Anam an Diabhail ! Arch-Anglophile Fintan O Toole has become quite the model of a modern Anglophobe of late.
Deora Íosa ! Tree-hugger O Toole morphs into Slugger O Toole. His latest lash at ‘D’Auld Enemy’ took the form of nutting both BoJo and Dav under the head-banging heading: Britain has gone to huge trouble to humiliate itself.
It’s almost akin to an ersatz Morris dancer, dispensing with the bell-pads on his shins, straw hat, wooden clogs, knee-length breeches, rhythmic stepping, ooh-arr, ooh-arr and stick waving (Continuity Stickies favour this wave-friendly item as a tool rather than coloured streamers) and, in their stead, donning his Aran crios, steel-shod glossy shoes the better to welt the flure while céilí dancing ‘Caidhp an Chúil Aird’, ‘Ballaí Luimní’, ‘Ionsadh na hInse’ agus ‘Tonnta Thóraí’ over the political grave of the Tory Party on the Mainland.
Éist:
– Has any country ever gone into international treaty negotiations hoping to emerge with a status generally inferior to the one it already enjoys? What do we want? National humiliation. When do we want it? Now.
(One cannot wait for the treatment of the affected FOTUS, as he is affectionately known to both friend and fiend alike, Fintan O Toole Uber Shoneen, of the Treaty during the Centenary of Same : Immediate and Terrible Humiliation here we come ! Assuming, of course, there’s isn’t a referendum before that on the use of FOTUS as a term of fatal endearment)
This Linguistic Lapdog with the Laptop has only turned to biting the bulldog of Britannia in recent times in The Unionist Times. This is a line taken at random-diddlee-aye-dye from the incontinent jottings of our intercontinentally-acclaimed swot:
-And Irish nationalism cannot be Gaelic, either. The burning desire to be “not merely free but Gaelic as well” spluttered out when it became official policy.
(Just like that ! All hail the Tommy Cooper of Shoneen Souper Stardom ! With one sleight of his bony-fingered hand the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history– dating back centuries to the old folk of Ogham inscriptions – splutters out in a nano-fraction of a sorrowful decade).
Ach fan/ But wait ! In fairness to the son of a fare-collecting bus conductor (FOTUS never wearies of reminding his audience of his ‘umble roots in Crumlin, D 12 and how far upstairs he has riz in the overall housing scheme of things: lest we forget ! lest we forget !) there follows a stoat of a sentence filled to the brim with weasel words:
–The Irish language remains a crucial touchstone of Irish identity and it should be supported and embraced.
(Nice to Saoi you, to Saoi you nice ! All hail the Bruce Forsythe of An Bhreatain Thiar ! Chin Féin abú !)
Míle buíochas, FOTUS, níl an géilleadh Gallda seo tuillte againn ! Nílmid maith go leor !!
This most gracious of concessions does not come unflagged (be it with a Butcher’s Apron or a Stand Alone St. George). Recently, FOTUS referenced the only county with a F-initial: Fermanagh. Some misguided readers cast him in the role of a latter-day Lord Brookebrough. For the younger reader with a hunger for deleted history, that’s the good Lord who wouldn’t have woodkernes aka Taigues about the place: ‘No cattle houghing by Roman Catholics here !’.
FOTUS aka Lord Bookborough, on account of the libraries he has devoured, is no Fermanagh Feudal Lord. With oodles of nous, he is far too enlightened for that.
When FOTUS, f’rinstance, was appointed by the powerful Twin Towers of The Unionist Times and The Royal Hibernian Academy to be the editor of a down-home tome called ‘Modern Ireland in a 100 Artworks’ he himself concentrated on the literary end of things. Well, in the main, in anyways. He made sure to barnacle himself to the glitzy part of the literary art.
For the near negligible Gaelic end of literary things he did allow ‘Taigues about the place’ and so, subcontracted that distasteful, diss-worthy bit of light lifting to happy-clappy helpers from the Leprechaun camp.
Little wonder then that a favourite mantra of FOTUS is ‘Things go better with C.O.K.E.’ (being a hack’s acronym of Chums of Compulsory English) on the basis that ALL plum jobs in the Free Southern Stateen go to these same Chums.
Nor is FOTUS not known as the Earl Grey of Grey Matter for nothing, so clever is he. (Crumlin-speak: Janey mack, he’s brainy). His powerful, notion-about-the nation-moving intellect has been likened to a Caterpillar Tractor. Mar sin, tá cúiseanna difriúla le dealramh go bhfuil an teideal Fear Buí tuilte ag FOTUS. In fact, he is the only man in captivity to actually know the words of the Humming Chorus of Madame Butterfly.
Hmmmmmmm.
–Britain has gone to huge trouble to humilitate itself.
Hmmmmmmm.
Ceist: An bhfuil monaplacht ar an bhféinuirísliú ag an Mhórthír? / Does the Mainland have a monopoly on DIY humiliation on the periphery of Europe West ?
There used to be a Blueshirt slogan back in the day of the spluttering decade which went:
-We hoped for Utopia, but all we got was Dev’s Myopia.
Hmmmmmmm.
Perhaps it is time for the Bruce Forsythe of An Bhreatain Thiar to be less far-sighted and fixated on the Mainland in dissing Dav. Time, maybe, for FOTUS to try a little myopia a la Dev. Become a founder, say, of the Myopia 2 movement, that sorta thingy.
FOTUS, f’rinstance, might look nearer Ogham, or indeed, nearer Holmes and pose (while posing -left profile, please ! – for the cameras) the question about (gulp) The Linguistic Lapdog which failed to bark. Even as Occidental England went to huge trouble to humiliate itself.
There is no (Pat) shortage of hilarious samples.
Tuilleadh le Teacht / To be Continued.
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