Brian Cowen: you are below contempt
by planetparker
A couple of days before Christmas a Cavanman brings his son to the cemetery. The man stops and, pointing to one grave says to the boy: “Look son, that’s where Santy’s buried.”
Those grown-ups who believe in Santa Claus are probably the only people who believe Brian Cowen’s assertion that Fianna Fail had nothing to do with engineering Trevor Sargent’s resignation. In many ways the media are just as responsible. When O’Dea fell on his bodkin there were those who hailed it as the Greens getting their first head. It was obvious that many of the backwoodsmen in Fianna Fail blamed the Greens in the same way that nearly two decades ago they blamed the then Venereal Democrats for the resignations of Jim McDaid and Brian Lenihan Sr. The fact that the latter and O’Dea had shown they were unfit to serve in government never came into play. Fianna Fail has a God-given mandate to rule, or rather misrule. The O’Dea affair proved once again that Fianna Fail can never be allowed to rule on their own. When one of theirs fucks up the instinctive reaction is to crowd round to protect the erring member from attack. As a result misdeeds go unpunished, and in the words of John Milton they continue to “rot inwardly and foul contagion spread”.
What Trevor Sargent did was wrong, but in the scheme of things it was not nearly so wrong as stating in court on the Bible that what he was going to say was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and proceeding to give information which was anything but.
The backwoodsmen may be happy they’ve scored the equaliser, but at what cost? They might have wanted to say: “We’re not the only crooks” but Trevor Sargent by his swift resignation and acceptance of responsibility has positioned himself on a different continent from O’Dea.
The question now is whether the Greens can stay in government with such people. Were they to leave now they might just be able to salvage one or two seats. If they stay any longer they are facing electoral oblivion. As someone who has long championed environmental issues this would be regrettable.
