MacCool

The ould mother's to blame

The Agreement fell apart. The Brits backed the unionist veto. Bertie Ahern and the Free State played the stage Irishman role and the 'peace process' rolls along the track according to Gerry Adams' 'master plan'.

Trimble went off on holiday. Paisley said he was right all along. Adams said he was hopeful. Martin [McGuinness] said he was from Derry . . . not Londonderry Mucker! That seemed to make him feel better.

On the Garvaghy Road the Orangemen were on their best behaviour. Out on the west coast, fishermen fished and on the east coast farmers farmed. The President of America's wife said she believed he had been abused as a child and that explained why he in turn abused women.

Life was simple. Every-thing was becoming clear. Those of us who occasionally questioned things were having answered questions we had never asked -- it was June/July 1999. A happy time.

Bill Clinton's wife had set the agenda. If you have a problem then rely on a simple technique and blame something in the past but don't blame history. After all, history is bunk according to Ford.

Freud had the thing down to a tee, set up the old father, that person of undoubted faith . . . if you can get away with that then anything after is plausible. After that the mother, the brother and the sister -- in fact anything becomes believable. To blame one's mother for one's short-comings takes a stretch of the imagination, that person of un-questioned loyalty but questionable judgement when dealing with one of her siblings -- which of course brings us to you and I and dear old Mother Ireland.

The truth of course is that she has been abusing us. The piece of land, which has nourished and fed us, sustained and protected us . . . The bitch has been tricking us all along. We have been conned into believing that we owe her something. OK we have been fed. OK we have been nourished but what the hell does she think we owe her?

After all we didn't have to be born to her. We didn't ask to be born to her. That was her choice. We could just as easily have been Chinese or Yugoslavian or our father could have been John Hume or John Major not to mention that decent old soul Tony Blair? Or we could have been English or Scots or Welsh . . . instead she tricked us into being born Irish! The bitch! John Bruton and his loyalist buddies start to make sense.

Bill Clinton abuses women (we are told by his 'loving wife') because a woman abused him and his wife stands by him. That takes a serious amount of arguing against. We all like loyalty. We all respect integrity whether it is well-founded or simply based on an honest belief . . . Yet this bit about Bill . . . Well?

Charlie Haughey . . . even the most honest of us can well understand his motivation . . . that twenty pence that we took from our mothers purse and bought that ice cream with . . .

Yer man Lowry . . . well who really likes to pay taxes? But letting yer wife blame yer mother for Lewinsky refusing to let you light a cigar . . . ?

OK, blame me for being plain old-fashioned. It seems to me that if you sign an agreement you can't blame your mother for not letting you uphold it. It seems to me that if you promise to stand by an agreement then you can't blame poor old Mother Ireland if it doesn't work out.

Unlike poor Mrs Clinton it just isn't as simple as blaming someone else's mother if your husband isn't faithful . . . yet, Bill's wife did it and no one seemed to notice.

Maybe I am out of touch. Maybe events and time have passed me by. Maybe it is time to let a new generation judge for themselves. Maybe it is time to blame the Oul' Mother for everything . . . It would certainly make life simpler . . .

If we adopt that maxim then everything becomes clear. I just have a sneaking suspicion that in the end Ireland, like each of us, must take responsibility for itself before it can take its place among the nations of the earth.
— Mac Cool