IRELAND IN A NUTSHELL: THE 31 YEAR OLD TEENAGER
There’s a strange cultural paradox in Ireland in which the dominant culture, the one that is ever present in the media, politics, and entertainment, simultaneously believes that it is a culture of rebellion and subversion. This belief persists even though the people who embrace that culture are in a position of absolute dominance over the rest of us. I touched on this in an article last week where I mentioned that Ireland’s Eurovision entry, Bambie Thug, described the things that made her special as being the fact that she is “a queer” and “a witch” as opposed to anything innate or inherent to herself. Her performance was laced with devil horns, pentagrams, and images of summoning a demon from the earth. Speaking after her defeat in Sweden, Ms Thug said that her defeat was nevertheless proof that “the queers are coming, non-binaries for the ****ing win”.
Bambie Thug is a 31 year old woman, but hers was the performance of a teenage rebel. The bad loser attitude afterwards the whine of a teenage crybaby. And in many ways, it summed up the whole country, as it is today.
After all literally everybody with an Irish media job cheered: “Take a bow!” hollered Newstalk’s Henry McKean. “They could finish last tonight and Bambie would still be an Irish Eurovision legend” was the considered and sober verdict of the Irish Times.
Meanwhile, over on the BBC, as Ireland’s act took to the stage, Graham Norton was encouraging parents to avert their children’s eyes from a “scary” performance. Yes, that Graham Norton, the most famous gay man ever to have come from Cork, and not someone known for his prudishness or conservatism. While the Irish media was cheering the song, the BBC of all bodies was warning that it might not be suitable for children.
Evidently, we live in a country with many views and many competing tastes. It would be churlish to pretend that there was not an audience in Ireland and around the world that adored the Irish performance, and it would be wrong to suggest that those of us who aren’t into that sort of thing should have a veto over who the country sends. But equally: The pretence that this was some kind of Irish cultural triumph simply doesn’t reflect the reality that hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people worldwide were watching and asking a single question: What the hell happened to Ireland?
Off stage, the Irish act hit the headlines for a series of weird and silly complaints targeting the Israeli act. The final dress rehearsal was boycotted because the Israeli national broadcaster had the temerity to call the Irish act “dark and occulty” during the semi-final. One wonders whether Thug will now refuse to appear on the BBC, after Graham Norton’s comments – I rather suspect not.
Then there was the “I cried with my team” reaction to the news that Israel had made it out of the semi final. That was followed by the bizarre “**** the EBU (European broadcasting union)” that came after Ireland’s (creditable) defeat was finalised. To a lot of people watching around the world, it came across as deeply weird, angry, and obsessive. It came across that way to a lot of people in Ireland too, not that you’d know to read or listen to any Irish mainstream media.
The irony of all this is that few people did more to aid the Israeli cause in the Eurovision than the Irish entry: Like it or lump it, this is how a significant portion of the global population see this country now – dark, lost, screechy, and weird. It’s hard to disagree with them. Voting for Israel was the clearest F-U to the Irish entry possible, and it’s fairly clear many people across the continent availed of it.
Ms Thug, it should be said, is not some rebellious teenager. She is thirty-one years of age, and until her middle twenties was a heterosexual woman called Linnea Lagerqvist – a name that will appear in no other Irish media outlet because that is now her “dead name”, and it is allegedly offensive to refer to non-binary people by the name given to them at birth, or even to mention the fact that they were once known by that name. The most you’ll get in the Irish media is a reference to the fact that she “was born to the Swedish Lagerqvist family”. If the facts offend, they must be suppressed.
This is, I’d argue, at the root of our cultural problem: “Why did she change her name?” is a question that many people might be interested to know the answer to – but the fact that her name was ever something different was dutifully omitted from all Irish coverage in accordance with progressive sensibilities, anybody else’s sensibilities be damned.
In addition, it is a simple statement of fact that most Irish reporters would be horrified at the very thought of asking her such a question, because to do so is now offensive in the social cliques that they inhabit. Every media outlet, without question, and without comment, referred to the former Ms. Lagerqvist with her chosen plural pronouns – “they performed, they said, they didn’t show up to their rehearsal”. To do anything else would have been considered beyond the pale.
But beyond the pale for whom? When did it become the law of the land that a basic thing like who you are and what gender you are became something it is forbidden to ask about, or report on? When did we vote on that? Only some of us, it seems, have a say in dictating what standards of behaviour, politeness, and conduct are, in this society.
Ireland, as it happened, gave 10 votes – just two short of the maximum – to the Israeli act on the night, through the public vote. I myself voted for Israel the maximum permitted number of times. Not because the Israeli song was the best – it was very good, but France and Ukraine were better in my estimation – but because for many of us it was the simplest and easiest way of sticking a finger in the eye of everything this juvenile Irish entry, and increasingly juvenile Irish society, stands for. We’re sick of being a country run by 31 year old teenagers whose answer to every single policy problem is to cry and whinge and blame somebody else – the British, the “far right”, various isms and phobias, the Israelis, misinformation, you name it. Everything in this country is someone else’s fault, per the people who run it and the people who dominate its conversations.
On June 7th, in the local and European elections, it is this same Ireland that is on the ballot. If you feel well-represented as an Irish person by Bambie Thug, then our establishment politicians have made clear that they’re on your side, and deserve your vote. But if you feel poorly represented by this kind of thing, it should be clear to you by now that while Israel might not be on the ballot as a two-fingers option, there are many others who are.
https://gript.ie/the-31-year-old-tee...jlHQZix3zOJrnf
Bambie is 31? I would have said 17 at a guess....very immature
