He’s back… and he’s wrong… John Waters on Brian Cowen’s as a ‘strong father figure’… February 13, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Complete nonsense, Economics, Economy, Irish Politics.trackback
Pity poor John Waters who has snuck back almost unnoticed aboard the good ship IT over the last few weeks following a break. Pity him the abysmal timing of his latest epistle to the Hibernians… for on a day when we learn that Brian Cowen’s satisfaction figure amongst the general public is down 2% at 24%, a mere 2% above the party he leads the sage of our times opines after reviewing the speech to Dublin Chamber of Commerce – a speech that he describes as being one in which “Brian Cowen’s deeper themes that night were postponement and reassurance, the great themes of fatherhood. What he was doing, very simply, was announcing himself as father of the public realm” – that:
Now, the party’s over, we need a different kind of father. Coming to grips with this has been Brian Cowen’s problem these past eight months. At first he tried to continue in the Bertie mould, but every instinct – his and ours – told everyone this was wrong. Now, yes, he has found his mojo: his daddy mojo. We have waited and waited, and now our father has come home.
Next Week: John Waters denounces the feminists and the liberal left for their infantile kulturkampf against the strong father figure.
God, I read that – never buy the IT anymore, but I wanted to read the poll breakdown, and I had a two hour bus journey to Wicklow, so I picked it up – it was utter tosh of the toshiest kind. If bankers were as bad at being bankers as Waters is at being an ‘intellectual’, who knows what state the country would be in…..oh, wait….
Hugh, that’s his M.O. to a tee…
Funnily enough SoS I only buy it when polls come out… but this was a doozy.
Somebody needs to slap Waters.
In general I think that Waters has more dignity and intelligence than he is given credit for. As a self-taught philosopher his ruminations are all his own, not the product of some lit/crit groupthink. One of the most salient features of the Celtic Tiger was its know-nothing tone, a virulent anti-intellectualism best caught in the plain-man braying of Charlie McCreevy and the vacuous Valley- Girl wittering (‘Omigod, I’m like, sooo not listening to this stuff’) of the Dundrum Centre. Waters, with his long black coat, his patriarchal dignity and severity, his reflective articles in the IT, many of them containing, OMIGOD, like, subordinate clauses and stuff, was a corrective to the intellectual tendencies of the era. That is not to say that I always agreed with Waters (unlikely, as I am an unapologetic feminist) but I respect his wisdom and his brave stance on many issues.
However, the Celtic Tiger is no more, and this latest Waters article grates. He seems to have caught the IT virus, a willful missing of the point, a total Ivory Tower disregard for the concerns of ordinary people. How far you have travelled, John, from Castlerea and Lisacul. You say that Cowen has found his Daddy mojo. The IT was obsessed last week about the fact that Cowen had at last “found his voice”. John, we don’t care whether Cowen has found his voice OR his Daddy mojo any more than the passengers on the Titanic cared what the band was playing. It’s late, the sea looks cold, and word is leaking out that there may not be enough lifeboats. Later, when we survive this and ruminate on its import, and write articles, and theses, and poetry, and jokes (please God let us still have jokes). THEN, we will examine the mood music of these awful times.But right now, this is not about Cowen, or his voice, or his mojo or his speech. It stopped being about style and optics sometime this week. Only the imperturbable Irish Times is still caught in a reflexive journalistic time-warp. There is something pitifully blind and self-indulgent in this parsing of Cowen’s speech. As if we were back in those happy, innocent days when we could write profound and witty articles about the symbolism of Bertie’s yellow suit or the fact that he could not pronounce ‘th’.The old philosophies are not working any more. We need new writers for the abyss.
[...] Solomon perhaps. Or some such. Somehow, though, this is just as wrong-headed as John Waters near barmy piece on Friday. And just as [...]
Tortoise, interesting points. I’ll just say that like you I had enormous time for Waters back in the day. He was fresh, intuitive and even-handed. But then as the 1990s lengthened he became a bitter parody of himself. I think that’s a terrible pity. But, unlike you, I don’t think his time in the Celtic Tiger period served him well. And I’m not sure his self-avowed patriarchal attitude served anyone well really.
Thank you, WorldbyStorm. I suppose there is a sort of celebrity disease one catches, especially here in Ireland which is such a tiny goldfish bowl and where the same old celebrities are trotted out and feted on the same old TV shows. Of course, it all goes to one’s head, even the head of an original and intuitive journalist like Waters, and becoming a parody of yourself is unavoidable. So many celebrity / journos have ended up like that. I hope this is not what is happening to Waters.
On the ‘patriarchal’ thing, I totally disagree with Waters’ gender analysis, but I feel he has served the debate well in the sense that he has brought an opposing view into the public discourse, which even I, as an ardent feminist, admit is feminist-dominated. This can only be good for us all, forcing us to up our game, examine our motives and sharpen our arguments. Dismissing people who attempt to articulate unfashionable views as ‘barmy’ ‘sad’ or in need of a slap (I know you have not said this, but other posters have) is a cop-out. We should be able to defend our arguments rationally, point by point, rather than giving in to the (very human) urge to engage in personal abuse
If anyone shouldn’t be raising the image mental of ‘who’s the daddy’ is Waters.