An Anglo-Irish entente

In the ongoing search for world peace, a sign of progress from a bizarre news event. As widely reported, a mentally disturbed protestor interrupted Sunday's men's marathon in Athens, and tackled the then leader of the race, an unfortunate Brazilian, who did not win the race. The protestor turned out to be defrocked Irish priest, and Kieran at Crooked Timber has an assemblage of links to his past antics; he now refers to himself as The Grand Prix Priest (a title which could surely be shortened...prixst?) following a more suicidal version of the same protest at a British Formula 1 meeting last year.

So what is there to be positive about? Well, when word was coming out of the Irish connection, it was like the Celtic Tiger suffering a relapse: you've just gotten through impressing the overseas visitors with a nice meal, conveying to them the general sophistamacation of the new Oirland...and the next thing, one of the neighbour's pigs is running through your yard, or the cat suddenly arrives in with a bird in its mouth, or that slightly shady cattle dealer who lives down the road has just driven his lorry into the electricity wires, and so we steeled overselves...Cornelius Horan..defrocked priest..Kerry...green outfit...the Paddies are at it again.

But No. We present a sample of two ranges of British opinion: the BBC story leads their profile of him by mentioning his living in Britain before getting to his nationality, and the Sun, which in the past would have found the scenario just too tempting, simply uses their preferred generic terms for such characters ("yob", "idiot") and has no references to his Irishness at all. Can eccentric Ireland as such be dead and gone?