Mary Kenny
Should sport be politicised? It’s surely a pity when it is. The spat between President Trump and the American National Football League probably has some merit on both sides: the footballers, mostly young black men, are entitled to demonstrate their antipathy towards the President’s alleged race attitudes, by kneeling on one knee, rather than standing in respect, for the national anthem.
Gesture
It’s a dramatic gesture, particularly since these athletes are impressive young guys at the height of their physical powers. But Donald Trump, impetuous and sometimes ill-judged though he can be, is also entitled to ask players to show respect for the national anthem, which should be about uniting a nation, not dividing it. This is not about race, he says.
Similarly, the GAA Dublin Ladies players who have unfurled flags to show their support for repealing the Eighth Amendment are entitled to their opinions. But by waving a banner for abortion choice on a sporting field, they are dividing, not uniting the nation. There will surely be other GAA players – we know there are – who feel they should defend respect for human life.
A former rugby player from Co. Tyrone, a Presbyterian who has a great grá for Ireland as a whole (and has just joyfully acquired his Irish passport) remarked to me that that rugby had done more to keep North-South relations cordial – during his years of growing up, during the Troubles – than any politician. It was the fact that it brought people together for the game and the shared green jersey – leaving their politics at the gate – which, for him, made it so glorious. Pass on the message!
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If it ain’t broke…
With Ireland facing possibly eight referenda over the next two years, perhaps Uachtarán Michael D. Higgins might indeed spare voters the trouble of going to the polls to re-elect him for a second term.
Michael D (and especially Sabina, who is a lovely person) has done a fine job. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is a sensible maxim. If he’s doing the job well, let him continue doing it.
The usefulness of a monarchy is that the incumbent is there for life, and the electorate doesn’t have to scratch its head every seven (or five) years wondering who to anoint as its ceremonial head of state: continuity prevails. President Macron has described his office as “a republican monarchy”.
Admittedly, the French President is both political and ceremonial, but he makes a point: if you elect a ceremonial President and just keep him there, maybe you get the best of both systems – monarchy and republic.
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It’s hard to shake off a rumour
In every profile of the writer Edna O’Brien it is mentioned that a priest in Co. Clare burned one of her early novels. No evidence has ever been produced to support this claim.
On November 23, 2015, Fr Tom Stack wrote to the Irish Times to point out that exhaustive research to verify the incident had never yielded any factual evidence. Edna O’Brien herself told me that a priest defended her when local women were being hostile (she also mentions this in her memoir, Country Girl).
But still, this canard about the book-burning cleric will go on being repeated. Eimear McBride, the novelist, is the latest to do so, both in the New Statesman and the Irish Times – she, too, has recently been corrected by a correspondent, Michael Dwyer of Maynooth, last weekend. But once legends are established, they go on being reiterated, however often they are corrected, and I would bet any amount of money that Edna’s obituary – may it be long delayed – will restate this particular fiction.