Kerrigan’s a great writer regardless of his views. It could be argued that he legitimises the Sindo by staying there though.
While I would prefer if Kerrigan wrote for somebody else, somebody like him is hardly in the position to be throwing away a secure job. It’s not as if the ownership of most other papers on sale here is much better than the O’Reilly rags either. It brings us back to the debate the other night about the concentration of media ownership, which as you know yorself is the real issue.
Nothing really to expand upon but Lemass used to punt on tick like most big punters so would rack up hefty losses, bookies used to clamour for payment especially before an election and threaten to expose this to the papers if they weren’t paid what they were owed. The McGraths (massive beneficiaries of the Hospital Sweep Stakes scam) paid the debts for Lemass, a dig out if you like. Any bookmaker in his 60s or older would be able to tell you the same.
Do his crime books sell well I wonder? It’s a small job market anyway, even if it was ran by saints. As far as Kerrigan’s job goes you’d wonder about their attitude towards him. In terms of having a token alternative view they could get far less articulate lefties than him. Is it possible that being a sindo writer lessens his impact considerably? The typical sindo reader has to be either indifferent or unsympathetic towards his arguments. They must be, otherwise they wouldn’t continue to buy it. The type of people who like him as a commentator are people who wouldn’t buy the sindo in a fit. Surely the IT has a vacancy now for a writer like him. It might be too much to hope for him to take over in September.
Who will Sarah Carey write for now she’s fallen on her sword at the IT I wonder? I prefer fantasising about angry sex with her than reading her articles to be honest but I feel like I should be interested in her print media career.
I don’t think writing for the Sindo lessens his impact, in fact it may even strengthen it. He is a tremendous writer, it’s just that there are so few of his like around, that’s the real problem.
Too few of him are tolerated. He’s a token gesture. Madam Editor’s pending retirement is a hugely important moment for our national media. With the wrong appointment any remote hope of balanced journalism in this country is as good as gone. Even with the right one, the political discourse is so poisoned it’s hard to have much hope. Month by month it’s further right we go.
edit: on the extent of his impact; I know it’s an imperfect analogy but Robert Fisk’s impact increased immeasurably when he left the Murdoch controlled Times. A lone voice amongst a chorus of right-wing sycophants isn’t the better platform as far as I can tell.
Reading Fisk’s “The Great War For Civilisation” at the moment. He resigned from The Times when his report on the USS Vincennes shooting down the Iran Air passenger jet in 1988 was completely rewritten to absolve the US of any blame. And to think the vast majority of the public stil don’t have a clue what effect the agenda of an owner can have on journalism.
I don’t think anything before the Gaza invasion angered me as much as the description of the heroes homecoming the crew of the Vincennes received. IIRC the story was rejected outright rather than rewritten, on the completely farcical basis that it wasn’t ‘factual’ enough or something similar. Was is that story that only Vincent Browne would run or was that something else?
Fisk filed the story, it was totally rewritten but his by-line still appeared abve it. Every attempt Fisk made to ask why it was rewritten was met with complete obfuscation. Browne ran with the real story the next Sunday (seven days later, the shooting down happened on a Sunday morning).
How are you finding debating with the lunatics on Politics.ie by the way?
I only ever wander over there every 4 or 5 months. It’s not a bad spot. A good ratio of lunatics alright but what do you expect. There’s some decent content on there if you look hard enough.
I worked out last week that one of the conservative Catholic nutcases was somebody I know. :lol:
Yeah I would never bother engaging that sort of individual. As a general rule you should have a 90-10 percent ridicule-serious ratio. Particularly with the jesus crew. An enjoyable moment for me around the bailout time was when the national alliance thread was joined by a bloke claiming to be Marc Coleman. I replied to his ‘setting the record straight’ tirade with that ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ article which deflated him somewhat. Who knows if it was him or not but he made some fairly desperate attempts to explain it away then disappeared from the forum forever.
Actually sid, FutureTaoiseach the gay fascist is one worth looking out for. He’s a noteworthy wingnut.
[quote=“Watch The Break, post: 436210”]
Yeah I would never bother engaging that sort of individual. As a general rule you should have a 90-10 percent ridicule-serious ratio. Particularly with the jesus crew. [/quote]
Try drinking with them :lol:
I’ve gone drinking about 4 or 5 times with the chap wose identity I worked out. The last time I went drinking with him and a few other people including his equally conservative Catholic mate was about 3 and a half years ago. This chap puts pictures of Pope Benedict and pictures of obscure Catholic texts on his Facebook page FFS. Some of these lads are serious misogynists too.
There was about seven or eight of us drinking (not all conservative Cathilcs now), it was in a fairly well known Dublin pub, alright it was the Ginger Man. The conservative Catholic friend bought about 20 cans in anticipation of a house party afterwards. He left them under a traffic cone within sight of the smoking area at the front. Towards the end he goy talking to some other random punters. Without warning he punched the shit out of one of them and a couple of the other conservative Catholic nutters joined in.
After two or three minutes of this everybody came to the conclusion that it would be best to call it a night. I was just standing there in amazement at what was going on but all the while keeping an eye on the traffic cone. “What about the cans back in the house”, I asked. “Fuck it, we’re all going home, no party”, and they walked off. So I made for the traffic cone and put the cans into an orange basin which for some reason was lying nearby and lugged the 20 cans home on the Nitelink. It was only the next morning I realised there was blood all over the basin and the cans. I’ve no idea how the blood got there. Maybe it was the blood of Jesus.
I still drank the cans after washing them in holy water, well tap water.
I think he is anti-Israel at least, a looney otherwise.
I lived with a jesus freak for three months before when she was down doing a term in nuig. She seemed a bit odd from the off but I didn’t know she was into that stuff until she started telling me stories about a christian youth group she joined. She was initially quite enthusiastic in her tales about singing in circles and all the other shit they get up to but as much as I tried to mask my horror she got the message eventually. She also continually referred to going home for the weekends as going back to ‘Britain’ however which struck me as unnecessarily provocative as even if I didn’t care one way or another she wasn’t to know that. I avoided religion in conversation with her but in the end I snapped while reading some article about an anti-abortion group and I remarked that them religious cunts are the most sickening fucking hypocrites that ever walked the earth. I hadn’t intended to offend her but it just found a way out in the end. Anyway we grew apart after that and when the term was up it wasn’t a long goodbye. The moral of the story is to insult them immediately so that everyone knows where they stand.
Was she a bible belter from Ballymena or somewhere?
Something like that. She never referred to regions of the north by their presumably excessively fenian county titles so I forget exactly where she was from. She struck me as someone having a brief flirtation with liberal ideals such as human rights and the like but judging by her parents also firmly headed for hardcore DUP membership. On the grounds of morality if not British nationalism. A reasonably pleasant person but one holding extremely dogmatic views from which an rpg would be required to shift her.