Intelligencer

The Toilet Bowl Man

You know it is a slow news conference when the person asking the most incisive question is asked by the man from the toilet bowl conference.

Yes, it is true, at the very same time as the Sinn Fein press conference held at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Monday, the toilet bowl group were wrapping up their get together.

In case you didn’t know, toilet bowl sales are a huge growth business for obvious reasons as the world population expands rapidly.

At the Sinn Fein leadership press availability, the toilet bowl man, who happened to be an American, left his nearby conference when he saw the flurry of cameras. He asked Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams whether or not the decommissioning act marked the turning point in the peace process.

Adams, flushed with success (pardon the pun!) immediately commended the man on his question and stated, yes, this was the turning point, that after years of stop and start the peace process had finally moved on to its decisive phase.

The toilet bowl man then went back to his conference (yes, it really was about toilet bowls), no doubt delighted that he had figured out in a nutshell what the whole historic day was about.

Ignoring the Tyrone Victory

Did you know there was an All-Ireland final last Sunday in Croke Park? If you happened to be reading the hard-line Unionist news sheet The Belfast Newsletter you would never have known.

Despite the fact that the All-Ireland football final is Ireland’s greatest sporting occasion attended by over 80,000 spectators, and despite the fact that an Ulster team, Tyrone, won the day, the Newsletter carried not a line on Monday in its sports section.

Oh yes, there was plenty about meaningless hockey matches attended by fewer than were playing. There was a half page on the well-known sport of kickboxing and copious coverage of Irish league soccer games where the average gate wouldn’t have paid for David Beckham’s jockstrap.

And that All-Ireland played up the road, watched by millions worldwide, the greatest sporting occasion of the entire year and won by an Ulster team wearing the red hand on their jerseys no less? The Newsletter obviously never heard of it, which is a sad commentary on how insular many in the Unionist community really are.

Van and The General

If you wanted an interesting juxtaposition in Belfast on Monday consider this. At the same time as General John de Chastelain was briefing the media hordes in the ballroom of the Culloden Hotel, a far more famous Belfast figure was holding court in the plush hotel’s restaurant.

The great Van Morrison, a native son, was sitting quietly with some of his associates as the media hubbub took place outside. No word yet on what Van thought of the proceedings, but it should be noted that he played for President Clinton when he was in town in December 1995 and immortalized “Days Like This” as the anthem of the peace process with his rendition of it that night.

Sad Bob Looks for Notice

It is normal for politicians to stay away from such events as press conferences by members of an oversight body such as the decommissioning commission. After all, it is the moment that the members of that commission have worked for for many years, and they are entitled to their day in the sun.

Such a convention was lost on Robert McCartney, once one of the most promising figures in Unionist politics, but now a has-been who formerly represented the constituency where the Culloden Hotel is located.

McCartney could be heard muttering under his breath as de Chastelain spoke and could hardly contain himself throughout the question and answer session supposedly confined to media. Eventually big Bob got to ask his question and de Chastelain handled it with tact and aplomb. Still, it seems a sad end for a politician who was once one of the rising stars in Northern Ireland politics. Hanging around someone else’s press conferences hoping for attention was hardly his ambition when he started out.

Hayden Shows Up

An interested spectator at the Sinn Fein conference was Tom Hayden, former California assemblyman and state senator, now an author with an abiding interest in Ireland.

Hayden, of course, was married to Jane Fonda and features prominently in her recent best-selling biography. He has a close friendship with Gerry Adams and admires him deeply for what he has achieved in the peace process so far.

Hayden is particularly interested at present in the famous “Brownie” letters written under that pen name by Adams when he was incarcerated in Long Kesh. Hayden has lectured on Irish resistance prison literature and the Brownie columns, he believes, are among the best examples of that art.