When the knell sounded for the melancholy death of Little Nell at the tale end of The Old Curiosity Shop there were contrasting reactions from two fairly well known Irish celebs.

The normally stoical Oscar Wilde could not control his tears:

– ‘One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without dissolving into tears…of laughter’.

While the judgemental  Daniel O’Connell, who had a fetish about having mean, oops, main streets, talked up in his memory,  famously burst into tears at the finale, and threw the book out of the window of the train in which he was travelling. Tears this time, of mournfulness, perhaps even the angllicised tears of anguish Il Duce of De Bog Oak Monolith refused to shed at the ‘demise of the despised language of the Leprechaun’.

The blues he oozed on this occasion during that train journey are said to be the same shade of blue favoured by his saintly latter-day camp followers, Les Chemises Bleues of Le Chemin de Fer.

It is little wonder that plaques mark the Georgian houses wherein that contrasting pair once did dwell in Dublin’s fair-sized city – at (gulp) diametrically opposite ends of Merrion Square.

(Speaking of railways, Oscar Wilde was actually born around the corner across the street from the train station of Westland Row. It is not unimportant to bear this in mind or else nothing will come of this, The Perkin’s latest think piece on things pink – see far below).

One had one’s Little Nell moment very recently while browsing through ‘ The Old Curiiosly Talk-Shop’ which is a synonym of The Unionist Times on account of that organ’s marketing slogan:

-Wherein the Nation (!) pauses to have a Conversation !

It was the following article of faith which caused The Perkin to be convulsed in a contradictary paroxysm of first draft sorrow and a little later, for afters – laughter:

Hugh Linehan: Is it time for publicly funding serious journalism?

The lugubrous glub-glub subheading of which was:

-Threat to public-interest journalism from market decline raises issue of State support.

In other words, yet another olagown from an Anti-Social Media type about the those omadawns, the Social Media typos. If Dickens were to be called upon again, having already served his purpose well with Little Nell, then one might do worse than conjure up, as a sub-subheading to the Hugh boo-hoo piece:

-The Ghost of Post-Truth yet to come.

Inherent in Hugh’s views on news is that The Unionist Times represents the Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Fruity Truthness, as respresented, f’instance, by The Newt on goings down north of the Black Sow’s Dyke:

-‘In recent years, the Reuters report, which measures trends in media consumption across 70,000 people in 36 different markets, has become a grim almanac of the inexorable decline of legacy media – print, TV and radio – and the rise of digital and social platforms.

The Reuteurs Report shows trust in news higher in Ireland than international average.

(Section 31 mentality hasn’t gone away, you know).

The underlying reality is still the inexorable shift away from legacy media. Print circulation and advertising slip further every year, with little realistic prospect that digital revenues will make up the shortfall in the visible future.

(Legacy media on Liffeyside look good in lesser spotted Leo-tards).

 Partly in reaction to some of these trends, the last six months have seen a striking shift in marketing strategy by quality newspapers.

With taglines such as “The Truth is More Important Now Than Ever” (New York Times), “Democracy Dies in Darkness” (Washington Post) and The Irish Times’s “Facts Have No Agenda” campaign, newspapers are now aggressively promoting the idea that the services they provide are a public good, one that’s worth paying for.

(Never mind the quality newspapers feel the holy writ).

All of this is true, even if one might wish the argument had been made a little earlier in this existential crisis. But it raises an inevitable question; what then happens if, as seems very possible, the most optimistic projections for digital subscription numbers still aren’t enough to sustain that public good?

If public-interest journalism of this sort is indeed a public good, and if the provision of that public good is threatened by a market failure, then it is reasonable to ask what role if any the State might have in helping to remedy that failure.

-Facts have no Agenda !

Anybody who can rehash this tagline of TUT and still maintain a straight face (see snap which accompanies his article) reminds the reader that Hugh L is a born humorist.

But then it wasn’t off the newsroom floor that Hugh Linehan picked up his comic flair: his Mammy was Rose Linehan, the comedienne. Nor did she in her day pick it up off the green room floor, neither. Her Daddy was Daniel McMenamin, a F.G. TD for Donegal (1927-61). Now, anybody standing for the Blue Shirts on Mallon Head in the most northerly county in Ulster, never mind Ireland, must, by definition, possess a funny bone way, way above the ornery, honey chile’.

Unsurprisingly, long before such a sophisticated device as the breathalyzer was dreamed up, much less blown into, Na Gardaí Síochána of both Tír Chonaill agus Dun na nGall alike had devised their own fuel-proof dodge to detect the drunk driver, by requesting the suspect to roll down the window and (verbally) repeat:

-The Magnimity of Agememnon McMenamin.

Now, before proceeding further, it is well to note the Republic of Irony inherent in this rhetorical question of the Hugh Linehan headline. What is actually being pleaded for here is that the Tax Payer fund the non-paying Hacks of Serious Journalism (see under John McEnroe) in The Unionist Times.

TUT, of course, is where Brian Ó Nualláin, having licked the inky top of his right index finger, raised it high, and, having decided which way the linguistic winds of West Britannia were blowing, duly kicked his Leprechaun into oblivion and embraced the German Queen’s English. To a bottomless well of applause.

Meanwhile, the Brother, Ciarán O Nualláin, opted to stick with the plain Sister Language and to kick-start the Irish-language newspaper, INNIU, thereby condemning himself to a bottomless well of derision. Not least from the direction of BON and his fellow cronies of Anthony Cronin, not to mention BON’s newly cultivated puttee-clad butties in TUT. (Shapely legacy media is invariably puttee-clad, the better for the throwing of, erm, shapes).

All of whom locked charms to mock the subvention (meagre ) from the Tax Payer which ‘kept the holed boat of INNIU afloat for far longer than it deserved’. The same mentality which later was less than eager to give Peig Sayers a prayer. And which went on, btw, to kick-start that Homage to Hand-outery, Aon Dána.

(One couldn’t make it up, unless one was Anthony Cronin, of course).

To coin a phrase; le nath nua a bhualadh:

-B’shin INNIU, seo AMÁRACH / That was TODAY, this is TOMORROW.

Perhaps it is not inappropriate to pick one or two other grant-free rants at random from this week’s TUT and to present them in tandem with the critical piece by Hugh Linehan

(Which might have had as its tagline: ‘What ISIS is to Daesh, this existential CRISIS is to Dosh’).

-Facts have no Agenda !

Moving on so from the son of a comedienne we come upon this sit-down routine from TUT’s contemporary comedienne in rez: Una Mullaly. Not for naught is UM knows as Dame Olivia Goldsmith to her vast fanbase. One glance at the mousetrap snap which embroiders her column will indicate the reason:

-Well had the boding subscribers learn’d to trace
The daily’s disasters in her morning face;

According to The Una Mullaly Cathechism, the first commandment is:

-Thou, manperson, shalt not toss bouquets.

Commandment 2, goes:

-Thou, manperson, shalt not even dream of tossing bouquets.

 -‘Creepiness in action: Women need to call out this behaviour

Women should call out Donald Trump-type behaviour in their workplaces, writes Una Mullally

We saw his creepiness in action when he beckoned RTÉ Washington correspondent Caitríona Perry to his desk in what she rightly labelled a “bizarre” interaction while he was on the phone with Leo Varadkar. “And where are you from? Go ahead, come here. Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press. Where are you from?” Trump said, commenting on the “beautiful smile on her face,” as if Perry was a beauty queen in a lineup and not a seasoned professional.

One can’t imagine Perry’s predecessor as RTÉ’s US correspondent, Richard Downes, having his appearance and smile being commented on by a female politician in full view of the world’s press.

(The Leo, anyone?).

-Facts have no Agenda (quota) !

The Trump did not give The Hump to just the (gasp) Galiphate in TUT but he did likewise to the (gulp) Galiban, under the, erm, byeline of Tanya Sweeney:

Caitríona Perry not the first woman to smile in face of humiliation

Caitríona Perry quietly returned to her seat without reacting after Donald Trump singled her out for some seamy treatment.

In other words C. Perry did exactly what her inner Perry C enjoined her to do:

-Catch a falling star and put him in her pocket.

A true heroine:

Re-spect.

It would be redundant of one to quote too liberally from each of the representatives of the Galiphate and the Galipan as they appear in the organ of record, TUT as both are patently whinging from the same, erm, Him Sheet. Indeed, both together sound remarkably like:

-Concerto for two Wo-mandolins in G Major by Antonia Vivaldi.

Furthermore, if the Financial Times on the Mainland is printed on pink paper then the offshore Unionist Times uses the thinking reader’s pink ink, visible only to the minds’ Oye !

Such crass behaviour towards a lass, as they launch their twin hackette attack upon would never be tolerated in Tolerance Central, south of the Black Sow’s Dyke. EVER. Where the neo-greeting of love, respect and courtesy to the stranger on the street is de rigeur:

-Póg mo Zappone !

It would be a, erm, Himpossibility to imagine such crassness on display in the hallowed halls of, say, Government Buildings in Upper Merrion Street, Dublin 2. That is why it is vital to nip a document of crass nastiness which has been circulating of late on Liffeyside. In the bod, oops, bud.

It deals with an (alleged) outbreak of a lethal sub-topical disease in the same august edifice of Political Science.

-Fake News ! Pre-Truth !

-Do’mentia.

The imaginary outbreak is supposed to have occurred during the accoladed decades of the Eighties and the Nineties when the first (hitherto disappointed) Female Minister of State were appointed, and duly presented with their seals of office in the Phoenix Park. In Aras an Uachtarain and not the nearby Zoological Gardens (bark ! bark! ).

To give this hitherto undocumented outbreak of Do’mentia a veneer of truthineess, a gloss of supposed female bossiness, the all-male rumour mongers have been suggesting that his outbreak was deliberately suppressed by Galiban-cowed Government sources on the fact-based basis that the outbreak of Do’mentia was confined to a small section of the Department of the Taoiseach’s staff.

To wit, those who are cursed to plot their course through this vale of tears with one Y-front and one Y-chromosone.

Lookit, CCTV cameras (allegedly) documented this lethal outbreak of Do’mentia as follows:

As the newly appointed female Ministers of State swept up the ceremonial steps with an absence (total) of ceremony, all h. and bustle, grim brows knitted and weighed down with the self-importance of neo- office, click, clack, clickety clack, back to the office and the vitally important task of, erm, choosing the matching curtains and carpets for their neo-office, their arms full of the latest furniture catalogues from Switzers and/or Brown Thomas.

-Don’t mention it.

Became the reply du jour of the Dudes who soon became inured to having their gentlemanly gestures of holding the door open unacknowledged (utterly ) as the Misses Andrews (for it was they !) swept onwards and upwards with zipped-up lips to the ceremonial staircase beneath the celebrated stained glass window of ‘The Four Green Fields’ by Evie Hone.

-Don’t mention it.

And just as literary deconstructionists maintain that the Misses Andrews is an Elysian elision of (gulp) misandry in the plural so also do the etiquettists and other Y-fronted and affronted Yetis claim that (gasp) Do’mentia is a contraction of:

-Don’t Mention It.

(To be Cont.)