Kissing The Crony Stone

Tyrone republican Sean Mallory runs his caustic eye over some recent media coverage in the North.

Eilis O’Hanlon – Belfast Telegraph 19/09/2016 - asks the public to forgive the appointment of Stormont's new Press Secretary, David Gordon. She explains that the former editor of the Nolan Show, and a man who once hunted with the hounds but now runs with the foxes, would have been unaware of the shady mechanisms involved in his appointment and therefore it would be grossly unfair to throw cronyistic stones at him.

Fionnuala O’Connor – Irish News 20/09/2016 – would tend to disagree and provides an interesting aspect to the shoddy affair by expanding Gordan's cronyistic appointment to look at the wider aspect of the deterioration of ethics and quality in journalism in general. Especially of the now common abandonment by journalists of the ‘them and us’ ethic to the ‘us and our government’ excesses.

Ms O’Hanlon then on 06/10/2016 in the same paper took umbrage to Mairtin O’Muilleoir's confident demeanour while answering questions put to him by the Assembly Finance committee on the Jamie Bryson/Daithi MacKay debacle.

Extremely irritated by his confidence, she highlighted that O’Muilleoir's cockiness prevented him from having the decency to find out what truly occurred and who exactly was involved and to report this back to the committee. 

When O’Muilleoir in his own particular confident fashion pointed out his innocence, this seemed to exacerbate her more and she queried why he hadn’t become a whistle blower/agent/informer/tout. Perhaps the fact that the committee had absolutely no evidence what so ever linking O’Muilleoir to the debacle was the irritant rather than O’Muilleoir's demeanour but the irritant not being republican in nature meant it was something that Eilis couldn’t berate!

Another Belfast Telegraph ‘journalist’, Suzanne Breen, tenuously attempted to make Willie McGuinness, brother of Martin, culpable for young people too drunk or high on drugs at MTV in Derry, even though Willie or his company didn’t sell them these recreational items. Obviously, Suzanne wasn’t down at Avicii on Boucher road, Tennent’s Vital.....now there was chaos!

Inclusivity, being one of the clichéd and in practice, most often discarded, watch words of today’s Stormont Assembly, was eagerly adopted by Maria Cahill in a ridiculous attempt at getting back in the public consciousness again – Belfast Telegraph 23/09/2016 –– On the back of the Denis Donaldson saga and not wishing to be like Denis and left out in the cold, she made the astonishing claim that Denis Donaldson - no he didn’t attempt or succeed in sexually assaulting her which kind of makes him unique among the leadership - but that he tried to recruit her in to the PIRA while munching on an Eastern take away delight. It would seem that the IRA in West Belfast was wholly infatuated with Ms Cahill and expended quite a large portion of its time and resources on either trying to seduce or recruit her. She declined his offer and in this instance her rejection was accepted!

10 comments:

  1. Making light of a woman's rape is despicable. Surprised at TPQ for letting that go ahead. For shame.

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  2. Steve,

    TPQ is not into the business of censoring commentary that might offend the opinions of others. Nor did we view it as an attempt to make light of a rape. Had it have made light of the rape we would not have censored it but allowed the author to be taken to pieces in the comments section or by other articles rebutting it. In this case the author was having a go at Mairia Cahill who in his view is trying to get into the media. In my opinion Mairia Cahill was right to make the commentary that she did and her intervention was well timed. The above piece calls it wrong but we have no grounds for that view. Given the amount of abuse heaped on Mairia elsewehere, I think she will hardly allow something like the above to annoy her too much.

    Maybe it is the fact that Sean Mallory wrote is what gets under your skin. I feel the unionist commenters on TPQ find his views bigoted. If he annoys you know how to deal with it. Calling for it to be censored will carry no weight here.

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  3. That should read above that we have no grounds for that view being suppressed

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  4. AM,

    I don't take 'Sean's' articles seriously anymore, I just thought that was a bit much. But fair enough. It was tasteless rather than offensive I suppose.

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  5. i wish ud a censored some of my comments over the years. when i was puffing the whacky i put some woegeous shite up here. sorry bout that. whacky days over thank god and hopefully bullshit comments too. on a serious note though im all for censorship in a way, because you cant really censor anyone these days with the internet, and because there is so much shit out there on the net, its not a bad idea to censor every now and again.

    im after reading the above again, and it sounds like im back puffing the whacky . if you ever want to censor me go ahead, ud probably be doing me a big favour.

    suzanne breen isnt the worst is she. i mean journalist. ive never read an article of hers i dont think, but she seems like a nice enuf woman. nicer than e o hanlon anyway, but thats hardly a compliment. on a more serious note though, sean shudnt be wasting his time reading and watching so much corrupted media. its seriously bad for ur mental health, worse than the whacky. at least with the whacky u get the odd dose of the giggles. he was a bit out of order i think but hes not the only one who thinks she loves attention. not taking away her awful experience.

    question - how many sf top brass double agents does it take to change a lightbulb. answer - as many as you want.

    who needs whacky for a giggle.

    g'nite.

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  6. Sean Mallory says

    Steve R,

    If you had initially taken my blogs serious then you and Goot should have hooked up back in his whacky tobaccy todays although Goot, judging by your ramblings, have you really given it up?

    Some may view my remark about Cahill as tasteless in lieu of her alleged rape and that is their prerogative but not my view.

    Let's be honest here Steve, you being a Unionist and upholder of the law, her rape was never proven in any court, so it remains her word.

    What I was trying to get across is that I was questioning Cahill's motivation in this instance. Her claims about Donaldson trying to recruit her, which could never be refuted or confirmed, which can be said also about to her alleged rape, to me, placed her in the same channel as those who were behind the extremely poor investigative journalism of the Spotlight programme against Adams. She saw the opportunity to drive the foot in and took it, spite, some would say.......SF tactics that she constantly places herself as a champion against.

    Whatever past calumny arises with the Belfast leadership, she just seems to have had some experience of it. Do you not think that is quite odd?

    By the way, I do personally support her claim that she was raped and in my private life I continually defend her against those who try to make little of her ordeal or berate her for trying to seek justice but as a public figure, her actions are open to criticism just as my blogs are!

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  7. at least i only ramble in the comments section.

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  8. Sean,

    Fair enough, I take your point. I was probably being too harsh unnecessarily. It's a bastard being so far out of the loop and I may well have missed some of the nuances of what you were attempting to convey.

    My apologies Sean.

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  9. - no he didn’t attempt or succeed in sexually assaulting her which kind of makes him unique among the leadership -

    thats the real low point in the above article, much and all as i dont like the leadership, its a careless thing to say. sean, ur only one syllable away urself, as are all men, from having ur life turned upside down and inside out, made a pariah and isolated from friends family neighbours and colleagues. i learned that the fucking hardway. i think u know what that little monosyllable is. there were times i wished i had my arms and legs cut off instead of being tagged with that little poisonous word. and yes,the whacky was a great escape from it for a while.

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  10. Sean Mallory says

    Goot,

    Thanks for the advice!

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