The phrase is one of those instances where the fiction has become more truthful than the recorded fact and history is perfectly at ease with the inconsistency.
One wonders if the Irish public will ever become aware of the imaginary cake they are fed in the place of the bread and butter of every day reality. The wave of public delusion crested this week with the resignation of the Police Commissioner Martin Callinan. Ireland may have lost its chief of police and may soon loose one of many Ministerial incompetents, however it has gained a new sweet phrase that has been put into the mouth of the mindless masses by RTE: A 'whistle-blower', this is what the National media have decided to call two members of the police who have decided (for their own reasons) to inform or leak to the media, corrupt practices within the police that have been going on for countless years and will carry on for years to come. Common practices known to all members of society with the barest smidgeon of that increasing rarity we refer to as cop-on.
If you worked in a chocolate factory you would enjoy the occasional free mouthful of chocolate. If you are on good terms with the sergeant you can have your penalty points erased. I am a doctor and if I end up as a patient in any of the hospitals I trained in, I am sure to get an extra ten minutes of bedside attention from the consultant. If you are a teacher at a school you would expect your child to be admitted to that school. If another GP sends his or her kids to see me I am likely not to charge them. My practice nurse and receptionist don't pay for their prescriptions, and if your mammy owned a laundrette you would probably get your dry cleaning done for free.
When the former Commissioner described the actions of the informants who informed upon their colleagues' occasional bending of the well-bent rules, they were certainly spoiling things for the rest. The particular privilege to bend the particular rule, will undoubtedly be confiscated, and passed on to a new organisation. (In Ireland we fix all problems by setting up a new committee or commission.)
The real issue of a police force that is too centralised and lacks the normal degree of division that occurs in normal societies, will hardly get a mention amid the puff and pavlova that RTE is dishing out in return for its massive state funding. Investigative journalism is far more expensive than bottles of smoke.
It was and is perfectly understandable that the Commissioner should refer to his subordinates' behaviour as "disgusting" . The only thing more disgusting is the fact that a single member of post-colonial Irish society should have the gall to be openly "disgusted" by his remarks. The old Christian adage of 'he who is without sin let him cast the first stone" springs immediately to mind. Who in Irish society is not entirely guilty of having sought a favour? A nod a wink or a place at the top of the queue?
The entire basis of colonial society is one of status and privilege, it is part of our cultural heritage and is formally and informally cherished by us all. If you have private health insurance you will be seen sooner and treated better at a public hospital than the same tax paying public patient who does not have health insurance. Forty percent of the Irish population have health insurance and are perfectly happy and feel perfectly entitled to skip in front of the less well off! If you can afford a solicitor and a barrister you may get better and more justice than one who cannot. If you can afford to send your kids to private school they will have a better more privileged shot at going to University. If you can afford a house in Dublin and don't live in the sticks, you will have access to better services, protection from floods and the ESB will turn your power back on faster.
Irish politics since the founding of the state has amounted to little more than passing the privilege of power between a few families and a few corporate men that make up the two (or sometimes three) political parties that have dominated politics since 1922.
What is amazing is the extent of the current delusion, the near universal sentiment of disgust at the Commissioners remarks, and the degree to which Irish society is effectively and almost entirely "up its own arse". The masses have behaved with their usual obedience and begun to bleet the current version of 'four legs good but two legs better' as the media and career politicians jump on the bandwagons of public sentiment that depart daily from the narrow platforms at RTE.
The real sadness in Irish society is that public sentiment is so controlled by the mass media, that so many should firmly believe the exposure of institutional "corruption" within the Police to be some kind of a surprise or a shock. Our own public persona, the artificial face we put forward to the world is apparently compelled to be disgusted by revelations of corruption, of nods and winks, that we all knew about and all engage in to a greater or lesser degree in our daily lives. It is almost as though Irish society has found a lewd picture, somebody engaged in a perverse sexual act, and yet we are entirely incapable of recognising that the photo is in reality one of ourselves, and nobody else. In truth, all of the opprobrium and moral outrage is far more disgusting than the sexual act depicted within the photograph. We really need to get over it; men masturbate, women have orgasims and Irish social mechanics is entirely dependent upon the nod and the wink.., we put on this farcical show of upset and disgust every time we are exposed to that which we know and are entirely comfortable with!
It is truly embarrassing to watch Enda Kenny bumbling along in the Dail, with the facial expressions of a school boy who has just wet his trousers, before the phoenix of a Fianna Fail leader determined to 'go for the jugular' and raise his party from the same ashes they recently made of the nations's economy. With the surrounding terriers; the Wally Wallaces, and the Socialist Workers and Left Aliances etc., all queuing up to kick the auld horse, score the points, bring down the government and ultimately score a bigger share of the same old cake. The same power and privilege they are wont to criticise is the same motive for the ostensible ranting and raving.
If Irish politics makes you sick to your stomach and you find it nauseating to listen to the lot of them then you probably have a firm hold of your sanity and your mind remains immune to RTE and its midwifery of our growing stupidity. Sadly however whilst this game is being played out by media and the currency of cheap news is being dispensed by a very costly national media; one might be forgiven for asking... who is running the country in the midst of this madness? Who is addressing the Heroin addicts that walk about the city like zombies, the victims of crime, the criminals who are failed by our justice system? The haemorrhage of emigration, the failure of education, health justice and social welfare?
Perhaps it might become apparent that Irish governance continues in the midst of this charade this puppetry of silliness, because governing is conducted by the civil service and by vested interests that work behind the elaborate sham of our body politic.
Put any Irish institution under the light for a day and a few disgruntled "whistle-blowers" will assuredly creep from beneath the sun-baked rocks. Start with RTE and the tax dodging registered companies that are its presenters. The legal profession, the ambulance chasing, the fees they charge, the mortgage monies that sit in interest bearing "client accounts", the cost of justice, the wait for justice, and the incompetent and privileged dispensation of justice. Banks, Church, Private Colleges and medical Schools, the corruption is universal because it is not one of the instution it is one of our national philosophy, of the ideals that define us as individuals first and as institutions, The spotlight simply revolves at the surface of things and never brings any of the deeper issues into focus.
Consider the multinational corporations for an instant, the 2% tax that Apple pays, against the 40% PAYE for the plebs. Put the education system under the spotlight and see the ongoing abuse of children, the mass suppression of their independence of thought, and their creativity. The failure of Irish education to deliver an appropriate standard of literacy for hundreds of thousands, and its near mass genocide of the joy of learning. Not to mention the mass corruption and abject failure of our health Service. The blowing whistles ultimately unite into a cacophoney of flatulence.
There is at present an extreme self indulgence about Irish media, about its portrayal of Irish society to we-ourselves; the portrait of self that we are meticulously painting and wish to stare at lovingly, imperiously and even morally. It might one day be recognised as the greatest work of art we Irish have ever imagined, and may have us recall why Joyce referred to our art as "the cracked looking glass of a servant"
