President states the obvious
IN the 1970s film Network, Howard Beale, a fictional character, famously proclaimed, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
President McAleese had a latter day Beale moment last week when she used the stage of the New York Stock Exchange to pronounce that Irish people were as mad as hell over what has befallen their once idolised economy.
It was an ironic location to expound on the state of the Irish nation, given the proclivity of members of the government to blame international circumstances, and crises such as the fall ofLehman Brothers, as the source of all the country's woes.
The President's rhetoric seemed geared to fit the new realities of Irish life. Three times she used the bullet metaphor, saying that the Irish had effectively bitten the bullet in dealing with their economic misfortunes.
Venting the public's anger and frustration on a stateside trip, while detailing Ireland's transition from underachievement to affluence and then crisis, seems a curious role for a President who has been in office for almost 14 years now.
It begs a simple question, do we need a ceremonial head of state stating the obvious in a country which itself has been through the mill, and has astronomical numbers of unemployed. Afterall, we are no different from any other country in the western hemisphere in currently going through the depths of economic depression.
McAleese's comments also highlighted the passivity of the Irish in the wake of the outrageous scandals that have taken place in the banking, commercial and political worlds. Greek or Icelandic style street protests are seemingly not for us.
The nearest we had to it in recent memory was the old age pensioners who effectively vented their anger over the medical cards. So, the Irish American businessmen the President was addressing were treated to the spectacle of a head of state proclaiming the public's fury while, if they take the time to examine the situation, they see an Irish public stoically getting on with it, and perhaps waiting their moment to exact their vengeance on the captains of industry and state.
Complementing her comments, the President advocated "a robust, credible reform" of the regulatory system to restore trust, and thereby not allowing for a recidivist slip back into bad ways. Then it was off to a fifth grade classroom, for a four act history of Ireland, comprising The Potato, The Famine, Emigration and Famous Irish-Americans. A simple and cliched narrative, which ignores the multitude of complexities surrounding these historical issues. Rather like President McAleese's tired and empty comments earlier at the Stock Exchange.
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Thursday 17 May 2012
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