An Irish woman’s social, political and domestic commentary
I’m a fan of Caitlin’s writing in The Atlantic but this tough review of her new book in Elle (via Salon) tears her apart, and with cause. It’s long but well worth reading ESPECIALLY the end. (which you have to read the start to get).
From ireland.com
“Labour leader Pat Rabbitte has accused RTE of allowing the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell a political platform without any opposition participation. Mr Rabbitte said he accepted an invitation yesterday to appear on last night’s Prime Time television programme to debate the current crime situation with the Minister. But he said he was later advised by the programme that it had dropped him because Minister McDowell said that he would only appear on his own.
“This is the same Minister who yesterday challenged Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton to a debate on the crime situation. “Like so many of his recent comments, his statement made on Monday about wanting to debate the issue with the opposition has turned out to be yet more hypocritical bombast,” Mr Rabbitte.
…..
A spokeswoman for Prime Time said today the programme made its own decision on who appeared and no outsider dictated to it or exercised any veto. [eh, after they've been told he won't appear at all unless he's on his own I suppose. Note following coded statment ] She said: “It was not uncommon for interviewees from time to time to agree to be interviewed on their own and not to debate with someone else.”
A spokesman for Mr McDowell told ireland.com there was no question of the Minister insisting on anything regarding his appearance on Prime Time. [I wonder how "insist" is defined]
He said the Minister has said on several occasions said that he would debate the issue with Mr Rabbitte at any time in the Dáil.” [yeah, where he knows most people won't hear a word about it]
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Ha Ha Ha. Boys aren’t getting away with it after all.
 From today’s IT
“The three leading Dublin consultant obstetricians who provided reports in 1998 exonerating the practice of Drogheda obstetrician Dr Michael Neary have been referred by the Medical Council to its Fitness to Practise (FTP) Committee….
The decision to formally assess the doctors’ fitness to practise was made during a two-day meeting of the Medical Council which considered in detail the report of Judge Maureen Harding Clark into peripartum hysterectomy at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
Separately, a formal complaint has been made to the Medical Council about the three obstetricians by Patient Focus, the group representing women damaged by Dr Neary. It has asked the council to conduct a fitness to practise inquiry into the three.
They were not named in Judge Harding Clark’s report but The Irish Times has established that they were: Prof Walter Prendiville, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Coombe Women’s Hospital in Dublin; Dr John Murphy, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street; and Dr Bernard Stuart of the Coombe Women’s Hospital.
According to Judge Harding Clark’s report, the three obstetricians “have had serious regret for their part in producing these reports, which were motivated by compassion and collegiality”. While acknowledging their reports may have been prepared for limited viewing, the judge said the language used was “regrettable”.
Following a review of nine cases of Caesarean hysterectomy carried out by Dr Neary between 1996 and 1998, one of the obstetricians said: “It is my firm conclusion that Dr Neary should continue to work in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital pending any formal investigation.”
The other two consultants concluded: “We find no evidence of questionable clinical judgment, poor operative ability or faulty decision-making [by Dr Neary].”
The Irish Times understands that, based on these and other findings in Judge Harding Clark’s report, the Medical Council decided the three obstetricians had a case to answer before its FTP Committee.”
Don’t you just love the diplomacy of that phrase: they were “motivated by compassion and collegiality”? That would be compassion for Neary, not the patients of course. And “collegiality” code for “old boys sticking up for one another and to hell with the consequences”.
Another ridiculous effort from the RTE 9pm news. Put the McDowell apology and the BIZARRE Dail handshake on AFTER the break. Like what the f*ck is the editor at?
And Miriam had a reasonable go at him on Prime Time. She did ok but didn’t damage him. They should have had someone else on with him. He wouldn’t acknowledge that Ricky was right even tho Bertie did in the Dail today….
I don’t believe it. After swearing on Morning Ireland that he wouldn’t be apologising for the “your type of people smashing up the PD offices” remarks to John Gormley he has done so after all. From ireland.com
“Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has withdrawn remarks he made in Dáil linking the Green Party to the recent Dublin riots. Mr McDowell claimed earlier this month that Green Party TD John Gormley’s “type of people” had vandalised the PD offices during unrest at the planned “Love Ulster” march down in Dublin on February 25th. But this evening Mr McDowell told the Dáil he would like to withdraw the remark.”
What’s gotten into the man? I’m starting to feel sorry for him. He appears genuinely contrite and not just playing the game cos he knows he’s f*cked up. I feel like writing to him. I wonder what’s going on. Trouble at home? A mid-life crisis? If he was a woman obviously we’d just assume a bad case of PMT. (Had it myself last week. My god. Weeping at the kitchen table from sheer inability to cope with ANYTHING. CONVINCED I had finally gone over the edge. Then I got my period. And it’s “aaaaah” or more properly “Doh!”. And 24 hours later totally chilled out. )
Anyway I digress, and of course, share too much. All these men getting emotional and not sleeping at night. Must check the moon…the location of saturn…I wonder what star signs are at play here?
Great entertainment though. Politics hasn’t been such a laugh since…..hmmm …Dick voted against FF in 1994? I was in the Dail that day. Most exciting.
The grovelling apology, the more grovelling acceptance. All here on Morning Ireland.
At last! A decent row. How cool. I missed the news all day so made the huge mistake of relying on the 9pm RTE news for the full update. How foolish of me. They led with it alright but spent about 2 minutes on it and edited out the best bits. Nevertheless did get to see McDowell in full temper! Wow! He could barely control himself. He was soooooooo close to breaking down. So this was what I unleashed in my little leaking escapade. No wonder Moriarty was so pissed off with me…
But good ol’ Ricky is standing up to him, realising that there are far too many people enjoying watching McDowell take a hit. I love his response:
 “The Minister for Justice does not like it when the facts don’t support his inflated perception of himself.” (this quote did NOT appear on the news of course but on ireland.com)
The best account is on RTE Radio 1′s News at One. WELL worth listening to whole file (11minutes). Watch out for how McDowell doesn’t answer the question on how many uniformed gardai joined the force in the last year…and don’t miss his final comments.
So here’s the thing about McDowell, you see on many points I really admire him. On specific policy issues he is great on the North and stuff like the prison officers. He has a fine intellect, is very articulate and love him or hate him he stands up and says what he believes – straight. If there were more like him, politics would be better off. BUT inevitably, he has two major flaws: arrogance and lack of compassion.
He absolutely refuses to believe that anyone else might have a reasonable point to make. And he absolutely refuses to believe that some people end up in bad situations because they are born in the wrong place. He takes the attitude that the government provides equal opportunity to all and if you don’t seize it, that’s your personal responsibility and tough luck. He’d get away with that because a lot of people probably agree with him in this nasty little country of our’s but the arrogance will be his undoing. He is making too many enemies to last long…Of course, the snobby, self-satisfied residents of D4 will no doubt continue to vote for him….
Bruton’s full statement here…
McDowell’s here
I was on Marian Finucane’s programme today doing the newspaper panel stuff. Link here, playback Sunday’s show (first few minutes appears to be missing).
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Now the matter may be taken out of politicians’ hands. The High Court is currently being asked to decide if frozen embryos are lives in need of protection, or property that can be destroyed. It’s as appalling as vistas get.
The failure of the government to address the definition of “beo gan breith”, or life without birth, means that a South Korean scientist could set up a clinic in Dublin tomorrow, buy donor eggs from women, clone a human and insert it into the uterus of a 70-year-old Italian woman hoping to produce an heir for her ex-husband’s fortune. Any surplus embryos could be flushed down the toilet. There is neither legislation nor regulation to prevent this from happening. But mention the issue to a minister and they’ll turn on their heels and run screaming down a corridor pleading that the Medical Council, the Supreme Court or the street sweeper make a decision. Anybody but the government, even though that’s its job.
Fianna Fail has been overtly fudging this issue whilst simultaneously attempting to make political capital out of it since the eighth amendment was put to the people in 1983. Back then Michael Woods said “there is no attempt in the wording of the amendment to define the moment at which the life of the unborn begins” because “in preparing the wording of the amendment we felt it was not appropriate to the constitution to have such definitions”. Thanks a lot Michael.
“Not appropriate” to your political career, perhaps, but it would have been appropriate for the rest of us so we wouldn’t have to keep revisiting this issue.
Because the issue won’t go away, there have been all sorts of delaying tactics. Governments tried throwing it back to the people in 1992 and 2002, and we threw it back at them by defeating badly worded amendments. Then they set up a commission and hoped that by the time it reported they’d be out of office. Micheal Martin established the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction in 2000. It took a very long time to consider the issues. Unfortunately, five years later, when it finally reported back, Fianna Fail was still in office.
In another attempt to stall, the government sent the report of the commission to a committee. It set up a sub-committee. The sub-committee will report back to the main committee next week. Their expected recommendation? Send the report back to the government. The circle is complete and nothing has happened.
Meanwhile the fate of the embryos lies with the unfortunate judge of the High Court who has to make a decision in the absence of any guidance from the legislative (more properly called non-legislative) arm of government.
I can just see the ministers on Questions & Answers over the next year while we wait on this election. When asked for their views on when life is life, they will solemnly declare that the report of the commission is being studied. What a laugh. It’ll actually be gathering dust in a lonely corner of some underling’s musty office. Ask a member of the opposition what they would propose and the answer will go something like: “If the government isn’t going to propose anything, you hardly expect me to commit political suicide by suggesting anything constructive.”
But would it be political suicide? Isn’t there a consensus on when life is life? On the face of it, there isn’t. One the one hand you have the “life from the moment of conception” argument, that is, life beings the moment at which the egg is penetrated by a sperm. By that logic the embryos currently residing in a freezer of a Dublin fertility clinic are life, and cannot be destroyed.
Then you have the ultra-liberal mob of family planning associations and socialists who say that life is only “viable life”, i.e. a foetus that can survive outside the womb, say from about 22 to 25 weeks. Tell that to a mother who miscarries at 20 weeks. If labour is induced at this stage, you don’t say, “I lost a non-viable foetus.” You say you lost a baby and you mourn for it. You do that if you lose a baby from the first day you become pregnant. I’m pro-choice, but let’s call a spade a spade.
Once you see the blue line on the pregnancy test, you are hyper-aware that there is a life inside you. But when are you pregnant? Easy. It takes about three days to go from unprotected sex to implantation. In that time, if you don’t want to get pregnant, you take a morning-after pill.
If there was a genuine consensus that life starts from the moment of conception, the morning-after pill would be banned. When you see a blue line on the pregnancy test, the embryo is implanted and then, and only then, are you pregnant. If a fertilised egg doesn’t implant, you were never pregnant.
I know this means that the unfortunate embryos in storage in Rathgar cannot be considered life, and it is most unpleasant that science has presented us with these horrible decisions. It does make one feel a tad sympathetic to the Catholic church’s position that messing with eggs and sperms in laboratories is a bad idea, regardless of how badly people want a baby. Since IVF is a miserable, painful, expensive procedure with a huge failure rate (over 80%) anyway, maybe it would be easier just to forget about the whole business and tell childless couples to adopt. But since science can, then we do, regardless of whether we should.
Coincidentally, as we await the High Court’s decision, Governor Michael Rounds of South Dakota has started a process which will force the US Supreme Court to do the same thing. Like Fianna Fail, the Republican Party has courted the pro-life vote while never actually doing anything constructive about it. Rounds has decided to test President George Bush’s coded messages of support for a “culture of life”. He has signed a bill banning abortion in South Dakota, knowing it to be unconstitutional, precisely so that the Supreme Court will have to consider the issue. So we may find out if Bush’s two nod-and-wink pro-life appointments to the Supreme Court (Roberts and Alito) are pro-life after all.
Apart from forcing the judiciary to make a decision, which terrifies politicians, we have something else in common with America. In the state of South Dakota only one clinic performs abortions. In several states, such as Wyoming, Texas and Lousiana, 95% of women have to leave their states to get an abortion because no clinics will do them.
For poor people in America, it doesn’t matter if abortion is legal or not. If you can’t afford to travel, you can’t have an abortion. Just like home; if you don’t have the cash to get to England, you can’t have an abortion. If you don’t have the cash for IVF, you don’t get to have embryos frozen.
The poor just have to live with whatever Mother Nature throws at them. No baby even if you want one, or a baby even if you don’t. At the end of the day, the politics of human fertility is only for the rich.
Update: I just want to clarify here that to be really honest, I think that the life actually is life from the moment of conception, or certainly, has such an enormous capacity for life that I am DEEPLY uncomfortable about the whole business of destroying embryos. However, I recognise that this is totally impractical because being consistent on that point would mean no morning-after pill and you have to have a morning-after pill. What I am saying is that regardless of what one’s opinion is on pre and post implantation, there is an existing medical and legal consensus that we use the morning after pill and therefore the most honest position is to legally define “unborn” as an implanted embryo. Anything else is just unworkable.
Also I really am pro-choice even though I don’t shy away from the fact that an abortion is taking a life but I recognise that there are just too many hard cases that must be legislated for. Any abusive comments will be deleted on this one so don’t even go there.
A lot of “what it means to be Irish” shite has been churned out in the past week or so (my own answer to the question “not a whole lot except that rural Ireland is still about 15 years behind urban Ireland and urban Ireland is just urban anywhere but without the guns (almost)”
Anyway, I did like this piece in the NYT..it’s a bit long but I publish it here…
When Latvian Eyes Are Smiling
By THOMAS LYNCHMilford, Mich………LAST year they opened a new Irish pub on Main Street here. O’Callaghan’s they call it, and it’s owned by two Palestinians who did it up in high Paddy style, with snugs and dark hardwoods, Guinness and designer lagers and a couple of imported boyos behind the bar. The décor came from Dublin in a kit. The lads came on their own from Wexford to pull pints, pour shots and give out with the brogue-y chat that separates an Irish pub from every other kind.Market research has shown that suburban Americans, like Parisians and the Japanese, find getting a little tipsy in an Irish bar is more agreeable — kinder, gentler, cuter somehow — than the shot and beer dispensaries where sad men sip up their sedation in privacy and silence. Folksy calls of “Slainte!” and “Failte!”, a dart board on the premises, some blarney and stews and beer-battered fish, tin whistles and a table quiz, a big screen with hurling or rugby games all conspire to make the consumption of fermented depressants anything but depressing.
It is an illusion, of course, a faux reality, but it’s market savvy, and the Palestinians are packing them in. How very Disney, I say to myself, how very American — like going to Vegas to experience Venice, a kind of dude ranch for the wannabe “faith and begorrah” sorts.
But in West Clare, where I summer in the ancestral cottage that was left to me, between the North Atlantic and the River Shannon’s mouth, the authentics and realities are shifting too.
My local is the Long Dock in Carrigaholt, an estuarial village of 600 with a castle, a small fishing fleet and an influx of seasonal visitors. It’s the real thing, the Long Dock, a genuine Irish pub with turf and flagstones, Armitage Shanks urinals and a history of famines and festivities. I’ve been going there for decades now, and though I quit the “top shelf” and pints years back, I love the fresh catch and local chowder, the company of friends and strangers.
Though the Long Dock is owned by a family named Lynch, two Lithuanians work the bar; a pair of Poles wait tables and Latvians in the kitchen turn out continental versions of the local fare. They come for Easter and stay till summer’s end, returning home flush with money the way poor local farmers, a generation back, used to winter in Glasgow and Liverpool and London, working to keep body and soul together.
Like the young of Carrigaholt and its surrounding towns, the young of Krakow and Vilnius are coming and going as they please now, citizens of the European Union and the global villages. Bartenders without borders, they travel light between cultures, common markets and currencies, picking up the languages, finding in the eyes of strangers the shared lights of humanity.
In this they resemble St. Patrick himself. The son of Romans stationed in Britain, he was kidnapped in his youth by marauding Irish who sold him into slavery to a Druid master. Given to visions and important dreams, after years of contemplative indenture tending sheep, he got free of his captors, took Holy Orders in France, thence to Rome where he was given his mission: to return and convert the “pagan” Irish from their worship of nature and its elements. It was early in the fifth century, and the sun and the yew tree and the river all seemed sacred still.
The local holy men were unenthusiastic about Patrick’s zeal and brought their own powers to bear against him. Still the Irish became, in the fullness of time, according to the ancient texts, “docile to the faith.”
It helped that Patrick was a deft metaphorist and could bridge the gaps between beliefs, finding connections in what seemed disparate themes. The Celtic cross was one such compromise — Patrick’s overlay of the circular symbol of the rising sun (a god in Druid theology) to the cruciform of the Christian’s risen son of God. Both were signs of second chances. Then there was the shamrock, which the saint famously used to explain the Trinity — that mystery of the many and the one, of unity’s embrace of diversity. The man had a knack for difficult mysteries, for sorting the sames and differents.
And here are some more glorious and sorrowful mysteries: how race and nation, faith and place, define and divide us endlessly; how ethnicity makes fast friends of strangers and also poisons the well of humanity; how religion calls us to worship and so miscalculates our Gods. If there is only one God — as all Muslims, Christian and Jews believe — then isn’t the one we believe in one and the same? If there is no God, aren’t we off only by one? And if there are many, aren’t there plenty to go around?
Consider the shamrock. Consider those famous 40 shades of green Ireland is said to have. It’s Disney, an illusion, a fake Irish bar. The world we live in is 40 shades of gray, and in each of them still 40 more.
The barkeepers know this in Milford and West Clare, in Boston and Baghdad, in Dublin and Darfur, wherever they are — it’s always the same human thirst and hunger, the same longing for the shared feast and safe harbor, the home fire and known place, the common table and place at the bar. The green beer and blather, the old songs and good craic notwithstanding, until all are safe in their own place, a Great Day for the Irish, or the Americans, is just pretend.
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