The UK has a law providing that government documents become public after thirty years, which is an admirably strong provision – unless it’s ignored. [click to continue…]
Timothy Egan is “at it”:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/opinion/egan-the-last-king-of-ireland.html?hp “again”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/02/catechism-of-cliches-irish-economic-collapse-edition/ in the New York Times
Oscar Wilde still lounges, louche-like … a river crossed by bridges named for playwrights and patriots … the clamorous clans of Erin … a bittersweet anniversary. Fifty years ago the last king of Ireland, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, came to the land of his great-grandfather Patrick. … delighted a lyrical people with his wit and his one-liners … charmed old ladies, nuns and schoolgirls …750 years of British occupation enforced by hangman’s noose and cannon. … poor island of farmers, shopkeepers and laborers … Hipsters from Google and Facebook flooded pubs in Dublin’s Temple Bar area and danced to traditional music as mournful as it was infectious. … crucifixes are gone from many homes … What remains, in homes and shops and pubs, are pictures of President Kennedy. … But looking back is always productive. Memory is embedded in every square foot of Irish sod.
It’s as if Thomas Friedman had himself decided to “follow the leapin’ leprechaun”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/opinion/01friedman.html, hopping swiftly from one cliche to another. Only worse. I don’t know why it is that NYT editors’ critical faculties desert them every time they see a piece singing of the sweetness and the sorrows of the Auld Sod. But I do wish that they’d stop it.