Inside File: Burn ‘mein’ book too, please

By Ray O’Hanlon

As a few among you know, the sainted ones to be sure, "IF" wrote a book a while back that was praised in some corners but not damned in others nearly enough to cause a global sensation. But inspired by forthcoming events on Long Island, where Angela’s Ashes is apparently destined to add to LILCO’s, if not Lily’s, power grid, "IF" was thinking that one’s own masterpiece would burn like bejaysus given the fact that Frank McCourt’s name is emblazoned on the cover where he gives the tome a bloody good plug.

Now we all know that book burning is a bad business. It brings back grim memories of a time when the bookselling world was in such a sorry state that a particularly cranky and ill-tempered author in Germany decided to burn just about all of the written competition, thus allowing greater market share for the turgid prose of his very own Mein Kampf.

Sixty years on, and in another place, Long Island, the prevailing First Amendment permits various forms of free speech including the setting fire to a book, or books, albeit within the bounds of the fire code.

Some might well remember a spoof on "Saturday Night Live" a few years back in which Dan Ackroyd, as Richard Nixon, proclaimed that nobody loved him or his book but that people should buy his memoirs anyway so that they could simply kick the thing.

Well, "IF" reckons that kicking makes the point well enough so on second thoughts all you millions now rushing out to buy "The New Irish Americans" with evil intent might consider a good jackboot to the back cover as opposed to a zippo job. That way, some might even get to read the blessed thing, second hand, while the half-starved author rushes to the same bank where Frank McCourt is laughing his head off.

GFA’s a hard sell

The Good Friday Agreement must be the least read document on the planet since Ian Paisley’s last sermon. The average punter would be led to think that there are more deadlines for decommissioning in it than there are days in the year — only there aren’t.

The New York Post last week stated that May 22 was the deadline for completion of decommissioning. Not true.

Many notables in the White House Press Corps, gathered for a Clinton press conference last week a day after the Provos went into a deep sulk, thought the "deadline" was February 12. Feb. 1 is also another deadline supposedly come and gone. Truth is, there is no deadline, which, in newspaper terms, implies a moment in time beyond which you are effectively dead, unable to change what was already occurred.

If no deadline, what? There is a stated commitment by the GFA signatories to work in good faith towards achieving decommissioning and preferably by May 22 of this year. That’s pretty well it. Zillions of copies of the GFA were distributed free in ’98, it was plastered all over newspapers and the internet and it’s still very easily obtained by anyone who wants to read it. On the copy distributed free in Northern Ireland by the British government, there is a plea on the cover: "This Agreement Is About Your Future. Please Read it Carefully." Clearly, many didn’t take the advice.

As for last week’s White House press conference. At one point, President Clinton started to say something about Sinn Féin: "I truly believed that Sinn Féin tried…" Then he stopped himself cold. Tried what? The president also made the point that he had worked "every day" of his presidency in an effort to bring about peace in the North. And Gerry Adams is fed up with politics already? God knows how Clinton is feeling. Our Gerry is making the mistake of blaming politics as opposed to politicians. The truth is, politics of the normal and lasting kind has yet to be achieved in Northern Ireland’s sorry history. Political jobs are not the same as politics. Politics, good, bad and indifferent, is a commitment for life, not just a process.

A Catholic standout

So congressional wannabe Walter McCaffrey is on the warpath over the row in Congress arising from the failure to appoint a Catholic chaplain to the House of Representatives. There is, not surprisingly, an impression about that a Catholic priest has never functioned as chaplain to either the House or Senate. Not the case.

Back in 1832, Father Charles Pise served as chaplain to the Senate for a year, the normal term of office for a chaplain in those days. And while he was officially chaplain to the Senate, his working brief also covered the spiritual affairs of the House.

Ironic indeed that the lone Catholic chaplain served at a time when anti-Catholicism was almost a badge of honor in some corner’s of American society

Young Turk Biffo

Brian Cowen’s ascent to the top job at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin couldn’t have come at a more hectic time, what with the wee North on the brink again, the Celtic Moggy’s emerging global role and so forth. And speaking of global. What of the moggy’s bid to secure a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council? "Faltering" was the term for it used in a recent issue of the Irish satirical magazine, "Phoenix." Seems that one of Biffo’s first firefighting jobs was to appease the Turkish embassy in Dublin.

The Ottomans were apparently furious over a travel exhibition at the Royal Dublin Society which included a stand where you could find out what countries on the planet were so dodgy in health terms that you required a zillion vaccinations before going near them. Turkey was included on the list with several dreadful afflictions apparently on the lose east of the Bosporus. The Turks reacted furiously, stating that visitors to Turkey did not need any vaccinations at all.

Turkey is a key NATO member. Its diplomats could do you and your ambitions no end of harm at the United Nations if they took the notion so it was no surprise at all that Biffo was quickly on the blower to his counterpart in the Department of Travel and Tourism, Jim McDaid. McDaid, in turn, called the organizers of the RDS show and what was "required" for visits to Turkey quickly changed to "recommended."

You would want to be in whole of your health to be dealing with this kind of stuff.