiality for Russian composers was no coincidence: it becomes one who is perennially in a rush: early to bed, early to rise, that sorta thingy. For before courting the Free Southern Stateen version of populism he had had already been associated with the exotic, if not the erotic, courtesy of his first signature tune:
-Song of India by Rimski-Korsakof.
This melody was first heard in 1896 in the opera Sadko (it rhymes wth Vradko) . In 1937 it was recorded by Tommy Dorsey as an instrumental number featuring Bunny Berigan on the trumpet. Thus, was a jazz standard born.
This morphing by Dorsey of a song from one musical mode into another came easily to the Penyslvania- born band leader: Dorsey as a name emerged from the original Irish surname, erm , D’Arcy.
While there were those cynical, one-note tootcawans (alas, there are always with us ) who decried Leo’s decish to announce himself as a Closexiteer as a cynical move to guarantee himself an easy road to the top , a calculated case of ‘2 Much Intel’, The Perkin is, happily, not one of them.
For he recognised, as indeed did Vrad the Plenty, the alumnus of King’s Hospital School in Dublin 20 who became first a Medical Doctor before graduating in Political Science, that this uniqe quality of (gulp) exotic erorticism, far from guaranteeing him eventual success, could well turn out to be a (gasp) double-edged sword on the sward of Leinster House.
No better man nor Dr. Leo to recognise that no amount of ‘holiday and lady terms’ from the vocal organs of one who ’is perfumed like a milliner’ even in the fopulism-friendly Free Southern Stateen aka the Rainbow Republic, will overcome that particularly invidious C-word:
-Complacency.
For Dr. Leo’s medico/political instincts recognised Complacency for what it was:
-The B.O. and Endo of one with ambitions to taligate the endomorphic Enda into Taoiseachdom.
(Settle, Petal, Leo is about to show his heavy-metal mettle).
If that is where his unparalled act of political courage manifested itself then, he showed his remarkably tight-fisted grasp on the zeitgeist in this week of the Manchester Bombing when he dissed those blaggards who are Hoist with their own Canard:
-Sinn Féin are the single greatest threat to our Democracy !
Thus, proving as if proof were needed that he is singularly well-endowed to lead a stateen whose morally superior media were speedily off the mark with an encyclopedia of on-the-hoof historical precedents from, the Manchester Outrages of 1867 all the Fenian way to Warrington, Birmingham, Omagh, Claudy and La Mon to Hyde Park, Arundel, M62, Guildford etc etc etc , that limitless litany of Britony blasts from the past.
It was left to another Kenny, the acclaimed agenda-free broadcaster to bring this part to a suitable enda, when Pat (for it is he !) opted to avoid the patently obvous which he considered far too, erm, pat:
-Here in Dublin, of course, we had our very own Manchester when we had ……….. The Stardust.
(To be contd.)
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