Bighorn strikes again!

Although it’s probably a major turn-off, I feel obliged in my position as yet another asshole with an opinion and a platform from which to express it to write about the war on Iraq.

However, before I start pontificating on the conflict between the evil, despotic dictator George W Bush and his relatively-mild-mannered-by-comparison Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein, it is important for you to remember at all times throughout the rest of this article that even though I have never been in either America or Iraq, and even though I’m not entirely sure why exactly the former chose to spend gazillions of dollars invading the latter when their gripe is supposed to be with a bearded man who is either dead or alive and living in a cave in Afghanistan, and even though I remain mystified as to why the Prime Minister of the country I live in was so hell-bent on joining in even though there’s nothing in it for him, everything I say is well informed, important and correct.

This is because I’m an opinion-forming journalist with a column in a magazine and therefore way more clever and interesting than you are. If you’ve got a problem with that, ask yourself why my photograph and byline sits atop this piece and yours doesn’t. If you can’t figure it out, I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s because I’m smart and you’re a gormless moron.

For these very reasons, it’s probably best if you just sit there all slack-jawed while weltering in the mephitic fug of your own ignorance and let me do your thinking for you. It makes sense because I’m sophisticated, articulate and well informed enough to know what words like ‘mephitic’ and ‘fug’ mean, whereas you’re so thick you missed the first hour of Ireland’s grand slam decider against England because you forgot to put your clock forward on the Saturday night before the match.

As you may have noticed from that uncharacteristic broadside against my readership who I am usually very fond of, I am suffering from Little Bighorn Syndrome, an affliction I have just made up that causes journalists everywhere to behave like pompous, self-important dickheads in times of war.

And before you go jumping to conclusions, let me add that the fact this disease shares its name with one of American history’s bloodiest slaughters is purely coincidental, as the reason I have called it Little Bighorn Syndrome is because it manifests itself in the “No, I’ve got the biggest cock” style of reportage that has long been the hallmark of the work of RTE news correspondent Mark Little, a journalist who once spoke about himself at length in a lavishly illustrated VIP magazine spread and yet still has the audacity to expect us, the general public, to take anything he has to say about anything seriously.

One does not need a medical qualification to diagnose the symptoms of Little Bighorn Syndrome, which is currently reaching epidemic proportions among journalists working in Iraq. Early signs include men and women of the press proclaiming themselves to be “embedded” deep in Iraq, when what they actually mean is that they are “hanging around with soldiers and getting under their feet.” After a few days in the company of these military personnel, the afflicted reporters move on to the next stage of their illness, which involves dressing from head to toe in khaki coloured fatigues, sporting a bullet-proof vest outside their clothes for added effect and, in extreme circumstances, delivering solemn pieces to camera while standing in front of big tanks and wearing preposterous looking gas masks that have almost certainly been tampered with (and therefore rendered useless) in order to allow them to speak clearly and coherently about how much danger they are putting themselves in just so we can wonder if that place they’re in is called Umm Quasr, or if the name Quasr is so hard to pronounce they have to hesitate at length each time they’re about to say it.

Having said that, I could be doing them a grave injustice. Maybe the squaddies that are chatting, joking and sharpening their bayonets in the background are of the opinion that gas masks are for pussies, or maybe they simply choose not to wear theirs because they want to get their faces on the news.

But enough juvenile carping. Perhaps the most disturbing symptom of Little Bighorn Syndrome is the belief of those who suffer from it that the news that loads of British and US troops are killing each other by mistake in Iraq is not bad enough as it is. Therefore, they devote their energies to dreaming up new and more innovative ways of making the plight of those on the front line appear even worse than it actually is.

Yep, with scant regard for their own dignity, the sufferers of Little Bighorn Syndrome will use every trick in the book to ram home just how horrific the war in Iraq is. They’ll do anything, it seems, except broadcast pictures of the charred and bloodied corpses of dead soldiers. That’s when you know you’ve got full blown Little Bighorn Syndrome – you’ll bend over backwards to sensationalise the news, but draw the line at showing gruesome, gory footage that might upset the ITC regulators and shock the folks back home.