Why We Should Be Wary Of Jews, Muslims, Mad Catholics And My Aunt Mavis

"A Jew as a Jew is utterly opposed to Jesus Christ and all the Church means... I want you to remember the truth very clearly: By Satan we mean not only Lucifer and the fallen Angels, but those men, Jews and others, who by deliberate revolt against Our Divine Lord have chosen Satan for their head."
- Archbishop John Charles McQuaid

"A man is generally what he perceives himself to be."
- Sam Peckinpah

By Charley Brady

Do you know what gets me? Do you know what really, really gets me?

It's just a short trip, twelve miles from my village in Oranmore into Galway and yet that simple trip has turned into a hell that is even worse than if you had been told that Paris Hilton had decided to relocate here.

There's nothing but posters of ugly people who are crying out to you for your vote in the upcoming election. OK, I'm being harsh; because there are a couple of good looking ones but in general the Irish don't really do good-looking politicians. I mean, even one of them turning up at your doorstep is enough to give you the screaming heebie-jeebies for the rest of what would be a severely curtailed natural life.

Imagine of you saw the grinning face of Jackie Healy Rae looming out of the mist. Christ, it would be enough to have you reaching for the baseball bat and worry about the consequences afterwards.

There's not a court in the land that would convict you.

Judging by our recent outings we tend to be either semi-drunk oafs or just plain corrupt goons who have the sole ambition in life to go over to the States in order to humbly hand over a bowl of shamrock for St. Patrick's Day.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course, because we sure and begorrah are a humble nation and the blessings of the Little People on us all, so we do be saying as we put that pig out of the kitchen.

Of course in reality those of us who aren't politicians are saying: "Would you look at the state of that feckin' eejit handing over a bowl of shamrock to Bush/Clinton/Bush Junior/Obama" when you know in your heart and soul that the carefully picked shamrock (yeah, bloody right I'm having a laugh) is probably going straight into the White House bin.

Can't blame them. Most of the recipients have had no problems with putting their own people into the bin in foreign wars that don't involve them; so what are a few sprigs of sham rock (the emphasis being on "sham") when you can dump human beings just as easily.

Never mind; all of them, all of our Irish hope-to-be-elected have parted with shed loads of loot at over forty euros a pop so that we can make our minds up about who we will vote for. By looking at a poster. Words fail me.

Caring for the environment? My sainted Aunt Mavis's ass: these affronts to any sort of aesthetic taste will still be hanging around, blighting the landscape long after this election is over.

Oh yeah, the lackeys will put these up so fast in return for no pay whatsoever (that's what lackeys do); but ask them to take them down WITHIN THE LEGALLY PRESCRIBED LIMITS and they vanish as fast as Bertie Ahern when asked to explain where all his loot came from.

It's like a recreation of Cardboard City out there in the time of Thatcher's London. At least when they eventually blow down or are dragged down even though they have been spat upon, defaced (possibly defecated on although that would be anatomically interesting since they are all up a handy lamp post) and generally treated like the empty symbols of nonsense and greed that they are, we can always look on the bright side because at least the homeless will have somewhere to shelter under. Well, that is if they are not arrested for trying to take them down in the first place.

As you know by now, we only arrest the poor here. The Fitzpatrick's, the Aherns and the Haugheys have and always will be untouchable. It doesn't matter if they are as guilty as sin.

These yokes pretend to be interested in the environment and yet they put reams and reams of paper through our letter boxes and then leg it before we have had a chance to grab the bastards by the scruff of the neck and force them to pick the crap up.

The main offenders are, of course, Fianna Fail. Well, they would be, wouldn't they? I mean, can you imagine calling to my place and having to listen to a litany of expletives deleted before getting told to take a long hike along a very short pier?

At least I would admire them if they did. Jeez, I don't envy their job. Yet I would have a bit of grudging admiration if they had the testicles to say: "Well, this is how we're going to do it differently this time around."

No, they don't even have the guts to do that. It's just something through the letterbox, run for your life and hope for the best. Well, there's a lot of courage in that, all right.

Instead we pick on the small things when confronting our venal politicians.

I was wondering when the question of Labour leader Eamon Gilmore's atheism would be dragged out

I said only a couple of weeks ago that I would never call myself an atheist again as it just gives you a bad name when you see the characters who share the same belief.

Look, he may be as much of a pillock as the rest of them, but to attack him and say that he has no right to be Taoiseach because he doesn't believe in God? Oh would you give me a freakin' break? What kind of return to medievalist bulls*** is that?

One of our good Christian voters is upset about this. Obviously a person who has spent too much time sighing and crying in front of the broken alters of a discredited desert religion.

"Well, I think that religion is a private matter," said Gilmore, quite rightly.

"I think that we have to be tolerant. This country has changed a lot over recent decades, we're a country now of many different persuasions and people who have no religion.

"We need to be a tolerant society where we respect each other's beliefs and work together as a country irrespective of what religion we are."

Well, I'm with that all right. Of course the big thing is that the Constitution mentions Christianity so bloody often. Here's the thing: it was written for an emerging Republic and the plain fact is that it now no longer applies to the flea-ridden, maggot- infested corpse of a country that is Ireland in 2011. Since we sold out to Europe I'm not going to even dignify it by calling it a Republic

Tear it up! Tear the bloody thing up and let's write a new one!

It's been amended so many damned times that it no longer resembles the original anyway.

This column has been running for - what - three years now. Any time I suggest we get rid of the Constitution the only angry mail I get is from America. In Ireland they just agree that it's about time to have a few changes.

Was it Einstein that said that there are no limits except to human stupidity or the universe and he wasn't even sure about the universe?

On the "question" of Windbag Gilmore's atheism I'll leave it to his fellow hot- air colleague, who was actually talking a lot of sense. Yep, believe it or believe it not it was justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte who said:

"What matters are one's values; the proposition that you can only have decent values of solidarity and co-operation and community and society if you are practising a particular religion is nonsense. It is the value framework that matters.

"[...Jesus Christ was] against usury and He banned them from the temple so if He had been Governor of the Central Bank we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. I think we could have made common cause with him and the conversion of water into wine would have been very helpful at night when one is finished campaigning."

What the hell is wrong with a non-believer in power? I mean, we've had a crook like Bertie Ahern as a good devout Catholic who lives by the Beatitudes while endorsing drink driving, encouraging the vulnerable to commit suicide and yet who hasn't been to confession in 40 years.

Look at his Satanic Master, Charles J., who was against divorce and spouting family values whilst shagging his mistress, the ghastly Terry Keane.

Go back farther and look at the anti-Semite Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, man of the cloth who was feared by all and who wanted - like De Valera - to turn this into a completely isolationist country.

Oh yeah, I do think that we could do better than this lot. Whether we DESERVE to do better since we have turned out be such a spineless country is another question for another time.

Let's look briefly at that other regular Mass-goer Gerry Adams. Man, he's had a bad week of it hasn't he?

The Anyone But Adams campaign that started off in Louth has really hit a nerve with people who are fed up listening to his whinging about how he knew nothing about people getting blown to bits and individuals being "disappeared". In fact he's appalled by it.

Can you set that to music, Gerry? You hum it and I'll play the piano.

The son-in-law of Jean McConville who was "disappeared" by the IRA in 1971, Seamus McKendry, was amazed at the support they were getting in Dundalk on Saturday.

He said that it was "...incredible. I've never felt a reception so heart warming in my life. Everybody was coming and saying, 'We're not voting for that bastard anyway.'"

The Anyone But Adams campaign shows how far we have come to recognising that this Armani-suited smoothie has fallen a long way from the bad old days when he was welcomed into the White House with open arms.

I hope to touch on some of these issues next week, but by that time the election will be over so maybe that won't be happening; so can I just urge you to read two superb articles:

One is in the Sunday Times Magazine for 13th February on the dissident IRA entitled "Back in the Line of Fire".

The other is in your own "Vanity Fair" for March; it is just as good an explanation of our fall from the heights as you will get and is called: "When Irish Eyes Are Crying".

Hope to see you again next week, no matter your creed or colour - obviously unless you're a mad Muslim; nut job Catholic; of the Jewish persuasion or black, white, blue or in my own case a kind of sickly grey colour.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net