The Ultimate Irishman

There’s a scene is Oliver Stone’s slightly overwrought (is there any other kind of Oliver Stone film?) biopic of Richard Nixon where, racked with guilt from his dark policy decisions, Anthony Hopkins’ Tricky Dicky ponders his legacy.  He looks at the sombre but heroic posthumous portrait of his nemesis John F Kennedy hanging in the Cross Hall of the White House and wonders why this privileged New Englander is so loved when the self-made Nixon is so despised.  He concludes that when they look at Kennedy they see who they want to be, but when they look at Richard Nixon they see who they really are.  The scene came to mind watching Charlie Bird’s profile of Tom Crean last week.  Crean, the man we want to be; Charlie Bird, the man we are.  Thankfully the analogy doesn’t hold up. Looking at the slow motion car crash that was Charlie Bird’s disturbingly intimate encounter with a pair of louche seals, the only consolation was the singularity of Charlie Bird.  The scene didn’t represent anything but the strange interior life of Charlie.  The highlight of the show was a brief interview with Tom Crean’s daughter who described a man who was reassuringly Irish, endearing and ordinary.  He handed over all his pension money to his wife, holding back only enough to buy a pouch of tobacco, he called his daughters the “lads” and was clearly a loving father.  Take away the super human achievements with Scott and Shackleton, he was a simple, uncomplicated man and, I suspect, probably a very smart guy into the bargain – if not the ultimate Irishman, definitely the ultimate Kerryman.  There’s a great picture of him in the crowd as the Scott expedition set off in October 1911.  Each weather beaten face carries the seriousness, and in some cases the fear, of men who know exactly how difficult a task they have set themselves.  All except Crean, smiling from ear to ear through his clenched pipe.   What Irishman doesn’t want to be that guy?  But it’s true he was only plucked from obscurity by a Guinness ad, forgotten for most of the last eighty years.  Commentators put this down to Crean being a Royal Navy officer, and the sensitive attitude to service for the crown in the early days of the independent Irish state.  The association with Scott might have been problematic too, for if Crean is a very Irish hero then Scott has to be ultimate English hero - the turbulent Romantic behind a stiff upper lip. The reality may have a more mundane explanation.  Many of our heroes come from a single narrative – the fight against the English.  So much so that some don’t believe there is anything else to being Irish than fighting the English or writing poems and songs about fighting the English.  In that context, a polar explorer is simply an irrelevance. This week we had an exhibition in Derry by some people who continue to believe that the defining characteristic of an Irish man is to fight the English (or more specifically, murder an Irish policeman in cold blood). Now I don’t go in for expressing political views on this blog but condemning this lot isn’t so much a polticial opinion as a simple confirmation of one’s sanity.  These idiots, whatever they call themselves, Continuity IRA, Real IRA, I Can’t Believe It’s Not the IRA would be laughable if it wasn’t for the family mourning a son in Tyrone.  They’re trapped into an incredibly narrow definition of Irishness which necessitates hating most Irish people.  They have their ideals of course, but so did Fred West. No, Tom Crean’s my nomination for the ultimate Irishman.

Census 2: Jew-ish

There were 22 Jewish people in Waterford at the last census, up from 9 in 1991.  I don’t know if 22 constitute a community but it would be nice to see another increase this time around.  The Irish Jewish community is small, just 1930 in the last census, down from a peak of 3907 in 1946.  It was never a big community and was made up largely of people fleeing Czarist oppression on their way to America but finding themselves dumped in Cork and Dublin by enterprising if unscrupulous ships captains, only some of whom had the decency to tell their passengers that Cobh wasn’t Ellis Island. David Baddiel’s grandfather ended up in Cardiff by the same stroke.  Of course we could have opened the country up to Jewish refugees in the thirties and forties, but the Irish government preferred Catholics.  Honourable individuals, including some from Waterford’s Quaker community, took Jewish children in themselves, but this extraordinary maiden Dail speech by Oliver Flanagan gives a taste of some of the countervailing views in the country at the time. But at each census I give a glance to the relative health of the Jewish population because Jewish culture, and more to the point, Jewish humour has had a big impact on my world view and no doubt that of many a goy.  It started with Woody Allen, who’s Jewish references couldn’t be missed, but very quickly as a young comedy fan you start to realise that so many of the people who make you laugh are Jews: Mel Brooks, Neil Simon (I don’t know why the Irish surname “Murray” sounds Jewish as a first name, but it does), the Marx Brothers, Gary Shandling, Larry David, Jack Benny, Larry Gelbart and Walther Matthau, who informed us that words that begin with a K are funny, like cucumber - very true.  It’s only a little afterwards that you begin to realise that there are also funny Jews in Britain; Peter Sellers, Stephen Fry, Sid James. Woody Allen was the king though.  He made films about anguished upper middle-class Manhattan intellectuals living in despair in the world’s greatest city, by rights living in Waterford you shouldn’t have been able to relate to any of it, but we all know what its like to be a nebbish. What’s particularly poignant in some of his best movies is the comedy of Jewish social mobility.  One associates the Jewish community these days with middle-class respectability, business and the professions but people like  Woody Allen and Philip Roth were the sons of working-class parents and grandsons of Eastern European peasants, in Stardust Memories Charlotte Rampling’s character talks about the incestuous frisson of her decadent intellectual family to which Woody responds “we didn’t do any of that in our family, my mother was too busy putting the boiled chicken through the de-flavourising machine”. A lot of modern American Jewish humour comes from a scepticism about and shame of the fruits of prosperity and we could relate to that until 2008.  But the tough immigrant background of American Jews is often overlooked.  In the twenties Jewish hoods like Meyer Lansky and Dutch Schultz were every bit as bloodthirsty as their Irish and Italian counterparts.  And this points to the other aspect of my childhood interest Jewishness. I mentioned before an unhealthy although hardly unique taste for all the things military. Since the Second World War there hasn’t really been the kind of conventional tank versus tank warfare that  boys love to read about, except in the middle east and in particular the 1973 war when Israel’s back was against the wall. The astonishing Israeli defence of the Golan Heights, the audacity of the counter-offensive over the Suez, these were stories to warm the heart of a twelve year old boy, and the term “tanks destroyed” is so much more palatable than “four men incinerated”.  The heroes of those battles; Israel Tal, Ariel Sharon, Avigdor Kahalani, Moshe Dayan, Yanush Ben Gal were not nebbish, but citizen soldiers worthy of the early days of the Roman Republic. I first heard one of these Israeli military men talk when a young government minister called Benjamin Netanyahu briefed the world’s press on the violence of the Palestinian Intifada.  He was a man’s man, broad shouldered and deep voiced, confident, like the Israeli state calm but with a capacity, you suspected, for violence if necessary.  He sounded American of course, but nothing like Woody Allen. His condemnation of the Palestinian stone throwers  was so convinxcung that it took some time for a fourteen year old brain to realise that what he was describing was, as we would say in Waterford, “young fellas throwing brickers”, and they were the mighty Israeli Army, victors of the Golan Heights.  And these young fellas throwing brickers were in their own land and didn’t really have much hope for the future against the mighty Israeli Army, victors of the Golan Heights.  The bravery and determination needed to create the Israeli state in 1948 remains impressive but there were innocent victims in that achievement and those innocent victims now have grandchildren and great grandchildren who remain victims.  Jewish humour so often speaks to the misfortune of those who live in a world beyond their control, Israel seems determined never to let that happen to it.  A robust approach admittedly which may be feeding a new wave of anti-semitism.  Anyway, that's enough reflections on a highly sensitive topic that no two people in the world can agree on and here's to a healthy Jewish community here.

Census 1: Catholic-ish

This year’s British census is likely be the last ever conducted, but we’re not going to be so lucky.  The thing is we don't really need it.  Yes the census information from 1901 and 1911 recently published online provides a fascinating insight into the lives of our ancestors but our great grandchildren are going to have a sea of useless information on us in years to come, floating about in the detritus of the internet.  While we might be excited to learn where our grandfathers lived in the years before the First World War, thanks to facebook our descendents are going to know our opinion of Thierry Henry’s handball, where we went on holidays in 2007, what we thought of Police Academy 4, and that on August 19^th 2011 we poisoned two grandparents at a hastily prepared barbeque – lol.  There has been some criticism in the UK on the intrusive nature of the questions in their census (which don’t seem that different to ours) but most questions will be uncomplicated for most people, except one – your religion.  An interesting atheist movement has emerged internationally in the last ten years, partly in response to a perceived increase in the influence of the religious right in the States, partly to the rise of radical Islam and partly a response to a type of multiculturalism which adopts a hands-off approach to religious practices that the students of the enlightenment consider barbaric.  Just as the seeming resurgence of religion (as a lobby if not a practice) fueled the new atheist movement, the new atheist movement is a godsend to the religious (can atheists be a godsend?). So in this year’s census there’s been a campaign for ordinary Irish people to fess up and admit they're not really catholics: births, deaths and marriages don’t count.  Presumably the more atheists in the census the stronger the argument that the church should be removed from certain services, particularly in education. On the other hand, some catholic voices have welcomed the plans the church announced last year that it would divest some schools.  It’s felt that catholic primary schools are no longer really catholic, as management feel they can’t be more robust in their doctrine with so many parents having no choice but to send their children to the local catholic school.  Better to have secular schools and real catholic schools and get rid of the wishy-washy catholicism practiced in schools today.  Then everyone would be happy, and shout at each other from behind their respective trenches.  Except…what if most people want to be wishy washy catholics? Maybe they don’t believe in the virgin birth but like Christmas? Maybe they don’t go to church but are good Christians? Are careless about the destination of their sperm but like the psalms? Maybe they’ve seen the Cistine Chapel, the work of Zurbarán or the cathedral at Chartes and think “I don’t believe in any of it but catholics have the best art so I’m in”.  There are no boxes in the census form for "sort-of catholic", "a bit catholic", or "only when I’m drunk".  The wishy-washies are ignored and I think sneered at by both the catholics and the atheists.  Hypocrites who don't know what they believe in.  But I’m not so sure people who are not so sure about stuff are bad people, it seems pretty human to me. Of course you can always take the mick in the census.  If it wasn’t for the fear of a spare skin examination I'm always tempted to tick the Jewish box. More on that anon.

Suit Anxiety

So I’ve had my first experience of blog guilt, a page neglected for ten days, two new followers with no fresh postings.  What a dissolute idler. Of course I had perfectly good parenting excuses; it takes a week to prepare to bring your children to a wedding and three days to recover. There’s also the distraction of suit anxiety, days worrying just how ill-fitting your one suit has become since last you wore it, knowing full well that it’s not the suit that’s changed shape but you.  I hadn’t found out just how much of me was going to be excess when I saw that a growing number of us Irish men are becoming obese.  Of course there’s a growing number of people getting fat in every first world country but there appears to be some evidence that us Irish men are expanding faster than anyone else.  We had thought it would be our American cousins who'd lead the exploration of the outer limits of the waistband to find out how fat a person could get without becoming a geographical feature, but alas years of over-compensating for the famine has left us a nation dart players.  Without the darts.  Getting fat is an emasculating experience. Suddenly very female concerns are thrust upon us; the size of clothes, how much sugar is in the thing I’ve been eating since midday, can we still get away with wearing that shirt, even does my bum look big in this?  Gone are the firm straight male lines of youth, replaced by first a single, then multiple folds, turning in on themselves creating shapes that are no longer recognizably human.  Parts of your body retain their original positions, so that an outie bellybutton becomes first an innie, then a dark, forbidding cave, holding the last pin in a neglected cushion. Your belt is a constant reminder of this slow but irresistible growth.  So much so that it assumes a sinister mocking personality, telling you first thing in the morning that (a) you are fat and (b) you’ve got one hole left before you’ve got to get a needle out and make your own.  Women live with these concerns from at least their teenage years and are equipped to constantly do battle against fatness; they may not always come out on top but conduct a heroic guerilla campaign with small victories enough to maintain the audacity of hope.  For us men the onset of fatness is unexpected and devastating and we wallow, immobile, in Vichy-like defeatism.  There is nothing more emasculating than dieting, that has to wait for doctor’s orders and a firm prediction of death.   So there’s exercise, but exercise only works if it carries some utility, if I get sweaty chopping down a forest I am a man, if I get sweaty running nowhere in a gym I am a bit sad.  Unfortunately there isn’t much call for journalists to cut down woods. 

That's the why

Parenthood is a dictatorship where we can only hope the dictator’s intentions are benign.  Debate can be suspended by the Gaddafi-like proclamation “because I said so”. As a parent, I think it very important to reason with my children, to give an explanation for what might appear to them as the unfair, arbitrary demands of the (titular) head of the family. We must I think be able to justify our decisions and actions to our children. And then, when that doesn’t work, I say “because I said so”. There was another phrase used on me as a kid – not by my parents – which also declared brutal finality to disputes: “because that’s the why”, as in “why can’t I walk in and out of the window of the sitting room for the next hour?” “because that’s the why”. I could never figure out what “the” and “that” referred to in this argument. It was a tautological nonsense, but very hard to argue with.  As adults we should be able to digest reasoned argument even if we don’t agree with it.  The clarity of the Minster for Education on the university issue in that context is welcome.  You don’t have to agree with him but at least he’s prepared to say why Waterford isn’t getting a university.  Waterford not getting a university isn’t new; we’ve not had a university forever.  Waterford has been asking for a university since the 1980’s and we haven’t had one since then either.  As a journalist, you report what people have to say on the issue and in Waterford everyone seems to say the same thing but until Ruairi Quinn’s statement in the Dail last week there was hardly anybody putting forward the opposite case.  But the opposite case does exist; every day Waterford doesn’t get a university someone somewhere is deciding that to be so. So instead of a debate on the issue, you get powerless people shouting their demand for a university into an unresponsive void of report gathering. Now you have a politician spreading the bad news: the country can’t afford a new university and upgrading is not necessarily a great idea, referring again to some sort educational doomsday in Britain when Ken Clarke upgraded the Polytechnics in 1992 (that’s not a universally accepted view by the way). It is perhaps a little frustrating that the Labour Party had promised the upgrade in their 2007 manifesto (though not in 2011).  But in explaining why, the minister didn’t resort to “because that’s the why”. You don’t have to agree with the Minister’s reasoning (not unlike Michael Martin’s position when he was Minister for Education), but any argument for a university has to take cognisance of these two objections. The counter point made by Deputy John Halligan remains undeniably an issue for the region, the migration of graduates out of the South East and the concentration of graduate employment elsewhere. But would a name change necessarily bring extra degree courses when the country is broke? Particularly those associated with the traditional universities such as Medicine and extensive Arts faculties (although WIT does offer some interesting BA combinations).  A name change won’t necessarily bring investment, investment doesn’t necessarily demand a name change.  So should the pressure remain for a university or should Waterford get behind WIT for what it is, an institution which has consistently topped the league in graduate employment, features the truly remarkable TSSG facility and where Business degrees are regarded by some as better than the Commerce degrees available in the traditional universities? And should parents and their children desperate to claim a place in a traditional university give more serious consideration to the degrees on offer on their doorstep? Why? Because that’s the why.