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.