A Kildare man botches US pop culture

We wonder if the Wall Street Journal dug up an old Ireland-themed editorial today (see last post) in homage to opinion page contributor Charlie McCreevy, longtime Irish politician. Because he's there today (subs. req'd) in his new role as European Union internal market commissioner to plug his trip to New York this week to discuss financial regulation. It's laughable to see Charlie outline his basic principle for his EU-US talks -- "better regulation" -- since under his time as the Republic of Ireland's Minister for Finance, the basic principle was no regulation at all.

But let's leave such carping aside and comment merely on Charlie's preferred analogy for the EU-US relationship. In what may be a reflection of a search for an analogy that would click with the alleged tribe of South Park Republicans, he goes for the Simpsons:

Read through the papers on both sides of the Atlantic and you'd think the EU and U.S. had a Bart and Homer Simpson relationship -- one side (and I'm not saying which) annoying the other beyond endurance, the other throttling away in frustration.
...
But add up the sum of the parts and the relationship looks more like Marge and Homer Simpson: A partnership based on experience and understanding, albeit with plenty of bickering at the margins.

Er ... we're not sure that solves the problem with the Bart-Homer comparison, since it's not clear that either side would want to be either character, leaving us wondering if Charlie has ever actually watched the show. But at least he didn't try to fit the two powers into Mr Burns and Smithers.