What is the point of Ann Coulter? Why Ann Coulter of course!

An interesting discussion on Politics.ie

Ann Coulter is no conservative. Why so? Because she's not the rentaquote liberal-basher she projects herself as, but is instead an astute and manipulative business person who has cornered a market in mock-outrageous hyperbole which presumably brings the money rolling in.
Some time ago I was listening to David Brock on an Air America podcast. Brock was a Republican activist before 'seeing the light' and turning liberal to the extent of being a cofounder of media watchdog, Media Matters (he also wrote a book 'Blinded by the Right' as I recall detailing his experiences). In any event, he was asked by the interviewer how many of those working within the US administration and beyond that the media cheerleaders in Fox et al were 'true believers', and he replied that in his experience there was a significant tranche who were careerists who had found this a good way to make money.

Lest anyone think that I'm insulting those of conservative beliefs, I'm not. There is little better IMHO that a cogent and sincere conservative argument and such beliefs have had a significant impact upon my own brand of libertarian socialism.

But it's where such beliefs meet the interface between the media, populism and money that they take a turn for the worse, becoming bloated and extreme for the sake of extremism (Indeed a similar situation, if marginally less noxious, can be seen I think in relation to Michael Moore on the left). Coulter seems to be one of those for whom principle is not the main motive force in her life.

I was hugely amused to see on her website a link to a fairly favourable Guardian interview. So it seems if you're kind to Ann you'll get brownie points. Well, I'll be kind for a moment.
She's a reasonably good writer (and in truth who am I to judge?), and a fantastic purveyor of soundbites. She's feisty and argumentative. I enjoy what she says enormously.
Moment over.

However, unfortunately her purchase on fact appears tenuous and her inability to moderate her tone is self-defeating.

But the old Marxist in me often wonders just how she thinks she's assisting the right in the US? It can't be strategic, because there's no evidence of long term thinking there. And it's hardly tactical because she generates controversy at inopportune moments like this. Even, no particularly, amongst the base her brand of pejorative ranting has it's limits. When she makes Limbaugh look reasonable then you know we're not in Kansas anymore.

And that's why I don't really think of her as a conservative, because what she does is entirely antagonistic to the conservative project.

She undermines the many viewpoints from the right that she purports to represent. But hey, that's business, as I'm sure she'd agree.

Without overstating her influence, whether the administration and her friends on the right will see it in just such terms as the project seems to be faltering I wonder…

Revision time

In the inevitable outpouring of analysis, op-eds and obituaries of Haughey we have to look forward to, it's hard to imagine a more bizarre piece (well, apart from what's published by Independent News and Media) than this, quick-off-the-mark, article by Jason Walsh in the Guardian's Comment is Free section.

Walsh begins with the kind of sentiment we can expect to see repeated ad nauseam over the next few days, but which remains broadly true: Haughey is, or was, a very divisive figure; for all the criticism he attracted, he still retained a good many devotees; whatever his personal failings, he had some remarkable achievements; history will judge him etc. 

However, the writer seems to be a little out of touch with the reality of public sentiment in contemporary Ireland:

More important, though, is what the people of the Republic of Ireland make of him. For now Haughey remains popular. He is credited with lifting Ireland out of the doldrums, laying the foundations for its current economic boom and his pensioner-friendly policies such as free travel guarantee his passing will be mourned by the over 65s.

Again, this is true, but only to an extent. Haughey is popular among some, but to say that he 'remains popular' is surely an exaggeration. There are very few who retain their admiration for him without qualification, and even those who credit him with the economic boom of recent years, or with laying the seeds of the Peace Process, will tend to acknowledge the less savoury parts of his history, albeit just to stress that (in their view) his influence, on balance, has been a positive one.

Walsh, however, doesn't seem to acknowledge, or realise, that Haughey might actually have had any flaws at all, or that a significant number of Irish people absolutely despised him (and not without cause). No, Walsh invokes the favorite confrontation of the lazy hack: the 'ordinary people' vs. the 'establishment'. It's the ordinary people (apparently representative of what Walsh terms 'the Irish psyche') who admired Haughey because he was a bit of a chancer. And obviously, there's nothing the 'establishment' hates more than ordinary people.

For many in the media and the academy, as well as on the opposition benches – and even for a few on the government benches – in the Dáil, this is exactly why Haughey must be cut down to size and if it must be done after his death, all the better. At least he won't be popping up to remind the public why they liked him in the first place.

Again, Walsh seems oblivious to the fact that Haughey's been massively villified for the past ten years. He did have serious questions to answer (and, due to his more recent ill-health, he didn't face quite as much scrutiny as he possibly should have). Still, if 'the media and the academy' (which 'academy' exactly is he talking about here, or is it just 'Class of Political Correctness Gone Mad 2006' again) say something, obviously it must be wrong.

Towards the end, though, it becomes pretty clear why Walsh seems so intent, not, perhaps, on defending Haughey, but on attacking his critics:

No doubt in forthcoming work by some celebrated commentators, Haughey's personal failings will be exaggerated in order to stomp on the republican consciousness of ordinary Irish citizens. His foibles will be held aloft as conclusive proof of the double-dealing and untrustworthiness of republicans, even of the soft variety found in Fianna Fáil. In death he will become an easy target for smears and attack stories. For Ireland's growing band of revisionists, Haughey represents the latent republicanism of the citizenry. At the very least he must be portrayed as outmoded.

This, to me, seems one of the most bizarre things I've ever read on Haughey, alive or dead. Apparently Walsh believes that criticism of Haughey is synonymous with an anti-republican position, or that critics of Haughey are motivated by anti-republicanism. 

What utter rubbish. Certainly many of Haughey's harshest critics were also critics of the Provisional movement, but it's quite a stretch to see the two as linked. There's no need to dwell on the darker aspects of the Haughey era right now; no doubt that'll be thrashed out in the weeks, months and years ahead. But we're still living with the consequences of the poisoning of the Irish political landscape , which must be seen as a significant part of Haughey's legacy (time will tell if it will be seen as the dominant part).  This isn't a figment of the imagination of 'the media' or 'academics' or even the dreaded 'revisionists' (a shadowy group of ne'er-do-wells which Walsh decries but never defines or names, content in the belief that anyone who challenges an accepted view – well, accepted by him – must automatically be suspect).

Never once in the piece does Walsh mention corruption, or Ansbacher, or the Moriarty tribunal.  Indeed, there's little to indicate that he's even aware of them. Instead, all he can bring himself to say is:

Whether Haughey made, on balance, a positive or negative contribution to Irish history, I have no idea.

In that case, perhaps he might do well to save his hysterical 'republican' paranoia, and his denunciations of the dread 'revisionists' and leave the analysis of Haughey's legacy to those even vaguely familiar with the facts.

Modernity and Charles Haughey.

Odd isn't it to put the word modernity in the same sentence as Charles Haughey, and yet, I can't help but feel that he was one of Ireland's truly modern politicians, someone who but for an accident of birth would have fitted as well into the British Conservatives or New Labour.

He was someone who achieved Ministerial power in the 1960s, who immediately saw how political power and influence can be entwined for the personal, although in fairness that wasn't unknown in this state on any side prior to that. He had an appreciation of the glamour of power (quite an achievement if the photo's from the time do him anything approaching justice) and an ability to project it. In his private relationships he shunned the conventions that middle Ireland held up as the standard. He assumed many of the trappings of wealth in a display which was nouveau riche, and yet was carried off with a wink. The late lamented Scrap Saturday had an entire sketch based on the fact he appeared to claim at least two and possibly more locations as his birthplace…but that was typical, all things to all men…

Does this sound like a eulogy? I certainly hope not.

Yet, I have two friends, both in their late forties or early fifties who knew him well. One was a long-time member of the Labour Party and it was perhaps the way in which they were able to maintain a friendship with Haughey that taught me something about the necessity to look beyond the partisan political at the personal.

However, while looking beyond the partisan political to the personal is good, it is sometimes necessary to look beyond the personal and consider the broader public good. On that score serious questions remain. Yet he remains a man of his time with all the vices and virtues that came with that.

In a way he was a sort of anti-Enoch Powell, a politician of rigorous principle who on one particular occasion allowed that principle to go to his head and allow him say something utterly reprehensible. Haughey was not, I suspect, a man who even his closest friends would have claimed was a man of rigorous principle. Yet, in broad terms his populism was remarkably restrained. So much of what he projected was a facade, a facade of nationalism, a facade of populism, a facade of gentrification. In a more real sense he was the personification of the old jibe about Irish independence being little more than a thin coat of green paint applied to the post boxes. No more or less meaningful than that.

However, if there is one thing I think he contributed to this society, and something that I suspect was no facade, it was in the late 1980s when the country was far from recovery. I think his approach to the issue of heritage and the arts was as important, perhaps more important than the IFSC (and I've often wondered was that a little dig at Tony Gregory seeing as it was sited in the same constituency – or was it indeed yet another element of the Gregory deal?). This developed from a genuine appreciation of these areas on his part. I'd argue that it was the support he gave to the state, and state cultural institutions and arts institutions which in part mitigated the more right-ward drift of his economic policies and perhaps demonstrated that the state wasn't merely something to be cut away but could become an enabler – that we could at least to some degree have our entrepreneurial cake and eat it with a side order of a relatively vibrant state supported sector. That indeed the state had a duty to provide such support as it disengaged from the nostrums of Keynesian support for the traditional semi-state sector. The contemporary economy, one built less on the old concept of industrialisation and more on services owes something to that.

That was a very modern lesson to teach – however short term it proves ultimately to be. And one that, perhaps far more than the man, has served us well in the intervening years…

…Regarding the Dáil eulogies. I thought Enda Kenny gave a measured and and balanced piece. The same is true of Trevor Sargent. However that given by Pat Rabitte appeared fractious and divisive, with the customary 'not the day for discussing the dark side' followed by 'on the other hand I would be a hypocrite'. One wonders is this yet another attempt to mark out a unique spot on the Irish political terrain. If so it's a bitter place…

Lefties fail to exult in death of terrorist

In yesterday’s Observer, Nick Cohen takes the liberal left to task for failing to jubilate at the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

Outside the international jihadi movement, ‘there will be few people shedding any tears for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,’ said the Guardian. Strictly speaking, this is true. Most of the world’s liberal-Left aren’t like George Galloway. They haven’t ‘saluted’ fascistic tyrants or gushingly described the ‘insurgents’ from the Baath party and al-Qaeda as ‘ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs’. Rather, they have pretended that the struggle for democracy in Iraq has nothing to do with them. They have concentrated all their energy on hating Bush and turned their backs on Iraq’s liberals and democrats. They don’t support fascism, but they don’t oppose it, either. Frankly, I prefer Galloway; at least he makes a commitment.

The real question is not why so few people cried on the news of Zarqawi’s death, but why so few cheered. The answer will take the liberal-left a long time to live down.

I must admit that upon hearing of Zarqawi’s death I failed to pump the air vigorously with my fist. This will take me a long time to live down. In my defence, however, what may have inhibited me from pulling my shirt over my face and wheeling around the room with arms outstretched is the guilty thought that perhaps Zarqawi’s elimination does not represent the final victory over the illiberal forces of insurgency in Iraq, let alone the wider Al Qaeda franchise.

I know it’s wrong of me, but for some reason I find it hard to cut loose when news reaches me of the death of individual islamist or Ba’athist figureheads. I’m not proud of it, but part of me would rather wait for some other positive indicator from Iraq before I allow a hearty “boo-ya!” to escape. You know, some sort of marked reduction in insurgent activity, fewer people being blown up or shot, a material improvement in the lot of ordinary Iraqis, removal of the threats to the country’s fledgling democracy. Stuff like that. I know, it’s a typically petty leftist attitude.

If this were 1945, I’m sure I would be the one spoiling everybody’s fun at the Mussolini execution street parties by mentioning the minor matter of the ongoing World War.

The elephant in the room

(via politics.ie)

According to the Sunday Business Post, former national organiser for Labour Pat Magner is predicting that the party with enter into coalition with Fianna Fáil after the next election, posing some obvious difficulties for Pat Rabbitte.

This is hardly surprising, of course, and it's well known that there are members of the Labour Party who'd be happier in coalition with FF than with their current buddies, Fine Gael. Similarly, there are people in Labour who have an interest in making life as uncomfortable as possible for Rabbitte and, given the corner he (Rabbitte) has painted himself into with his pre-electoral pledge, Magner's comments must be read with that in mind.

Still, what we do see in Magner's comments is perhaps the first utterance of what will likely become a recurring theme over the next twelve months: the need for Labour to act in the 'national interest' when it comes to forming a government.

Magner, who served under four Labour Party leaders, said that it was still the duty of the Dail to elect a taoiseach and ‘‘Pat Rabbitte has to play his part in that’’.

‘‘Firstly because it is not his decision whether or not the Labour Party will enter government with Fianna Fail, that decision is a matter for the Labour Party. Labour Party members have been called upon to form governments when the country was on its knees.

‘‘In this case, we’re being asked to forgo government in a country that’s awash with money, and which we’re saying is being badly spent.”

We've heard this before, and we'll hear it again. In the event of Labour and Fine Gael (and, possibly, the Greens, although they seem to be playing a smarter game than their Labour colleagues) not having the numbers to form a government, Labour will have a duty to go in with Fianna Fáil. The country needs a government after all, and surely you don't want the Shinners at the Cabinet table!

Of course, there is the other alternative: the coalition that dare not speak its name. Labour could always stand aloof from both the larger parties, and let them go into government together. Surely if Labour has a duty to hold its nose and vote for Ahern (or whoever) as Taoiseach, the same duty applies no less to Fine Gael. And would the policies of such a coalition be so much worse than what Labour could achieve in government to justify deferring any longer term electoral advantage Labour might gain by staying in opposition?

Let's not be naive about this. It's long been a bit of a dream of the Irish left to force such a coalition, the thinking being that this would show the electorate that Civil War differences were fundamentally meaningless, and would force the famous realignment of Irish politics into left and right. That's not going to happen. Irish politics has already realigned, but everyone's moved to the centre. Labour isn't going to start proposing the nationalisation of the banks just because it's the largest party in opposition. And Fianna Fáil isn't going to hold a seminar on Hayek (or, indeed, develop any kind of coherent political philosophy) during their getaway on Inchydoney just because Labour's sitting opposite.

However, Labour does have a lot to lose by entering coalition with either FF or FG at the moment. They're already vulnerable on the left from Sinn Féin (although the current extent of this threat is often overstated). If SF manages to, at the very least, consolidate its vote (if not increase it) at the next election, it could be rather nasty thorn in the side of Labour in government.

Magner talks about 'a government that's awash with money'. Can he be quite sure that the money will still be there in five years time? Or that, for example, a Labour Minister for Health would be so effective that any criticism would be empty? Remember, any coalition with Fianna Fáil will inevitably have a Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance. As long as that's the case, any scope Labour might have for any kind of serious improvement in public services or redistribution of wealth will be extremely limited. And we can be sure that SF will take full advantage.

Of course, when it comes to weighing up short-term gains in office with longer term drawbacks, you don't have to be psychic to guess how the decision is likely to go.Still, as long as an FF/FG coalition isn't seriously considered, Labour can always plead that they had no choice but to go into government, 'for the good of the country'.

Interesting times…

I don't claim to have any insight into the inner workings of Ulster Unionism, but the news today that an UUP councillor (the brilliantly named) Peter Bowles has jumped ship to the Northern Ireland Conservative Party over the current liaison between the UUP and the PUP has been fairly intriguing BBC News. What's most interesting is the fault lines it has exposed within the 'moderate' unionist bloc between their single MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, and the Reg Empey leadership. I would always have considered Hermon to be a pragmatist on a par with Empey, but she's clearly spitting mad about the links in the assembly.

On paper it was a brilliant coup for Reg Empey. Should the power-sharing executive be formed the UUP would get an extra ministerial seat at the expense of Sinn Féin. Quite a wheeze for a party which has been on the back foot since it's Westminster contingent was eviscerated by the DUP. And perhaps clever politics too if the DUP appears just a little too staunch and steadfast come the Autumn and refuses to do the deal with SF. A moderate UUP with a significant cohort of Ministers might be just the sweetner to mask the bitterness of yet another administration with SF participation. However, it presumably turned to ashes for Empey following the shooting of Mark Haddock hardly a week or two after the ink was dry on the agreement between the PUP and the UUP. And it's hard not to see a considerable degree of hypocrisy on the part of the UUP considering the merry dance of the last eight years as executives came and went over links between SF and PIRA. On the other hand, Trimble had a hell of a job convincing his own base to move with him, so perhaps the hypocrisy was well warranted, or at least understandable. And Empey has been eloquent in his admission about the manner in which Unionism used the paramilitaries in the past.

No, in some respects the most curious aspect is the direction of the defection. The NI Conservative Party is hardly the biggest political player on the field, yet this is the new home for the most moderate of the 'moderates'. Yet it makes sense. For those who detest the DUP, but have no wish to move towards Alliance, the purity (as some would see it) of the NICP might be just the ticket. That the NICP is effectively a stalled political vehicle, with no prospect of popular support is irrelevant – principle has been maintained.

Yet it also points up a solid immovable fact. Pragmatism is becoming the order of the day within the North. Outside of the environment the Good Friday Agreement has engendered (as distinct from the GFA itself which may or may not have a future) there is no serious political existence, within it even the UUP and the PUP can be cosy. And a similar dynamic is evident on the other side of the political equation where the wailing and gnashing of teeth of 'dissident' Republicans only serves to highlight the dominance of Sinn Féin as the voice of Northern Nationalism and Republicanism.

Somehow I don't think Empey will be too worried about this particular straw in the wind, but unless the deal can be seen to deliver in the short to medium term he too might discover that pragmatism also has it's price…

Because he’s Gorgeous.

The latest edition of the New Statesman contains an article by George 'The Cat' Galloway on Che Guevara and the exhibition currently running at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's all pretty standard stuff, Galloway's writing being remarkable only for its banality. He tells us little we didn't already know, and haven't heard a hundred times already. However, whether by accident or design, he does raise a couple fairly interesting points.

Referring to the received wisdom about the famous Korda image of Che, that it's become commercialised and stripped of any kind of radicalism, and criticising a perceived distaste among the more serious left for the image, Galloway writes

It is tempting for those of us on the left to feel uncomfortable with his popular appeal; rather like music fans who, when their favourite underground band hits the big time, moan that they've "gone commercial" and sagely tell new enthusiasts that the latest gigs aren't a patch on "the night they played the Crooked Billet in Scunthorpe.

Has he a point? It's a cute analogy, but I don't think it really holds up. The problem with the Che image isn't just that it's popular, but that in its popularity and unbiquitousness, it ceases to retain any serious political connotations. Familiarity might breed contempt, but more usually it just breeds indifference. Someone wearing a t-shirt with the image or it (and I have one myself, so I'm certainly not exempt from this) is saying less 'I am interested in radical politics' than 'I want to look like I'm interested in radical politics'. There's nothing in itself objectionable about wanting to project a radical image, provided that's not confused with radical action. The more we see the image around us, the more it becomes just that: an image, signifying nothing except its own iconic status. On that point, there's probably a very interesting essay to be written on the Korda picture, analysing it with the reference to Walter Benjamin's famous piece on 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', but I'm certainly not clever enough to attempt it.

Galloway's next point is also worth nothing. Dismissing the straw man objection he sets up above, he writes:"

I don't see it that way. If only 10 per cent of the people who wear the image of this incredibly handsome figure know what he stood for, that is still many millions. Overwhelmingly, they are also young people, with their hearts set on making the world a better place. Indeed, in my experience, many more than 10 per cent have a very good idea of what he stood for. It is an excellent example of the younger generation confounding the low expectations of them.

Admittedly, this might be true (once you've stopped shuddering at the 'incredibly handsome' part). Many young people attracted to the image may very well also be interested and involved in progressive politics – I know a few myself (I even was one … once). But I think Galloway's fetishisation of young people is at once patronising and self-defeating for 'the left'.

Galloway is grasping at the cliche that young people aren't interested in politics, and that anything that gets them more involved must automatically be a good thing. It's hard to argue against anything that would lead to greater political engagement, among young people or, indeed, anyone. But is it really true that expectations of 'the younger generation' are really so low?

Over the last ten years, the real energy on the political left seems to have come from young people (or, in Galloway's Macmillan-esque phrase 'the younger generation') who, perhaps weary of party politics, tend to focus more on broader issues. Obviously, all I have to go on is my own experience, but it appears to me that young people (that is, those in their late teens or early twenties) are far more likely to be aware of, for example, international development issues, globalisation (and the international anti-capitalist 'movement'), the IMF, the WTO and the history of US foreign policy than they were ten or fifteen years ago (back when I was 'young'). Whether it was the crisis facing the 'old left' following the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the relative difficulties of accessing left-wing writing in the days before internet access was widespread, back then political engagement tended not to rise much higher than support for Greenpeace and a fondness for Bill Hicks. Even Noam Chomsky, who now has shelves devoted to him in Waterstones, was a relatively obscure figure.

Of course, I'm probably exaggerating, but it's becoming increasingly hard to sustain the argument that young people aren't interested in politics (or, in the case of Galloway, to argue that this archaic belief is widespread, but that George knows better).The real challenge facing the left in this regard isn't about attracting young people to politics; it's in keeping them involved when they stop being 'young'. Youth involvement will only get you so far, but unless you can ensure that they stay involved after they leave college and enter the workforce, you're not going to be able to build a sustainable political movement (unless, of course, you're basing your programme on The Children of the Corn).

For Galloway, of course, it hardly matters. The whole 'reaching out to young people' thing is something of a mantra for him and, indeed, was the justification he used for entering Celebrity Big Brother (a lowpoint for him, perhaps, but the highlight of 2006 so far for me). It's not hard to guess why he's so interested. For someone whose sole motivation in life appears to be to gain as much publicity and press attention for George Galloway as he can, it's understandable that he would focus on the 18-35 yr old demographic. But for those actually interested in politics that go beyond soundbites and interviews with GQ, there's a greater challenge ahead.

At least until another great iconic image, like the Korda one, comes along to revitalise the left and inspire a generation to rise up against oppression.

An image like this one, maybe:

 Hasta la victoria siempre, George!