Are We Having Fun Yet…?
This article appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for December, 2016.
I wrote this straight after the Trump win. When I suggested that within a couple of months he would be absorbed into ‘business-as-usual’, I really hadn’t expected it to start so soon. I guess that’s politics…
I mean, what was I thinking? There I was, not really caring who won the American Presidential election as long as it wasn’t the co-head of the Clinton gang.
God, I can be slow at times: as the countdown began and I could see all the self-important pro-Clinton celebrities getting their precious selves all upset; see the usual crowds of tender, easily-offended buttercups looking shocked and teary; and most of all, as it finally dawned on me that a Trump win would mean LOTS and LOTS of ass-kissing and humiliating U-turns from our spineless Irish politicians who had slagged Trump off and all but called for him to be barred from stepping on Irish soil; as all of this sank in I was practically running around with a daft baseball cap on my head and wearing a TEAM TRUMP T-shirt.
I really hadn’t considered the entertainment value this would mean for me!
Pollsters, for a start — how can anyone sane not laugh at people who make their living from doing up polls? They’re so used to only asking people in one particular bubble a few leading questions and never take into account the fact that people LIE or…here’s a thing…change their minds. Yes! Lie or change their minds; who would possibly predict that?
Hopefully, after getting BREXIT and the American election TOTALLY wrong and making complete eejits of themselves, Pollsters will be keeping the head down for a long, long time. Nah, I’m not counting on it either. It will somehow turn into our fault for being stupid.
The mainstream media! How happy was this making me? Article after article lectured us, told us we were thick if we thought that Trump had a hope in hell before listing all the reasons that Bill’s moll Hillary was going to wipe the floor with him. And now this very day the same chancers are listing the reasons why she lost.
Guys, here’s the thing…you’ve been found out. Since you were wrong all the way down the line, then why would you have a clue now? We don’t care what you write anymore. With a handful of honourable exceptions (and just let me give a shout-out to Ireland’s Niall Boylan Radio Show who called Trump’s election win when the elitists were still guffawing into their Chardonnay) the mainstream media has shown itself to be just as corrupt and agenda-driven as your average politician. Or –or – try to be kind – just as lazy and complacent.
In Ireland the anti-Trump articles were SO relentless, SO ubiquitous, SO vicious – and with nothing on the other side to balance them, in case Denis ‘Redact’ O’Brien got upset – that it actually had the effect of making people who didn’t give a toss about Trump (me) suddenly hope that he really wiped that entitled smirk off Clinton’s face.
I mean, we know a bit about entitlement dynasties here in Ireland, where the sprog thinks it’s their God-given right to be elected into the seat that their great-great-granddaddy won about a century and a half ago when he got the parish pump fixed. So seeing Queen Muck of the Mountain pointing at imaginary people and hugging Beyoncé like she was already dining at the trough was a bit off-putting, to say the least.
Beyoncé and her hubby Jay-Z! Wasn’t that a hoot, seeing Jay-Z singing a sweet, inspiring and presidential little melody at a Hillary fundraiser? What was it called again? That’s right! ‘Jigga ma Nigga’ was the title that this wordsmith had given it, proving that Patrick Kavanagh will never be dead but leaving me puzzled. Wasn’t Trump supposed to be the racist one? Why was Jay-Z singing this load of tripe…oh yeah. I forgot. You can only be a racist if you’re white! That must be what that commentator meant when he called the whole thing a ‘whitewash’.
Oh, and as I type this I hear that Enda has had his ten-minute phone call with his new best pal. Remember back in June when Enda announced that Trump was ‘racist and dangerous’? Well, apparently that was only said ‘in the heat of battle’. Jesus wept. You could be forgiven for thinking I’m making this up. Trust me: my imagination just isn’t that good.
I’m going to need some third person perspective on this, though. Our Enda has history when it comes to talking to people that no one else can see. Can anyone confirm that there was a ten-minute phone call? They can?
Apologies; but what’s the betting that Trump kept him on hold for nine minutes and forty seconds. I know that’s what I would do.
Still, Enda’s happy: there he’ll be on St. Patrick’s Day, clutching his bowl of shamrock and getting ready for some major, MAJOR forelock tugging. And he’s well used to it after the amount of brown-nosing he’s done with Merkel these past years.
Meanwhile, back at home, as if caught in the slipstream of insanity that is consuming the world, I switched on the radio last Sunday and to my horror, who was on the Marian Finucane Show but Pat Rabbitte and Bertie Ahern!
I kid you not: Rabbitte, the failed Labour traitor and champagne socialist who says that it’s OK to lie during an election; and Ahern, the man who won all that money on the horses, after riding the country into the ground – and of course, the self-described ‘last socialist in Europe’.
I couldn’t believe my ears: there they were, like a sinister Stan & Ollie of Irish politics pontificating on everything from the Nurses’ Strike to the proposed Garda Strike to BREXIT.
It might have been OK if the hideously overpaid Finucane had asked a few tough questions. But no; she’s at that point in her career where that isn’t going to be happening ever again. Instead, there was lots of diffidence all around whilst Ollie Rabbitte blew his bloated, rancid bubbles and Stan Ahern did his fake stammering, misunderstood, man-of-the-people act, pretending to be an eejit whilst coining it in to beat the band.
But all in all it has been the Donald’s month and also highly entertaining seeing excitable people preparing for Armageddon. Listen, give him a couple of months and he will have adapted to the status quo and we’ll all wonder what the fuss was about. Who knows? He may even be a great President.
And as one wit said on social media today, he will get on just fine with Kenny as he has openly said he likes ‘pussies’.
‘He’s not even a career politician’, they’re screaming.
Well, isn’t that kind of the point? We’ve tried career politicians and they’ve lied to us, stolen from us and – here’s another reason that they got shafted – NOT LISTENED TO US. When Joe & Jane Soap say things like they are concerned about immigration they are NOT being racists, they are being concerned about immigration. Listen to people and they won’t give you the kicking they gave Clinton.
Meanwhile I’m going to have a lot of fun listening to our lot, starting with Kenny and Martin, tie themselves in knots as they try to explain that when they called Trump ‘racist’, ‘dangerous’, ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynistic’ they meant… in a GOOD way.
Are you having fun yet? I know I am. How long that lasts is another matter.
