Niamh Walsh’s Manifesto
Parents are just inventing problems for Leaving kids
WHILE clearing out my childhood belongings I happened upon my 6th year class yearbook. The tatty notebook was littered with the writings of school friends along with notes from teachers all with iterations wishing me good luck and fortune in life. But on one page my finger lingered as I read a note which simply said: ‘I hope life hands you a bowl of seedless cherries.’
I recalled not really understanding what this curious message meant and, to be honest, I had no interest in deciphering its meaning. School was out, a summer of fun was to be had.
But upon rereading, my adult mind deciphered this childhood code. I was a spoilt child (youngest, only daughter) and I sailed through childhood.
I expected life to be a bowl of cherries that I didn’t have the task of pitting myself.
But it rarely is for anyone, and the class of 2020 are learning this far earlier than me.
This week saw a procession of parents like ‘Furious Fiona, mum of inconsolable son Fionn’ bombard the airwaves to vent and vex about the unfairness of the decision to give ‘calculated results’ for the Leaving Certificate.
Some parents and pupils are apoplectic as they predict a bias from teachers.
I mean, spare a thought for Timmy and his pre-ordained place in Trinity, which his parents now fear will be denied him by some teacher ‘with a thing’ against him. And darling Dearbhla, who ever since Santa gave her a toy stethoscope was destined to be a doctor.
Haven’t we enough real-life problems without inventing more?
The callers complaining of imaginary teacher bias and the downgrading of their darlings weren’t just ridiculous – their comments were insulting to every educator in the country.
As the rants went on I could but wonder what some children are being taught in the home.
At a time when our world has been shaken to its core we could be teaching our young to have faith in humanity and to believe in fraternity and goodness.
And recalling the words my teacher wrote all those years ago, I realised that while life doesn’t hand you a bowl of seedless cherries, with good work invariably comes the fruits of your labours and you almost certainly get your just deserts.
Adams is suddenly the apple of my eye
I NEVER really had an opinion either way on singer Bryan Adams.
But this week the Canadian singer sailed right to the top of my charts. Taking to Instagram he raged: ‘Thanks to some bat-eating, wet market animal selling, virusmaking greedy [expletives], the whole world is now on hold.’
Adams was attacked – at a socially safe distance – and was labelled a racist. But many countered, and I agree, is it racist to call out an inhumane culture of cruelly eating live animals like the world has seen at the Wuhan wet market?
I have written before on China’s appalling animal-rights abuses, which see dogs boiled alive at the horrific annual Yulan Festival.
It is not racist to call out practices that inflict such cruelty on defenceless animals.
To voice an opinion and to vent your anger at something that offends you is not racism.
When Adams deflected these claims of anti-Chinese sentiment he was called ‘poorist’ as some claimed that the reason Chinese people eat bats is born of poverty.
Utter hogwash. Bat soup is considered a delicacy in China and is served up in silver bowls with ladles in upmarket restaurants. So while Adams’s music might not be No.1 on my list, I am certainly moved by his life lyrics
Furious George’s show really is a trial
WHETHER we like to admit it or not we all derive a certain amount of schadenfreude from others’ lives.
Which is why it takes a certain amount of chutzpah for someone such as actor George Clooney to make a series where he seeks to vilify the media and absolve people for bad behaviour. Clooney, who lives his life in the media glare and literally banks on the media feeding the public, is hypocritically profiting from his new Netflix series Trial By Media that chronicles real-life crime and court events in which the media played the most Machiavellian of parts.
The series is intriguing viewing but like any of these shows one has to watch with a critical eye and realise that even before the cameras have rolled a judgment has already been rendered.
The media, especially in America with the likes of Court TV, do bear some responsibility and are at times the guilty party.
But, as Clooney hammers home his ‘horrible media narrative’, he conveniently glosses over the facts that get lost in his telling.
In each episode there are bad people who did bad acts of their own volition. The outcome of each trial was also not, as he would like us to believe, dictated by the media or a whipped-up public.
Some were of their time and others because of cultural issues.
The US is, after all, a country where: the 2nd amendment’s right to bear arms trumps public safety; raped women were considered at fault as they ‘were asking for it’; and systemic racism blinds even Lady Justice to the truth.
A glaring omission in Clooney’s argument is surely that the film industry repackaged this awful event and served it back to people for entertainment. If it’s Trial By Media, Clooney and his ilk should be in the dock as well.
Matt takes DJs on Spin around Dalkey
KUDOS to Spin 103.8 radio presenters Nathan O’Reilly and Graham O’Toole for the coup of securing a world exclusive interview with actor Matt Damon, who is in lockdown with his family in Dalkey.
Tenacious Nathan, the co-host of the station’s breakfast show Fully Charged, spent six weeks tirelessly campaigning for an interview.
His efforts paid off when Damon’s assistant contacted them and said he’d give the pair their chat.
Damon opened up about all elements of lockdown life even revealing that his eldest daughter had the virus and how he thought Leo Varadkar was a ‘badass’. Leo’s self-satisfaction rating must be breaking all records.