I had planned to update this blog a bit more regularly, but so much is going on that I'd be writing around the clock if I was to keep up with everything that's happening. Thank goodness the election campaign has livened up a bit, even if it's getting increasingly nasty by the day.
As I write, we are awaiting the latest opinion poll from Red C, but it comes on the back of this mornings Irish Times / IPSOS / MRBI figures, which were pretty interesting to say the least, and, if I'm to be honest, more than a wee bit worrying! I'm beginning to get the distinct impression that this campaign is being won and lost - not in the general media, but the "Red Tops", who are willing to crucify each other for the latest little smidgin of dirt they can find on any given candidate, on any given day.
So far, they appear to have successfully bludgeoned David Norris into submission, a bit like baby seals are clubbed to death in parts of Canada. When they couldn't for whatever reason, get copies of the letters he wrote to put on a front page, they started on other stuff. If I were to believe everything I read on the tabloids in the past few days, Senator Norris is going blind, struggles to control his drinking, and is some kind of welfare fraudster. The poison, most of it spewed by Ger Colleran and his colleagues in The Star, appears to have had its effect, and Norris has collapsed in the opinion polls. Now, don't get me wrong - his action in writing the now infamous letters was not the wisest - but Jaysus, nobody died. The youngster who had (fully consentual, it should be repeatedly stated) sex with yer man, Ezra, is now an adult, and entitled to his anonymity. Why should he risk losing that, just because somebody wants to see a bloody letter? Of course, when the letters were not forthcoming, another way had to be found (in the eyes of the tabloids) to "take Norris out". If you ask me, it's shameful.
Mind you, it's not just Norris who has been pursued. So Mary Davis sat on boards, or as Vincent Brown put it the other night "she's been on more boards than Michael Flatley", over the past number of years. Er, so what? Beggin' yer pardon, like, but where's the crime here? OK, it might suggest that she was "well-in" with the Government of the day, but would I turn down an appointment to a board, if someone offered it to me? I would in my ass. Now, the PR contract controversy, admittedly, does suggest a bit too much 'insider info'.. but again, there's no evidence of any wrongdoing, so far as I can see.
Of course, as sure as the tabloids can take you down, so they can also build somebody else up to the last. Sean Gallagher has rocketed to second place in the latest poll, behind Michael D. Higgins. Never mind the fact that he represents a kind of "continuity Fianna Fail", but ask yourself - who is he, exactly?? He's a REALITY TV STAR, that's what he is. He appears on a ridiculous, shallow little TV show, and has made a few inane, populist comments about election posters and Litreacha Um Thoghcháin. Dreadful stuff. BUT... the tabloids love him, because he is "The Man from Dragons Den.." Jesus Wept. Is that how shallow we've become? Maybe Rosanna Davison or Georgia flippin' Salpa should be candidates, if they were old enough?
Now, before my friends from the Tabloids gather around to have me frogmarched out and shot, they're not entirely to blame for how the opinion polls are changing. When I listened to Gay Mitchell getting stuck into Martin McGuinness on Eamonn Dunphys programme last weekend, I said to the Queen Bee.. "He'll pay for that.." and he has. I don't care what you say, but there has surely to be some correlation between Mitchells attack, which - unlike Vincent Brownes the other night - was cack handed, rude and belligerent, and his continuing slide. Gay Mitchell is not popular, and Fine Gael must now realise that they picked the wrong man for this race. Not just because he lives in Cork, but surely Pat Cox, even as a "parachute" candidate, would now be doing a lot better, simply because he wouldn't get into ugly little spats like that.
So, at the end of my latest rant, how am I calling it? Well, it's Michael D's to lose. Gallagher has made big inroads over the past week, but I can't see it lasting. Unless he gets ahead of the Labour man on first preferences, I can't see him winning.I think you can forget Martin McGuinness at this stage, and you can't really see Norris recovering - BUT.. he's going to transfer very heavily to Michael D., the man who let him into the race..
Phew! That's that lot off me chest!
