Inside File Da Post blew it — again

By Ray O’Hanlon

The New York Post has an uncanny knack of stepping in it. The Rupert Murdoch-owned daily espouses a kind of East Coast-Tory editorial line on Northern Ireland. At times, "IF" is inclined to believe that if British warships sailed into New York Harbor in the morning, the Post editorial board would be down at the Battery cracking champagne and rolling out the red, white and blue (British version) carpet.

Still, "IF" is always quick to encourage interest in matters Irish and even poor coverage is better than none. With regard to straight reportage on Northern Ireland, the Post is not the worst and its actual degree of coverage has been notched up in recent years. But matters start to go very much awry when the Post editorial writers get their hands on the wee North. This was most certainly the case last week with an editorial headlined "Ballots or Bullets, Mr. Adams?"

The Post was turning its guns on the Shinners and Provos again and giving both quite a roasting. Nothing new about that. However, what was painfully evident was the same old order of unmerit that goes something on the lines of the Provos being the real bad guys and source of all the North’s problems, a fact that drives the Protestant paramilitaries to such distraction that they are now even more trigger happy than the IRA. It’s about as shallow as that.

Still, intellectual depth is not always the measure of an editorial line. The Post is quite free to dislike Gerry Adams and the rest of Ireland’s republican pantheon, with gusto if it so wishes. But with editorial writing there is additionally the credibility factor. Reasoning must first be based on at least some grasp of basic facts. So while errors are an everyday possibility on a paper’s news pages, a foulup in an editorial sticks to the shoe that much more. No less so with the Post editorial in question, which came out with this gem: "All this has served to stoke further the Protestant community’s perpetually high level of paranoia. Indeed, Unionist extremists have even outdone their Republican opponents, committing 15 shootings and 48 ‘punishment beatings’ since January. A group calling itself the Red Hand Defenders just a few weeks ago blew up Rebecca Nelson, a lawyer associated with Republican causes."

Forgetting for a moment the obvious howler, what is amiss here is the assertion that Rosemary Nelson was "associated with Republican causes," and the suggestion that her fate might have been linked to this presumably dubious connection. Nelson was a lawyer was associated with the law. That some of her clients might have been nationalists or linked to republican causes is neither here nor there. The Post’s shoe will be stuck to the floor for a few weeks after that one.

Meanwhile, reviews are another area where writers sometimes lose the run of themselves. Take this from a recent Wall Street Journal Review of "Making Peace," George Mitchell’s new book: "Indeed, the IRA has begun a Mafia-like transformation into a purely criminal organization, backed by vast supplies of arms and by collaborators in the southern Irish government and civil service." The review was by Herb Greer, described by the WSJ as an author and playwright living in England. Herb’s obviously on an inside track the rest of us have yet to spot.

Bal(kan)oney

"Unlike the Americans, for whom the trauma of Vietnam overshadows more recent victories, post-imperial Britain has great confidence in its military record. It defeated Argentina roundly in the Falklands war in 1982, and it has discharged itself honorably in Northern Ireland . . . "

British journalist Peter Kellner was lavishing praise on Tony Blair in the New York Times last week while suggesting that Blair, unlike Bill Clinton, doesn’t have to worry too much about body bags coming back from the Balkans. The subject of his op-ed piece was Kosovo, but Kellner, a columnist for the London Evening Standard, sidetracked into some of the empire’s more recent military adventures in the Islas Malvinas and wee North.

Never mind Bloody Sunday, shoot-to-kill and all the rest, "IF" was wondering how Kellner could miss the irony of making the case for "post-imperial Britain" while highlighting two conflicts that have been nothing if not imperial in both origin and contemporary effect. Britain’s military confidence is all very well, but the difference between an empire and a democracy is that in the former, public opinion doesn’t matter much. The plucky plebes are there to serve, not mouth off. With Northern Ireland, the bulk of British public opinion has been poorly informed or largely uninterested over the last 30 years. The Falklands/Malvinas caper was like something out of the Raj days with ships, flags, cheering crowds and, oh yes, a few body bags at the end containing mostly Welshmen, Gurkhas and a lot of "Argie" teenagers whose lives were sacrificed to a silly general’s ego. England expected. The colonies and the truculent natives filled the coffins.

At the same time, Blair seems like a man who might finally lead Britain into a truly post-imperial state of mind. His swipe last week at Paisley-type unionists protesting Stormont peace negotiations — "those are the people who have never had anything to say about the future of Northern Ireland. They are the people of Northern Ireland’s past" — was an indication that Blair might actually be in the process of letting slip the final bonds linking a still imperial-minded Britain with a time when much of the globe was painted red. Northern Ireland wouldn’t be the first place on earth where the inhabitants were all of a sudden told that the great game was up, that they simply couldn’t be telling the world anymore that they were British, that it was time to bloody well grow up and let go of mummy Britannia’s apron strings.

Pen to envelope

Some folk are unhappy with the Irish immigration stamp because it doesn’t include a reference to the Famine. Well, Mary McCaffrey of Los Angeles has a solution of sorts. Mary recently wrote to "IF," her letter paid for by the 33 cent "Irish Immigration" stamp. Beside the stamp Mary wrote in red ink, "famine coffin ship." She pointed to the stamp with an arrow. Mary is encouraging folks to purchase the stamp and write the same thing on the envelope every time they mail a letter. Not the worst idea that has landed on "IF"’s desk. A woman of action is Mary indeed.