Any new national day must focuson neglected patriots – not political showboating
MAN-OF-DESTINY Leo Varadkar seems to have a handle on how he expects history will judge him. Time may have different ideas, but at least he has a vision.
When it comes to the national narrative, though, he seems less assured.
His notion of turning the 75th anniversary of the 1949 declaration of the Republic into an annual national holiday is certainly misplaced.
It is a date that has been shamefully airbrushed out of our history textbooks and collective memory, most probably because nobody died in some noble blood sacrifice or sang sentimental ballads about it. Whatever the reason, it just doesn’t chime with us and any official commemoration would ring hollow.
In any case, we already have 1916 and 1922 competing to lay claim to the role of national midwifery and that’s enough to be going on with.
But we could certainly do with a bespoke national day.
Paddy’s Day will never be it, because it represents everything we are not and very little of what we are.
So perhaps a celebration of nationhood that doesn’t revolve around paddywhackery and national narcissism wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Perhaps Leo is on to something after all.
And seeing as we play due homage to the gunmen in a merry-goround of solemn commemorations at Bodenstown, Arbour Hill and the Garden of Remembrance, we could quietly honour other architects of modern Ireland instead.
I’m thinking of those who lived for Ireland rather than died for it, like Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. They endlessly pitted themselves against a powerful empire in the bear pit that was the Mother of Parliaments. Their only weapons were words and reason.
The combined fruit of their struggles brought Catholic emancipation and education, franchise and land reform. Then, by the by, repeal and home rule. Other than being reminded of their greatness by bookend statues at either end on O’Connell Street, I see little to remind me of their immense contribution to today’s Ireland and certainly no ongoing acknowledgement. The 1949 declaration was really just a piece of harmless political showboating. If we are to have a national day of commemoration, shouldn’t it be for such shamefully neglected Irish patriots?
Stones evolving intoa parody
LETit be said clearly and unambiguously that the Rolling Stones are pop deities. When the Gospels of Rock ’n’ Roll are written they deserve a volume all to themselves.
Their explosive combination of R‘n’B, pop, sex appeal and moral menace made them an integral part of the Swinging Sixties. And it would be hard to find a funkier album in the 1970s than ‘Exile on Main Street’.
But they made the one crucial mistake that the Beatles conspired to avoid: they grew old.
Getting on isn’t in itself a bad thing (the older I get, the more I’m in favour of it) but the decade is long past since the Stones were real or relevant.
In fact, they’ve morphed from being their own tribute band into something approaching embarrassing self-parody.
The greats who aged best (David Bowie and Paul Simon readily come to mind) were the ones whose music evolved with them.
They were true to it and it, in turn, was true to them.
Jagger, on the other hand, is still principally singing about getting laid. At 75.
If they were playing in my back garden I would open the window to let the noise in, but a pilgrimage to Croker next month holds no attractions.
It’s only rock ’n’ roll, but not as I like it.
Phone-ogling era a death knell for good manners
SMARTPHONES are making us dumb, but you knew that already. Worse than dumb, however, they are also making us rude.
A few years ago if somebody barged into you while zombieogling their screen, they’d most likely mutter a sorry.
The other day a hipster, watching some mesmeric download, tried to walk straight through me.
Apology? Still waiting. Evolution, it would appear, has left the building.