Presidential Election

[Broken Wing]

If it was simply an anti-death penalty thing then why choose a guy who was not only unrepentant of his crime but urged others to follow his example? It could be argued that Mitchell chose this guy to defend, out of all the people on death row, because they share a pro-life agenda. I could be wrong and perhaps Gay attempted to intervene on behalf of everyone sitting on death row but I've not seen that mentioned anywhere.

Either way, the issue with Norris, as I understand it, was his attempt to use his position to intervene. Mitchell did the exact same thing. Of course Mitchell chose a fundamentalist christian pro-life double murderer to defend while Norris chose someone who had sex with a minor so really it was about the crime and not the actions of the candidate.

[fourthirtythree]

Mitchell chose a fundamentalist christian pro-life double murderer to defend while Norris chose someone who had sex with a minor so really it was about the crime and not the actions of the candidate.

I'm obviously quite ignorant of how people roll these days but: how can you be a pro-life double murderer? Kind of beggars belief doesn't it?

[Broken Wing]

Mitchell chose a fundamentalist christian pro-life double murderer to defend while Norris chose someone who had sex with a minor so really it was about the crime and not the actions of the candidate.

I'm obviously quite ignorant of how people roll these days but: how can you be a pro-life double murderer? Kind of beggars belief doesn't it?

I think it was George Carlin who said that Pro-lifers only care about you until you're born.

[Dave Cahill]

Every now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something grey, wrinkled and quite trunky sitting the corner.

[Slipper1]

Every now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something grey, wrinkled and quite trunky sitting the corner.

Mauler?

[Darce]

If it was simply an anti-death penalty thing then why choose a guy who was not only unrepentant of his crime but urged others to follow his example? It could be argued that Mitchell chose this guy to defend, out of all the people on death row, because they share a pro-life agenda. I could be wrong and perhaps Gay attempted to intervene on behalf of everyone sitting on death row but I've not seen that mentioned anywhere.

Either way, the issue with Norris, as I understand it, was his attempt to use his position to intervene. Mitchell did the exact same thing. Of course Mitchell chose a fundamentalist christian pro-life double murderer to defend while Norris chose someone who had sex with a minor so really it was about the crime and not the actions of the candidate.

But combine Norris' use of his position with his close relationship with the convicted man and it's quite different. Perhaps Mitchell wrote other letters for other death row guys, perhaps he didn't, but I think that that relationship between Norris and Nawi means there is a subtle, but significant difference in the 2 cases

[Broken Wing]

If it was simply an anti-death penalty thing then why choose a guy who was not only unrepentant of his crime but urged others to follow his example? It could be argued that Mitchell chose this guy to defend, out of all the people on death row, because they share a pro-life agenda. I could be wrong and perhaps Gay attempted to intervene on behalf of everyone sitting on death row but I've not seen that mentioned anywhere.

Either way, the issue with Norris, as I understand it, was his attempt to use his position to intervene. Mitchell did the exact same thing. Of course Mitchell chose a fundamentalist christian pro-life double murderer to defend while Norris chose someone who had sex with a minor so really it was about the crime and not the actions of the candidate.

But combine Norris' use of his position with his close relationship with the convicted man and it's quite different. Perhaps Mitchell wrote other letters for other death row guys, perhaps he didn't, but I think that that relationship between Norris and Nawi means there is a subtle, but significant difference in the 2 cases

Yes there is. The difference being that Norris actually knew the guy so was in a position to write about his character first hand. Presumably Mitchell didn't know the guy he was trying to defend. Is that difference really that significant? If anything it shows Mitchell as willing to put his name to defending any randomer.

I'm not trying to defend what Norris did. I'm just pointing out that another candidate also sent a letter pleading for celemency for a man convicted of a serious crime. For some reason the fact that he didn't know the man and that the man was only guilty of a double murder means this is somehow acceptable.

[Darce]

As I've said previously and as is stated in the letter, Mitchell does not try and defend the guy. He merely argues against the merits of putting one man to death for the murder of others.

Mitchell did not advocate not punishing this perp. Saying he did would out of the ball park

[ronk]

As I've said previously and as is stated in the letter, Mitchell does not try and defend the guy. He merely argues against the merits of putting one man to death for the murder of others.

Mitchell did not advocate not punishing this perp. Saying he did would out of the ball park

So did Norris. He tries to talk about mitigating circumstances etc.

[Amz]

Just to get away from that issue for a second, I'm hearing a lot of people saying they're not going to vote this time around. I would sincerely hope that they at least go and spoil their vote rather than sitting at home looking apathetic.

[Broken Wing]

Let's be honest Amz, if they could get Mary II to stay on for another 7 years we wouldn't even be having an election.

I'll still vote of course. Hopfully Dana will run so I can show my distaste for the candidates without spoiling my vote.

[sarah_lennon]

Not even in jest BW

[Broken Wing]

With Mitchell running we already have a pro life religious nut so I'm curious as to what she'd be standing for.

[rathgarblue]

With Mitchell running we already have a pro life religious nut so I'm curious as to what she'd be standing for.

For those people who view Mitchell as a dangerous liberal urban leftie.
Neither Gallagher nor Davis are catching the imagination either, at the moment its probably Michael D by default for me.

[Hickiefan]

I'm so uninspired it is depressing. If It wasn't against everything I believe it I wouldn't vote. I hope a new candidate comes from somewhere... not feckin Dana though!

[Slipper1]

I'm so uninspired it is depressing. If It wasn't against everything I believe it I wouldn't vote. I hope a new candidate comes from somewhere... not feckin Dana though!

with you on all of that

[deco]

Dana is as entitled to run as anyone else. Like it or not she has a constituency and will pull a large vote. If she's elected, the public will get what we deserve - just like the government we elected.

We're a shambles of a country, the sooner we have full European Union or re-join the British one the better, 'cause we have proven that we are unable to govern ourselves.

Sir Bob's Rats got it right all the way back in 1980:

Banana Republic-

Septic Isle
Screaming in the Suffering sea
It sounds like crying (crying, crying)
Everywhere I go, oh yeah
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests

And I wonder do you wonder
While you're sleeping with your whore
That sharing beds with history
Is like a-licking running sores
Forty shades of green yeah
Sixty shades of red
Heroes going cheap these days
Price; a bullet in the head

Banana Republic
Septic Isle
Suffer in the Screaming sea
It sounds like dying (dying, dying)
Everywhere I go, oh yeah
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests

Take your hand and lead you
Up a garden path
Let me stand aside here
And watch you pass
Striking up a soldier's song
I know that tune
It begs too many questions
And answers too

Banana Republic
Septic Isle
Suffer in the Screaming sea
It sounds like dying (dying, dying)
Everywhere I go, oh yeah
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests

The purple and the pinstripe
Mutely shake their heads
A silense shrieking volumes
A violence worse than they condemn
Stab you in the back yeah
Laughing in your face
Glad to see the place again
It's a pity nothing's changed

Banana Republic
Septic Isle
Suffer in the Screaming sea
It sounds like dying
Everywhere I go
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests

[Mackman15]

Wouldn't it be interesting if the existing Reid Professor were to enter the race with a view to completing the Hat-trick.

Ok, perhaps not.

[Hornet]

Every now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something grey, wrinkled and quite trunky sitting the corner.

I'd vote for that! Better than any of the candidates out there.

[deco]

Pertinent questions ignored in Norris case


NOTHING IN recent years has revealed the ideological corruption of the Irish media as the David Norris saga. Nothing has so dramatically laid bare the extent to which our culture has been appropriated by people for whom words, facts, circumstances are no more than the raw material for beating Irish society in a new shape of their liking.

Anyone reading David Norriss 2002 Magill interview was left with a nagging question: why would anyone want to say such things about paedophilia? The idea of an “academic” discussion about classical Greece was deeply implausible if you read the full text. Isn’t it interesting the way the interview turned out to be a kind of insurance policy when the details of his legal intervention on behalf of his convicted lover rapist emerged?

But, instead of publishing the relevant text when the interview resurfaced last May, most Irish newspapers carried comment pieces speculating about “smears”, “homophobia” and the possibility of a “right-wing conspiracy”.

The author of the article, Helen Lucy Burke, who raised the matter, was rubbished. Norris was given kid-glove treatment on primetime radio and television programmes, and allowed to bluster uninterrupted about ancient Greece.

Child abuse activists who criticised or questioned Norris were ignored, while his apologists were given centre stage. Instead of pursuing the unanswered questions, commentators revisited Norris’s record as a human rights agitator. Thus, a significant proportion of the population was persuaded that the Magill episode was a bottle of smoke. Anyone insisting otherwise was daubed “homophobe”.

Had it been down to the investigative exertions of most of the media, the facts that have become public in the past week might not have emerged until after the presidential election, by which time the president of Ireland might have been a man who had failed to fully disclose to a foreign court the nature of his relationship with a convicted rapist. Even now, Norris’s fans in politics and the media seek to minimise what occurred, talking about “the culture of the time” and proposing that Norris was not “the worst offender” in seeking clemency for an accused person.

There is no reasonable comparison to be made between what Norris did and anything that has emerged about any attempt by any other Irish politician to plead on behalf of an accused or convicted individual.

Who else has sought to influence a court on behalf of a convicted lover rapist, while failing to disclose the full nature of the relationship?

Who has sought to use his position as an Irish parliamentarian to question the motives and procedures of a foreign jurisdiction in prosecuting and convicting a rapist lover?

But, instead of scrutinising the facts as would be automatic if the protagonist were a bishop or some less-favoured politician, most media coverage contrived to twist and reduce the meaning of Norris’s letter to the Israeli court, and to ignore the way it contextualizes Norris’s views on paedophilia, as communicated in his interviews with Magill and the Irish Daily Mail .

In exiting the presidential campaign, Norris was made to look like some kind of martyr, done down by a combination of illiberal forces and his own romantic folly. He loved, they told us, not wisely but too well.

Does nobody think it necessary to ask Norris the kind of questions journalists would immediately and automatically ask of a bishop found to have remained silent about an episode of clerical abuse?

For example: at what stage did he first become aware that Ezra Nawi had had sex with an underage boy, and what steps did he take to prevent a recurrence?

And, by the way, can someone outline for me the distinctions to be made between Nawi’s behaviour and that of the man at the centre of the infamous “X case”? There are no morally significant differences.

Thus, this saga tells us that we now reside in an Alice in Wonderland culture, where language, meaning and truth are putty in the hands of journalists. A glaring similarity between particular sets of facts no longer guarantees that similar meanings will be adduced.

Now, we must consider also how political or ideologically useful the protagonist is.

Sexual abuse is deplorable when it implicates people the media consensus disapproves of, but otherwise is a technical matter arising from the absence of enlightened legislation – resulting, one assumes, from a paucity of classically-educated legislators.

How, henceforth, can the citizen have any reasonable expectation of being told, truthfully and consistently, the facts and meanings of events? And how, in the future, is the citizen to take seriously media fulminating about child abuse, when it is clear that, when a liberal icon is implicated, commentators and editors are disposed to look the other way?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... tml?via=mr