Father Fintan
Jun 25th, 2008 by Donagh
Irish No voters have really ticked Fintan O’Toole off(sub req). Perhaps this is a good thing, as his columns are generally jaded and stuffy affairs, with overtones of the fatherly lecture, which is given while he cleans out his pipe by the fireplace. The No result though has filled him with utter indignation and has him flinging the breakfast things off the sideboard and smashing the fine china against the wall.
The man who is happier with subtle analysis and fine literary references now feels that he has to speak down to the people using the populist references that they’ll understand. The time for kindly fatherly chats is over.
So, according to O’Toole, we should forget the Eurobarometer survey and turn our back on fancy analysis. All we need to know about why the Irish voted the way they did is look to the recent Irish Calsberg ad campaign. You know, the ones where the cheeky Irish fellas get themselves out of sticky situations by either pretending to be the brother of the girl he is trying to chat up to save himself from a beating, or by using well known but completely meaningless Irish expressions, such as ‘Is maith liom cáca milis’ when asked to speak Irish, again to save himself from a beating.
This, O’Toole argues, is how we see ourselves post-Lisbon. The Irish people are like the fellas in the Carlsberg ad, smart-alec tricksters.
The view of the world that underlies those Carlsberg ads and the mentality expressed in our approach to Lisbon is a very old fantasy, embodied in the trickster. In folk tales, the trickster is a weak figure, an ordinary peasant, who gets one over on the strong - the king, the lords, the bishop - by evading and inventing, by ducking and weaving.
Fair enough maybe, but I’m not very happy about it. First of all, at the beginning of his article he says “If you really want to understand the nature of the contemporary Irish psyche and the way it has knocked the European project off course, think Carlsberg.”
Wait a minute, who says that the European project is knocked off course? Is Ireland capable of that? I seriously doubt it is and O’Toole is once again putting the frighteners on people. In reality it’s a bit of a headache for European leaders, but it’s highly unlikely that the good ship EU is going to go anywhere other than intended. Before the vote it was suggested that if Ireland voted no that the EU would still implement its provisions using other treaties, or by knocking together legislation that would allow the changes in Lisbon to be implemented. Now, where did people get that idea from?
Instead of tackling this O’Toole goes for the grand figurative conceit thus neatly avoiding the context in which the vote came about. For example, he seems unwilling to acknowledge that people were perfectly aware of how the Lisbon treaty became necessary in the first place. It was widely described as the failed Constitution repackaged. It was also widely understood that the reason why the other 26 countries could ratify it in their parliament rather than in a plebiscite was because the failure of the constitution in France and the Netherlands. The EU knew that if it was put to a popular vote again it would fail to be ratified by almost all those countries. In the case of Ireland this was unavoidable, so when they failed to ratify it, blame the Irish and attribute it to a ‘psyche’, a ‘post-colonial state’ and other mumbo-jumbo rather than political reality.
Playing on his trickster theme he suggests:
“In political terms, tricksterism translates, at the personal level, into stroke politics and at the collective level into populism. The stroke - the concept, in this sense, is uniquely Irish — is all about pulling a fast one. It assumes that the system is rotten and will always be so, and uses this assumption to justify the raising of low cunning to the level of high art.”
But there is another allusion which Fintan is actually using although he wouldn’t acknowledge it. Not of the trickster, but of the child. As everyone knows, there are good children and bad ones; those who respect their elders and follow their instructions and those who do not. His whole approach to the Irish electorate is to think of them not as intelligent people who, faced with a series of dizzying contradictory claims about a complex document chose to step back from signing the contract until they were happy with what they signing up to. Instead he chooses to characterize them as children who, rather than following the carefully articulated instructions of their betters chose to act disrespectfully and whiz between their parents legs.
Of course the reason why Fintan doesn’t want to go into detail about what the No vote really means is because that would force him to face the reality of how the Government behaved up to June 12th and how the heads of government in the large EU countries reacted to the vote.
As Jürgen Habermas has mentioned they are at their wits end, and as Vincent Brown argued today (sub req), there is no crisis, unless they choose to make it in to one. Both are correct, because both look at the EU with a little realism.
O’Toole on the other hand prefers to see things as if everything is a childish fantasy.
Note, I wrote most of this yesterday, but WorldbyStorm got to the subject first, so I left it.
John Cooney goes one step further in today’s Indo:
“IRELAND today finds itself comparable to the habitually sober citizen who has woken up with a raging hangover after having gone on an almighty pub crawl during which the family silver was foolishly pawned.”
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/lisbon-treaty/sober-reflection-will-cure-treaty-hangover-1420573.html
I think Conor put it well “He sounds like a poor man’s David McWilliams”. And David, your John Cooney quote is more of the same. What is about the Irish commentariat that they find it increasingly tempting to reach for trite analogies or useless sustained metaphors to discuss complex problems. Basically it’s easier than doing some real analysis and I presume they think it comes across as clever and attractive for that section of the readership (probably a large part!) who couldn’t be bothered leaving their brains turned on long enough to read through a more grounded analysis were it provided.
It’s junk, pure junk.
Both O’Toole and Cooney consider the Irish electorate to have been irresponsible. They were given a most solemn responsibility, something so delicate, precious and important for Ireland’s future and they fucked it up. It’s as if the Lisbon Treaty was the most expensive Faberge egg imaginable, the future value of which would keep us in silk and fine wine for generations. But instead of taking care of it and putting it safely back in the display case where it belonged we took it out on the town, throwing it like a rugby ball from one to the other, placing it absent-mindedly in the seat beside us as we sat in the pub with our pints. But the kinds of pubs that we chose to hang out in were also frequented by unsavory types, provo, Marxists agitators, Catholic extremists and mega-rich entrepreneurs. However, instead of concentrating on the beauty of the egg in their possession the collective psyche’s head was distracted by the dazzling chatter from members of the twist cabal (the oh so sweet Mary Lou for example) and without realizing it, allowed them to nick the thing, out the door and down the street, cackling like crows at the booty they had just nabbed.
Hey, what? If well paid journos like O’Toole and Cooney can do it, why can’t I?
On recent sweeping observations made in terms of ‘we-are-a-post-colonial-nation-and-therefore-this-is-what-we-are-like’ by the likes of O’Toole or Banville. The tone used is very hard to distinguish from that of colonial master.
It sounds like most of you would all like the metaphor dispelled completely from the printed press in favour of the dry academic language of a social studies textbook.
What metaphor?
Yes, I thought so too. The images of tricksters and irascible drunkards does fit a colonial stereotype of the Irish as sleeveen conmen with the gift of the gab and drunken layouts squandering their few pence rather than using it wisely like a lord and gentlemen.
It’s curious, because Geraldine Kennedy made a specific reference to the fact that Ireland by joining the EEC was able for the first time to get beyond the yoke of the Act of Union and British economic domination. Now, when we seem to have turned our back on the EU – this of course is not the case – these commentators see us through the eyes of Europe using images that were first used by the British Empire.
Niall, what’s surprising about O’Toole’s piece was not what he put in, but what he left out. This trickster metaphor was just fancy embroidery work to decorate something he chose not to discuss. He wanted to deploy it not to clarify or analyze the issue, but to make people who voted no feel bad and to encourage them not to do it again.
Donagh, I take exception - I am most unashamedly a drunken LAYABOUT..
If you’re looking for drunken layouts, think you’ll need to be heading to the ad agency that got all that moolah out of Libertas.
Once again, you’re right Seán. Damn my sloppy fingers.
The mainstream media have collectively assumed the role of the father figure in this ‘debate’ - more than usual, perhaps because the government was so slow off the mark. I don’t remember FOT ever being this overtly (despite the fact he rarely lacks self assurance) and obstinately self righteous on an issue.
It is their uncloaked assumption that our ‘leaders’ are to be trusted on all matters, not just matters of constitutional changes; despite the fact FOT himself (and any other journalist with a shred of credibility) has been at the forefront of public investigation and debate over the trustworthiness of the very same political establishment.
Essentially then, we can infer that it is not the establishment leaders, as in the elected government, FOT wants us to trust, but the unelected establishment, and with it, the Irish Times and FOT himself, as integral members. The unrestrained scolding being dished out is a reaction to the media’s, including FOT (and their establishment associates) failure to ‘lead and shape’ public opinion.
The Irish Times was of course in jubilant mood when Venezuelans voted against proposed constitutional changes, celebrating even the fact they voted against the leader and not necessarily the changes - abstention apparently partly due too to the complexity of them. Similarly, the majority of Venezuelans support the Bolivarian revolution, yet they retain the right not to be hoodwinked (if you choose to interpret the changes that way). [It should be noted too, that it may not have been possible without the injection of corporate money, much like Libertas]
There seems to be something inherently anti-democratic about the entire political establishment (more or less) and the entire ‘free press’ being at war with a) its electorate and b) it’s consumers. Evidencing perhaps the fragility of the ‘normal’ inversion of power in the democratic model, usually enjoyed by elites.
Off topic, but funny…
Starring our own Kathy Sinnott
“A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in Brussels earns approx. 14,700 euros per month (~£11,587), according to this RTL Report (in German with English subtitles). How much the MEPs have to work (or don’t work) for their €14,700 is the subject of this on-site RTL investigation in Brussels. The video is about MEPs who sign in on attendance lists and then disappear immediately for their weekend. RTL investigating journalists were thrown out of the EU building in Brussels during their work. ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnMtc_QJ4-E&e
I think Donagh your point about FOT seeing the electorate as children is spot on. That said, I’m not certain we can make any assumptions good or bad about the qualities of those who voted either way. I don’t think electorates have personalities in any meaningful sense, nor am I taken with the idea of the ‘wisdom of crowds’. I think any number of factors intervened and that run on different dates it could have gone that way, or the other way or whatever. Incidentally I loved the vote in Carlow/Kilkenny. What was it? Six people or so in the end tipped it into the Yes camp.
Very funny David, Kathy burns the midnight oil for the EU. I suspect that much of the comment comes from the fact that they know something awkward has to be done. How much easier it would have been if people had voted yes. There is also the realization that don’t, as you say, ‘lead and shape’ public opinion. Which is why its easy to slip into a them and us scenario. We told them what was the right thing to do and they chose to ignore us, therefore they do not deserve our respect. They got the hump.
WorldbyStorm, the idea of thinking of an electorate in the collective sense, as having a personality is completely wrong, as you say, in my view. That’s what is so startling. Different people voted for different reasons. However, there is a desire to lump everyone in together.
Whatever about being patronised by Fintan, I resent Habermas calling us ‘ those small, obstinate people’ in the piece from Der Spiegel you link to: I’m Irish and nearly as tall as Michael Ballack…… mind you, I voted yes, so maybe he’s right and only small Irish people voted no? if so, one of those things they have at fun fairs to show how tall you must be be to go on a particular ride could be used at polling stations next time - you must be this tall to vote…….
Yeah but SOS, how are you going to measure their level of obstinacy ??
One of those arm-wrestling machines ?
I also note that you are probably the same height as Sarkozy standing on Merkel’s shoulders.
Hearing those type of phrases from the mouth of a German is a bit spooky - do they have amphibious panzers yet ?
Granted - the same clichés have been trotted out by the French press about the ‘rebel’ Irish. Sorry to retort with another well oiled national cliché.
Funny footage from laugh-a-minute RTL. Especially hilarious the very shy German Green MEP - at least she had her re-cyclable supermarket bag instead of the others with their standard issue roller cases.
Here in Europe - many of the MEPs are also on a double or triple mandate - which I always find fairly ridiculous - paid representatives at local, national and European levels. How on earth are you supposed to be effective doing 3 fulltime jobs simultaneously ? - apart from from the point of view of your bank manager
Perhaps there is a translation loss to Habermas’s remarks and instead of ’small and obstinate people’ he meant ‘headstrong pygmy people’. Either way, I say sink the head in the fucker just in case.
I-m 5′ 6” and voted no. I think we have the real reason behind the swing.
Heightism
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