"Stick It Up Your Whats-It, Mr. Obama, Frankly" And Other Country Wisdom

"As a species we are fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room and we start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Next thing we invent politics and religion."
- Director Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's "The Mist"

By Charley Brady

Now as anyone who reads this column regularly knows, I am the most placid of men. I love almost everybody who has a pulse. I am a loving person who will not hear a bad word said against anyone unless it's me. What can I say; it's in my nature.

Coming after my warm regards to the Queen of Britain and Northern Ireland last week I should be giving an equally warm welcome to Ireland for the flying visit of Obama Barack; but I just can't be particularly bothered.

He won the hearts and minds of all those that you would expect to be won over by a flying visit, said all the right things (many of them so corny that I almost believed him) and then took the first flight available in order to get on to the next whistle stop in his tour of Europe.

I don't know what it is about that guy, but he just gives me the shivers; and not in a good way.

There he was flying through every arrangement as fast as he could. Yet he gave the feeling that he was spending time with people instead of what he was actually doing, which was moving faster than the proverbial one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

I'll get back to him later and in the meantime try to figure out why I just don't trust the guy farther than I could throw my sainted Aunt Mavis, and believe me that is a big woman.

I want to talk about this, first.

We've known for some several years now that all of our previously, don't-say-a-word against them hierarchies were liars and organisations that looked down on ordinary people as if those people didn't have the basic intelligence to know that they had been lied to and spoken down to.

I'm talking of the swinish politicians who took what was an honour to have been elected by those same people and turned it in to a money making exercise in fraud, cynicism and a way to feather their own already opulent nests.

Or the Catholic Church, that to this day goes around collecting the money off saps in their little collection boxes in order to first fund and then pay for the transgressions of the greatest paedophile rings that have ever been created: a group of people led by a past-it Pope like Benedict who has the temerity to give approval to an inquiry into the spread of AIDS and yet who will not even yet suggest that maybe condoms might be a good idea.

Lawyers we gave up on a long time ago. We always knew they were mainly sharks that would take the hand off their own grandmothers. That we don't trust lawyers comes as no surprise to anybody.

Just to go off on a tangent from this. At the weekend we had "celebrity solicitor to the stars" Gerald Kean here having his home robbed of jewellery supposedly worth €1.5 million and horror of horrors, it doesn't even seem to have been insured.

That doesn't make it right, Gerald. Your home should never have been invaded and your fiancee Lisa Murphy should never have been put at risk. No one would ever wish that on you, no matter how irritating your smug face is; but if you go on flaunting your wealth for years as you have been doing and rubbing it in the noses of people who have bugger all by appearing in magazines to show off the mansion and ostentatiously, not to mention vulgarly having every gaudy party you throw photographed in every paper you can lay your hands on then I guess that you shouldn't be too surprised when the bad guys eventually say: "Oh, I'll have a bit of that."

When the scumbags who robbed you were screaming at Miss Murphy to give them "Gerald's" and Michael Flatley's ring (Lisa Murphy's previous fiancee) they seemed to think that they were on first name terms with you, so well have you advertised yourself.

Hell, there are people in this country far richer who manage to keep their private lives under the radar by showing a bit of discretion.

Having been robbed myself - smaller scale, obviously - of course I sympathise and am profoundly glad that no one was seriously hurt and maybe this is a bit harsh; but it's just a thought.

Anyway:

As to the crooked bankers, well, I don't suppose that any of us ever expected any of that shower to do time. This is Ireland, after all. The only people who do time here are people who have been caught cleaning windows and doing a bit of bar work on the side in order to make the increasingly far apart ends meet.

So no, anyone living here doesn't really expect there to be much chance of any of the real crooks going to jail.

With all faith in politicians, bankers, organised religion and solicitors, not to mention the Health Service having gone sailing down the Swanee, you would think that at least we could expect the police to be held responsible for wrong-doing. Well, that one took a swim this week as well.

On Thursday May 26th we saw Garda Dean Foley being given an eighteen-month sentence for assault. Addressing the Cork Circuit Court, however, Judge Sean O Donnabhain said that he should serve no more than six months since he would, being a Garda, be in solitary for most it.

While off duty, Foley had administered an appalling beating to Stephen Murphy, who had made a drunken remark that Foley's brother was wearing a "gay shirt". For that he was left with fractured cheekbones, a broken nose, smashed teeth and bleeding to the brain.

Now I don't know, but I'm pretty damned sure that if it was myself or any other ordinary Joe Soap who had beaten a man unconscious and left him with injuries like that, we would have had the book thrown at us.

Yet on Friday, just the next day, it got even worse when it was decided to release Dean Foley all together!

Arguing for the defence, Donal Sullivan BL pointed out that a prison sentence for Foley would be much worse because he was a cop. Well, he should have thought of that before he went berserk. Mama Mia! Surely I can't be the only person who believes that if you are sworn to uphold the Law and then behave like a wild animal on your night off, you should be treated even more harshly - not given one night in jail and told that you are out of work.

One thing that struck me about the defence was that Sullivan BL mentioned that along with foreign nationals "a period of sentence is more difficult" for a member of the Garda Siochana. So if you are foreign and you commit some heinous crime we are expected to go easier there too? What the hell is happening to this country?

Mysteriously, the learned Judge said that: "We are in a completely different place today than we were yesterday."

Now do you know something? I have absolutely no idea what that means. None at all. What had changed overnight that an 18-month sentence, already reduced to six months could so quickly be suspended in its entirety. Well, except for the harrowing ordeal of spending a whole night in jail, that is. I just don't get it; and I don't think that anyone else does either. Not even the gardai themselves. In fact you can't even blame them as a whole. I'm sure that they know that this kind of "one rule for them and another for us" kind of thinking won't make their jobs any easier.

Back to the countries most famous Irishman, President Barack Obama: I still haven't quite figured out why I don't trust him. It has to be more than his sickening and triumphalist appearance at the site of the Twin Towers a short time ago. Maybe I've just become so jaded that I find it hard to believe that anyone who presents themselves as so bloody squeaky clean is the real thing.

Whatever it is, I found myself laughing whole-heartedly at Mary Murray of Moneygall, where the President's ancestors supposedly came from.

In the 2006 Census there were 298 people living there, although I believe it has since gone up to 350 and all of them were on the street cheering Barack "I've come home" Obama. Well, all but Miss Murray, that is.

Even though free paint and stuff to beat the band was being given out to the residents in order to have them give their residences a lick of paint and generally spruce the place up for the appearance of the great man, Mary, who runs an army surplus store was having none of it.

"My house has never been painted, it's 200-years-old," she said. "I had three deputations that tried to force me to paint it but I refused."

God, I just love people who take the contrary view, just love them, but when you listen to her I think that you have to admit that she has a point, apart even from the simple right to be an individual in these ultra- conformist times.

Commenting on the fact that residents had to wait for six hours in order to get a ticket that let them stand in their own village she said: "As the day went on, I talked to residents, elderly residents that had been waiting four hours for tickets.

"There were four people from Offaly County Council but no one was organising the queues, they were allowing the strangers mix with residents so everyone had to queue.

"In the hour I was there, we moved two yards, so I said, 'You can stick it up your whats-it Mr Obama, frankly', because I don't care one way or the other, there's live streaming on the internet that's just as good.

"We've had this for months, tearing up the paths and putting them down again. People sweeping paths when they don't need to be swept. Copious amount of drink until 2am and then they come slamming the doors. I haven't had a proper night's sleep in I don't know how long."

As a result of exercising her freedom of choice this obviously dangerous and subversive individual was placed under armed guard in her own home.

"I'm a resident here and I have to be under house arrest because I choose not to leave my house on Monday morning.

"We are supposed to be taken from our houses, searched and moved up the street and told to stand there. It's going to be cold and windy and sure I could watch it on the TV if I want.

"If I stay in my home I have to be under armed guard and that's what I'm going to do."

I'm sure that she will be put down as a mad, grouchy old spoilsport, but in a world of sheep I just want to applaud her. 'Way to go, Miss Murray!

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net