BEGIN   the   BEGUINE by Perkin Warbeck

The Great American Songbook, as most cultural commentators will assert, was largely the product of the Jewish woof in the American warp.

One of the notable note-perfect exceptions to this rule of strum and who brought his own, erm, Waspish buzz to the songbook was, of course:

-Cole Porter.

He was the Wasp who composed   the bee-loud lyrics of ‘Begin the Beguine’. Which would explain the second B. A Beguine, of course,  was originally a Christian lay woman of the 13th or 14th century living in a religious community without formal vows.

But in the creole of the Caribbean, especially in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the term came to mean “white woman”, and then to be applied to a style of music and dance, and in particular a slow, close couples’ dance. This combination of French ballroom dance and Latin folk dance became popular in Paris and spread further abroad in the 1940s, largely due to the influence of the Porter song.

(It also, incidentally, prompted the famous ballad of the Irish folk song revival of the 60s:

– ‘Give the white, lay Christian woman in the bed more Porter’.

Not to mention, in a roundabout way, the pub in Rathmines once named ‘The Coal Porter’).

That explains the second B: Beguine. But, how to even begin to explain, the first B ? Which is indubitably Jewish:

-Menachem Begin.

So where, as it were, to begin with Begin? Why not then with, say, Monday, July 22, 1946, at 12.37 in the wee small hourse of the afternoon?

As they say in a certain Bavarian town, once the first five o clock shadow has begun to fall, every decade and decade of the rosary:

-Tús Maith leath na hOberammergau.

For that was when M. Begin, lucky for once, put the Irgun right back into Israeli politics and bombed (spectacularly) the beHayses out of the King David Hotel in downtown Jerusalem, thus predating and (gulp) prototyping the blast which was to, erm, rock Brighton by nearly 40 years in the process. Likud or not, Begin went on, as PM of Israel, to swop the King David Hotel for the Camp David Accords.

Or, as a certain cultural commentator, as distinguished as he is disinterested, succintly put it recently, in the august pages in late July of The Unionist Times:

– Kevin Myers broke the only rule that matters – don’t pick on people who can answer back. Jewish people have learned from the most abysmal experiences to be alert to the tropes of anti-Semitism and to call them out when they see them. It’s a matter of survival. Myers was probably half asleep and wholly bored when he threw in some of those tropes to try to enliven the corpse of a moribund column.

Now Fintan ‘Intinn’ O Toole (for it is he! ) is not universally known for his Funny Bone but this thigh-slapper of a slap down of his former colleague in TUT serves to remind one that it is often only in extremis that the tough finally get going on the Gag Gig.

For,sadly, the doomed  Organ of Record (OoR Wooly Thinking Ink Link ) is, by its own admission, with its sales precipitously plunging like the Cliffs of Moher into the Ancient Irish Sea, currently operating:

– Under the Sword of Damocles.

Or, as the free-standing comedian FOT of TUT, the soon to be former pre-eminent thought-former of the Free Southern Stateen   and one who knows his onions when it comes to opinons, might pefer to put it, with a smile as wide as an Anglo-Irish mile on his distinguished and disinterested dial:

– Under the Sword of Damon Runyon.

So subtle, indeed, is the strain of humour in Fintan’s funny bone that it remains largely unknown. For, it is precisely what he does NOT say rather what he does say that contains the hayseeds of his hilarity. Much indeed like the orgy of narky corgis on the streets of Loyal Liffeyside : it is what they do NOT bark which is of the most interest to those who are engrossed in the uproarious.

That is but one of the umpteen reasons why Fintan ‘Intinn an Ghrinn’ O Toole is the current European Super-Heavyweight Champion of Commentators.

Re-spect.

That is why this Goliath of Grey Matter dumped on the disgraced Star of David, late of Kevin Street, not, thus: by ending his Torah-tinged tirade and Rope-a-Trope of the Leicester Bigot and the latter to be last seen galloping off into the sunrise of the East, before he, Fintan the Intinn, had (gulp) even begun to Begin.

Consider, for example: the reason why Menachem Begin chose the King David Hotel as a target, and which left 91 smithereened dead in a troubling pile of rubble. Not because the hideous nature of its neo-comtemporary architecture in Old Jerusalem made him narky but rather on account of Operation Agatha.

In a word, a s-word, indeed, the S-Word (see above):

-Survival.

There was no whodunnit mystery to tax the little grey cells about Operation Agatha (short for Agatha Christi, incidentally, for Latin was still mandatory on the curricula of those feeder schools for Sandhurst, Eton and Harrow). This Operation consisted of a series of anti-Semitic raids on the Jewish Resistance and was hatched from scratch by the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine and (gasp) Transjordan whose HQ was – mirabile dictu ! – in the spanking new King David Hotel.

Fine-minded Fintan, if his mood had not turned abruptly flinty and if he could but find the time in the Times, which alas runneth out, would mintuely explain that the reason why Mandatory was chosen by the British Overlords in the Meán-Oirthear was because the Fanatics of Fíor-Ghaeldom in the Free Southern Stateen had already cornered the market in the C-word:

-Compulsory.

There is an almost uncanny ring tone of familiarity about this prototype bombing by the Survivalists of the Irgun in 1946: the hotel manager was notified by phone and in the closing mintues before the explosion, he called an unknown British officer, but no evacuation was ordered.

Say no more, Seymour.

Archbishop O’Toole’s (of the Diocese of D’Olier than Thou) homily, which, erm, called the former Star of David out from the pulpit for his Anti-Semitism, appeared on Tuesday in TUT: it wasn’t till the Saturday that his second homily appeared, this time to shout out the misogyny of the Myresman.

Now, there are those cynics who will say that the second article only appeared after Una the Mull of Contrary over which the Gulls of the Galiphate hover, had applied all due pressure;

Fiddlesticks ! says The Perkin. The O’Toole is his own man; and besides, does anybody seriously believe that anyone, even one as formidable as Fintan the Intinn, could have endured four (F-O-U-R) full days of THAT LOOK before wilting ?

-Cead cainte ag fear caillte an chluiche !

Or as Fintan the Fanatical Monoglot of Mainstream Multilingual Europe, would translate, having first turned to his willing troupe of little elf helpers when it comes to the Leprechaun:

-Let the Loser lip it up !

Ri-spetto.

Over now to Our Kev, the Unhireable Hack of Myreland:

(Be still, one’s single headstrong heart !).

-I am the author of that article, I am the author of my own misfortunes, I am the master of my soul.

Re-spect.

-I must answer for what I have done.

(Throw that drowing man a trope !)

Meas.

-The manner in which I was disposed of was wrong. It could have been done more gently and I think I could’ve been treated better.

(In ainm Chroim agus Crumlin, throw that drowning man a buoy-lingual trope !)

Trua.

-I am issuing an apology for no other reason than contrition for the hurt I have caused them.

Urraim.

-I am a great admirer of the Jewish people. In fact, I think they are the most gifted people who have ever existed on this planet.

Urraim ghorm.

But, stay ! A weasel word or two before you go-go.

Most gifted people ?

Hmmm.

With a special gift, perchance, for planting spectacular bombs in high-rise hotels with, inside, high-ranking Blimps in limp handle-bar moustaches holding up the bars with pink gins in their paws and, yaw, blue murder on their imperial minds ?

Hmmm.

(Would you purchase a used platitude from this former hack with attitude ?)

In one of those quirks of fate, Our Kev (we know he’s actually THEIR Kev but still, old hairy twine habits do be dying hard) manages, with exquisite irony, to remind one of an old Gaeilgeoir (that’s racist for Lepreachaun Enthusiast).

Long before the Hired Hack of Myreland got his long overdue Shout Out for his debateable baiting of the Untouchables he had quite cornered the tolerant media market in Impugning the Little People with impunity. Hence, perhaps, the exquisiteness of the irony.

This Gaeilgeoir (beannacht Dé lena ainm agus a anam araon) is as long dead as the language itself, was a familiar figure about town in Céad Teanga Circles when the Leicester Bigot first eroded into Dublin during the mid-Sixties.

In the tightly knit and Aran knitted Godforsaken Gallimaufery (TUT-speak) that passed for impolite Gaelic Society on Liffeyside this galivanting gadabout of a Gaeilgeoir became known initially as Buail Isteach na Tairini (Hammer In the Nails). And not without reason. For he was always the first to volunteer to do the dirty jobs for An Chúis / The Cause.

If he had been a footballer – in fact as a lad óg, leadóg (tennis) was his game of choice – he’d have been the dude to win the dirty ball. His anomalous choice of ballgame ensured he cut a swathe through the anti-social circles of Gaeldom with his tennis sweater nonchalantly knotted around his waist, where his Aran crios should have been.

His most notorious stroke was setting off stink bombs at the equally notorious Manions House Meeting of 1966 by the LFM. This latter charming colection of Maniacal Monogltos, also logically boasted a zoological wing which was determined that dogs should mioaw, cats bark, horses moo and cows neigh. And the most prominent of the patrons of the cryptially named Language Freedom Movement, was one, John B. Keane. Who later, of course, went on to achieve a certain notoriety as the uncle of one, Fergal Keane, OBE.

With the passage of time this stinkbombing Gaeilgeoir’s mouthful of a sobriquet (Buail Isteach Na Tairni) eventually contracted to:

B.I.N.T.

(Do Chaoimhín)

Buail isteach na tairní,led thoil, gan trua

Déan ceap magaidh díom roimh an slua

Cothaíodh m’náire

Na rabhartaí gáire

Do mo námhaid Tagadh Lá an Bhua.

OUR KEV REVS UP

Yo, bro, before you could say Mo or Bo

Take your Corn Fakes befo’ you go-go

Bolt,dear dolt

Like a 45 colt

Farah way go with d’Leprechaun low-blow.