Conspiracies and Scandals
Don’t we just love ‘em! Conspiracies, scandals, and unsubstantiated allegations are lapped up by us like milk from a dish put in front of hungry kittens. Far be it from us to take our news cluttered with facts, truth, or common sense, give us outlandish inuendo, raunchy rumour, and invective harangues anyday! Sure, we’ve enough on our minds now as it is, what with the price of the Pint, sport, reality shows, nosing and begrudging, celebrity worship, and finding an excuse not to go to work on Monday filling our heads, who needs facts bouncing off those brain cells too?
With Bertie’s recent money from friends scandal the big question everyone wanted answered was, "Who leaked it to the Press?", not, "Was that appropriate behaviour for a Finance Minister?". And what about Charlie Haughey’s shirts? and the mysterious woman in Liam Lawlor’s Merc when it crashed? That’s the stuff we want to know about and that’s what sells papers!
This morning I was listening to the radio while I was making the toast and porridge and heard a good bit of nonsense. The son of an American Black Panther founder was rattling on how the dikes in New Orleans were blown up by the government during the Hurricanes, and that the city would have survived, if not for this plot to clear the area of the Black population. Ooh! lap,lap,lap. No facts to be seen for miles but I could believe this! I want to believe this! Bush bashers unite!
The next guest was an investigative journalist in America, Noelle I think, who claimed there was a concerted effort by authorities to give guns to the ghetto kids so they could kill each other! Ooh! lap,lap,lap What other reason could there be for such a high rate of gun crime in the inner cities? With a couple of off-hand quotes from some Irish cops who confided in her that it was their policy to let them kill each other to make the policemens’ jobs easier! An Irish connection! lap,lap,lap.
I was beginning to think this was a re-broadcast of an April Fool’s show when they segued into a panel that was convened to analyse Bill O’Reilly’s appearance in Dublin last week. You know Bill, of Fox News fame and The O’Reilly Factor, "my, my this is going to be good", I grinned, and sat down to porridge with my ears begging for the cream! lap,lap,lap. They played clips and analysed O’Reilly’s talk….something was amiss here I thought to myself…Bill was witty, honest and factual…his arguments and logic held water! He made the audience laugh and applaud! "Hey, what’s going on?", I pondered. The assembled panel of experts were bewildered, they mumbled and stumbled around and couldn’t bash the Yank with any of the typical inanities, I was gobsmacked! The kitty dish of milk taken right out from under their noses! Finally, they all seemed to agree with the Yank, and broke for the news.
I sipped at the tay and cleaned up the dishes. What I heard next brought me right back to the idea that this was an April Fool’s broadcast. The news reader announced that the ESB were going to charge each household €225 to install a smart-meter that will be more accurate in measuring electrical usage. It can be read and monitored remotely and will make redundant the lads that come to read the meters! Brilliant! We can now a.) subsidize the ESB equipment so they can b.) save on payroll and they will expect us to c.) give the poor lads a generous golden handshake! Do I have GOBSHITE written on my forehead or what? I’m going for a walk in the bog to see if I can think of a good excuse to get out of work tomorrow.
