Birds of a feather

Slightly short of blogging steam (and time) these days so just a pointer to some unusual associations. We learn via Slugger O'Toole that Brokeback Mountain won't be showing in Ian Paisley's hometown, Ballymena, meaning that the War on Brokeback as chroncicled by James Wolcott has gone trans-Atlantic.

Also, the extensive biographies for Michael Wharton, for years the scribe behind the Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph, make reference to his interest in Irish affairs, in which his outlook helped him to see links that others would have more trouble with:

[Times of London]
Among the causes he championed were the Welsh and Irish languages, and particularly those peoples that left-liberals found it fashionable to ridicule and despise: white Rhodesians, Ulster Protestants and the Serbs — whom he regarded as the guardians of civilisation (against the Turk).


[Telegraph] Wharton supported the white Rhodesians, and had some sympathy for the aims of the Irish Republic; but he knew that the former were doomed, and felt that the latter was bent on turning itself into a uniformly socialist state no different from any other member state of the United Nations. He had no answers, no hope.

There is an obscure link to present day events in another bit of the Telegraph obit:

Particularly after anthologies of the columns started appearing in book form, he attracted a few distinctly sinister "fan" letters. These welcomed, at last, somebody who could "understand" their conspiracy theories about Social Credit, international Jewry or Satan's Second Coming.

Social Credit is a theory linking the printing of money with growth and income distribution and had its main political life in Canada; the party is now gone but its latent support base is still around, particularly in Western Canada -- not least with the strength of the Conservatives in the recent election.