Author Archives: Aaron McAllorum

The Late Late Show had another of its ‘positive’ shows on Friday.

We’re calling it emotional engineering.

Ryan Tubridy: “Do you think we have – we’ve been celebrating, as you know, and we’re trying to, and news of the president of America coming to see us, and we’re trying to –”

Edna O’Brien: “Very good, yes.”

Tubridy: “Well, it’s good, we’re trying to drum up a little bit of, I suppose, positivity, breathe it back into the country again. And do you think we have much to celebrate?”

O’Brien: “Well we’re here. Of course we have. We’re alive, there’s music. That music was wonderful. It would be absurd of us to think we haven’t. That is not to omit or disregard or be ignorant or closing one’s eyes to what problems. But of course there is, celebrate. If you think – and I was told I was to be optimistic and upbeat -”

Tubridy: “You don’t have to be if you don’t feel that way.”

O’Brien: “Oh I do feel it. I’m thrilled to be here.”

Tubridy: “No no.”

O’Brien: “I do feel it.”

Tubridy: “No no but if you’re feeling… otherwise, say so.”

O’Brien: “If you think about what’s happening for instance in Japan. We have to have a sense of perspective. The land is still here. It’s not penal times. There’s so much. Plus people being tested know this; I’m sure everyone in this audience – you’re young but maybe you know it too. Oh you’re looking peculiar there.”

Tubridy: “That’s my normal face.”

O’Brien: “Being tested is a very significant thing. Life, whoever lives it, is not easy and of course people will have to come through it. What else do you do?”

UPDATE: Following a request from the Irish Times, we have removed the photograph originally used in this post and replaced it with a specially commissioned artist’s rendering of the same image.

“As of today I am officially a statistic.

I read on a daily basis about 1,000 people a week leaving the Emerald Isle in search of greener pastures for a greener future, but to be personally thrown into this mess is completely overwhelming.

How has it come to this?

I want out.

I am now one of the 1,000 this week.

Lately I had become nauseous at the failure of the Irish government to keep its people employed and prevent them from jumping willy nilly on great big planes to foreign lands.

With further cuts required under the IMF-EU bailout terms, I am at a loss for words. I feel suffocated, and the only means of resuscitation is coming from the Land of the Free.

I never thought I would choose to leave my beloved country because of economic factors.  Nor return to education at the age of 30 in a foreign land. Nor look to better myself in the hands of an education system other than the Irish one.

It was late at night when I got the email heralding a new life in America.

I applied on a whim last year, thinking it could be an option if things became bleak and dried up dramatically in Ireland, never really expecting them to for me.

However, I was shaking in anticipation as I clicked into the email from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York, as I now really needed to get a place in this prestigious university.”

I Never Thought I’d Leave Ireland For The American Dream (Alison O’Riordan, Irish Central)

Sitting down?

Good.

“For several weeks now he has been there for the taking, but the western powers have prevaricated and procrastinated, tabled resolutions and debated the imposition of a pointless no-fly zone, hoping for an outcome – any outcome – that would not involve them having to do anything.

Barack Obama is the embodiment of this culture of hypocrisy and childishness: a black president who is president because he is black, a walking advertisement for left-liberal vanity, a man who can match, word for word, the verbal flatulence of an era characterised by delusion, cowardice and empty talk. A fortnight ago, when Gadafy was still vulnerable, Obama loudly declared that the Libyan leaders “must go”, but since then he has done precisely nothing to enable such an outcome.

Obama is the elected representation of the postwar generations who never understood that politics is about choosing the lesser of evils. Even had he the personal courage and determination to act against Gadafy, Obama could not do so, because the commitment to do nothing in such situations is central to the unwritten contract he has made with those who delivered him to what was once the most powerful political position in the world.”

A black president who is president because he is black?

Oh dear.

Western Hypocrisy Gives Tyrants Free Rein (John Waters, Irish Times)

(Photocall Ireland)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmA4QK8kHvU&feature=player_embedded

A somewhat tetchy Glen Hansard was the entertainment last night at the White House St Patrick’s party (Go to 3.00). Complaining about the sound quality, he interrupted his second song, The Parting Glass, by telling ushers to close the door as if it was Whelan’s on a Monday night.

He urged punters  – rather crankily – during the third number to click their fingers as he sung about going back to his home “in Chicago”.

Later he was joined by Tim Shriver for a particularly maudlin version of the very maudlin The Auld Triangle.

As Chompsky noted, while sniffing around the Rose Garden after the party: “He’s not doing my wedding.”