You'll never please the Irish

The Irish are often called (by ourselves) a nation of begrudgers, but apparently we've been up to even more of it than we knew. Confronted by the accusation that Dubya has dissipated all of the post 9/11 global sympathy for the US on his Arabian adventurism, the sadly predictable response from his boosters has been to claim that There Was No 9/11 Global Sympathy for the US. It's especially surprising for bloggers to make this claim, because surely they understand than in addition to our memories of the global outpouring of solidarity, they must know that the same technology that allows them to blog allows us to go back all of two years ago and check that our memories were correct.

In his quest for evidence of global gloating, Andrew Sullivan links to a blog-irish selection of quotes from the opinion pages of the Irish Times. [Link via a fine riposte on Sullywatch ]. How dubious is this exercise? Let's start with one little thing. Robert Fisk is used as an example. Given the widespread reprinting of his columns, just how many countries could be shown to be gloaters with quotes from locally published Fisk articles?

But then there's the whole MO of this exercise: trawl through the op-ed pieces of one's favourite whipping boys, and pull out the quote expressing, God forbid, the odd bit of skepticism or cynicism about the likely aftermath of 9-11. Let's look at number 1 target, Fintan O'Toole. Exactly 14 days after the atrocity, Fintan is worried:

On the other hand, the kind of serial killing that is being actively canvassed by some within the Bush administration would make the world an even more dangerous place. There is serious talk of an open-ended war, not just on Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, but on Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and, in a neat stroke of opportunism, Cuba.

Is he an anti-American gloater because 14 days afterwards, he fears that 9/11 might be used an excuse to invade Iraq?

Finally, lurking here is the recurring inconsistency at the heart of much right-wing media criticism. Are these pampered Dublin 2 liberal media elites a cloistered enclave of anti-Americanism within a mass of "real" people who know the truth, or are they an evil 5th column using the vast power of the Irish Times opinion page to manipulate the public around to their pinko freedom-hating ways? If it's the former, then why does it matter what they say, and if it's the latter, why does this 5th column often seem so singularly ineffective?

To take the last question at face value, could it be that people read other parts of the paper besides the opinion pages? On the days from which the Irish 9-11 gloatfest was culled, the following articles also ran:

Irish Times Article - NY an Irish city from firefighting to finance

Irish Times Article - Homage paid by North's business

Irish Times Article - Global community backs US in 'act of war' aftermath

Irish Times Article - Irish-born missing or unaccounted for estimated at 20 to 30

Irish Times Article - State is silenced by 'awful acts of hatred'

And this before we get into things like Ireland's nod-and-wink neutrality in favour of America, for example, the Shannon stopover for military flights. But let's say one positive thing about Sullivan and his Irish contributor: with the surprisingly big egos we Irish have about our place in the world, all of us can take pleasure at being taken as representative of world public opinion.