The Clockwork Chartophylax

Because I am a masochist, I stuck on RTE One last night, you know, to see how my licence fee was being spent. And I got a forceful reminder of how bad an idea that was in the form of two movements from the bowels of RTE Factual department.

First up – the Frontline, an avant garde faux-current affairs programme that uses the format of a day-time talk show to probe the pressing issues of the day with typically hilarious results. It’s presented by “Pat Kenny”, a monochrome computer-generated approximation of a human being whose heartbreakingly inept attempts to emote and empathise with real humans provides the comedic core of the show.

Last night’s topic was The Family. The panel featured Ivana Bacik, whose terrifying Ovaries and Dublin Liberalism took the combined bigotry of two male religious haters of The Gay to balance out.

Gay hater number one was David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, a Catholic think-tank that “promotes the place of marriage and religion in society”, that place being in your bedroom making sure you don’t do anything icky that that the Pope wouldn’t like. Quinn is a clever Pope-agandist and knows that the only thing liberals love more than The Gay is Evidence and all that stuff that god-botherers usually have no time for. So he was all about vague American studies that prove that kids do best if brought up in a family with a married mother and father who confine their carnal lusts to Jesus-approved sex acts. One of the studies was a study of studies (and so brimming with proofiness) by Childfriends, a “left leaning” American organisation so authoritative that even the Google can’t find it (though it’s possible that David Quinn’s idea of evidence for the excellence of godly parenting falls under the same category as his idea of evidence for god and that you have to believe really, really hard to see it).

Gay hater number two, Jim Walsh, a Fianna Fail senator (challenging Fine Gael’s lock on loony religious legislators), was entirely more traditional in his approach, eschewing liberal “evidence” for some good old-time crazy. The Civil Partnership Bill, along with the EU and UN, with their insistence on “human rights” and “equality” would lead to a “Totalitarian State” where civil servants could not exercise their god-given freedom to discriminate against citizens that they their god didn’t approve of. Discriminating against discriminators is discrimination squared, doncha see! Just to prove the point, poor Jim was then brutally oppressed by a lady former Supreme Court Justice who pointed out that giving officers of the state the right to discriminate against citizens based on personal prejudices might be a Bad Thing. This is nonsense, since every decent Christian knows that discrimination (esp. against The Gay) is not only Goodly, but Godly.

To round off the routine, “Pat Kenny” showed his remarkable verisimilitude to a real human being by attempting a bad analogy. He compared the herd immunity provided by vaccination to the “protection” that the existence of traditional married heterosexual families provide to the unfortunate spawn of other types of family. OMG – so if there’s not enough traditional families in the herd – we might all get the Gay-pox! Why do you want us to get the Gay-pox, Ivana Bacik? Why? WHY?

An ogre in the audience suggested that this was all part of the Gay Agenda, which seemed to excite him to a point not seen since he watched that episode of the Riordans where Benjy and yer wan were cavorting on the beach in Ballybunion.

The Gay Agenda, of course, wants to destroy heterosexuality by granting unmarried and same sex couples the same rights and freedoms enjoyed by married, heterosexual couples. Marriage is only good if it’s exclusive, you see. Without special incentives, men and women will no longer feel the God-Given, “Anthropological” and Wholly Natural desire to get a document from the state that legally codifies their relationship and magically transforms them into the most ideal type of parents possible. Why bother with procreation (ew!) when you can have sodomy and the Wizard of Oz 24/7?

The Frontline was a hard act to follow, but RTE Factual weren’t done yet. Their next offering of the evening was “If Lynch had Invaded”, a fascinating documentary exploring what might have happened if documentaries were shot by autistic 12 year olds with attention-deficit disorder and mobile phones.

The precocious filmmakers got most of their footage by stalking Keelin Shanley, an RTE “personality”, pursuing her relentlessly around the back streets of Dublin and London. In a series of queasily sensual scenes, the camera slewed drunkenly in and out of focus, crash-zooming into unsettling close ups of Shanley’s mouth as she purred the narration over her shoulder while desperately fleeing the tirelessly roving eye of her pursuers. There was also a retired army man driving around Newry in a Land Rover, talking about how hard the Irish army would have been fucked by the British if we’d crossed the Border in 1969, but he was boring. The camera only had eyes for Keelin, on the fleeting occasions it could get her simultaneously in focus and in frame.

“If Lynch had Invaded” was a daring and innovative piece of post modernism that was not afraid to present the viewer with absurd contradiction – RTE Factual filming an unwatchable television programme predicated entirely on a fictional event. Genius.

July 6th, 2010 | Tags: batshit, civil partnership, factual, Frontline, If Lynch Had Invaded, Ireland, Ivana bacik, Keelin, Pat Kenny, rte, Shanley, TV | Category: Ireland, Strangeness, TV, humour | Comments (1)

When you get the same message from across the political spectrum, it’s a sign that something real may actually be happening.

Liberal Glenn Greenwald:

It is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind — or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is — and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

People who feel weak and vulnerable crave strong leaders to protect them and to enable them to feel powerful. And those same people crave being part of a political movement that gives them those sensations of power, strength, triumph and bravery — and they need a strong, powerful, masculine Leader to enable those feelings.

Centre left and very angry John Cole:

I can’t believe our politics is so fucking stupid that the President has to bow to political pressure and give a big address from the WH about the oil spill. And then we can all wank about whether he was “tough enough on BP” or if he “showed enough emotion” or “took charge” or showed he was “hands on and in control.” None of which stops the fucking leak.

Of course, if anything positive was going to happen, Obama would have to stand up there and say “Those pelicans coated with oil and shrimp that taste like wd-40? You stupid motherfuckers can expect more of that until you stop voting for assholes who oppose alternative energy sources and any move away from fossil fuels. Until then, I hear dental floss works ok removing tarballs from your teeth, you dumbasses. Also, this response IS big government, you teabagging shitheels.”

(Actually sane) conservative Daniel Larison:

The comparison hadn’t occurred to me until today, but what is striking about the endless whining serious criticism concerning Obama’s response to the [Iranian] Green movement is how much it resembles the criticism of his handling of the Gulf oil spill in unreasonableness, pathetic need for executive activism, and overconfidence in the power of the Presidency. There seems to be no understanding that Presidents cannot address, much less solve, every problem that makes headlines. The U.S. government is not omnipotent, and Presidents do not work magic, but for whatever reason some people think it is reasonable to expect these things.

Just plain funny Wonkette:

“Al and Laurie went from friends to lovers,” an insider tells Star. “It couldn’t be avoided.”

That’s right, America: These things can never be avoided. If people could avoid doing bad things, well, it would be like we had free will and were responsible adults instead of bloated children having a tantrum because they can’t eat everything in Willy Wonka’s factory.

People are unhappy with Obama because he can’t Do Something to stop the BP oil spill, but People need to grow up and realise that the real world isn’t Independence Day, Armageddon, Air Force One or a bad Tom Clancy novel.

One of the most striking things about American political drama is how it treats the office of the president. They’re not merely elected officials in charge of one of the three branches of government, but Grave, Serious, Tough Men worth of respect and unquestioning loyalty. They are Commanders-in-Chief who can command armies and fleets with a simple wave of the hand. Alternatively, they are folksy men of the people, guys you’d have a beer with. Even the West Wing (which can hardly be put in the same category of shit as Air Force One) fawned over and fetishised the office, though it did at least make an effort to show the fallibility of the man behind the title. It’s no accident that real presidential candidates have increasingly been forced to adopt these fictional personas in order to win elections. But is should give some pause to consider that Julius Caesar was familiar and adept with all of these roles – the grave patrician, the triumphant imperator and the generous friend of the plebeians.

This kind of hagiography and cult of office isn’t healthy. A president is not an emperor, but a servant of the people. They’re not gods, but rather, from the evidence of the last 50 years, frail, fallible and sometimes corrupt and dangerous men.

In Rome, when returning generals paraded through the streets in triumph, a slave held a golden wreath above their head and whispered the words “remember, you are but a man”. Someone needs to whisper that in the ear of the American people.

Or perhaps they need to just switch off the TV and go out and play in the real world.

June 16th, 2010 | Tags: america, cult of the presidency, politics | Category: america, history, politics | Leave a comment

Fine Gael are putting on a great display of why Fianna Fail have been allowed to limp on in government despite having presided over one of the biggest economic collapses in the history of the State.

With a talent for grasping defeat from the jaws of victory that puts the US Democrats to shame, Fine Gael have picked the very day that Brian Cowan is standing up in the Dail to defend his record of mismanagement of the economy to assemble their own private circular firing squad.

For fuck sake, this is not rocket surgery!

Being in opposition means your primary motivation is to make the government defend their policies and decisions, especially when those decisions have proven disastrous for the country. Make them look like the corrupt buffoons they are.

This should not be difficult.

However, you do not inspire confidence in the electorate by looking like a pack of bungling twits who can’t score even with an open goal yawning in front of you.

Enda, Richard- it’s simple, FIRST the pointy end goes in the (fat) man, THEN it goes in each other’s back.

June 15th, 2010 | Tags: bruton, fine gael, ireland politics, kenny, leadership | Category: Ireland, Stupidity, politics | Leave a comment

No, seriously.

Irish Independent:

VATICAN investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests, the Irish Independent has learned.

Yes – because lack of a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics was the real reason why priests raped children and their superiors in the Catholic hierarchy covered up their crimes.

Priests committed heinous crimes; bishops and cardinals covered them up and the solution is to try to make congregations more beholden to the leaders that failed them on every level?

The Church’s solution to sweeping of child abuse under the carpet is to lay more carpet.

A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

Of course materialism and secularism are the real enemies of the church. They make people question the authority of the church and the ridiculous myths it peddles. They encourage the kind of independent thinking that brings people to report the wrongdoing of the church to secular authorities.

This has nothing to do with preventing child abuse. The church plainly doesn’t care about it. All it cares about – all it has ever cared about – is maintaining its control over the minds and purse strings of the populace.

Update:

And this is just creepily Wrong:

Archbishop Dolan’s address, titled “God is the only treasure people desire to find in a priest”, was the high point of the Irish church’s celebration of The Year of the Priest, a campaign to encourage vocations to the priesthood.

“The Year of the Priest” would be a great title for a horror film.

June 8th, 2010 | Tags: benedict XVI, catholic church, ireland child abuse | Category: Ireland, atheism, religion | Leave a comment