Intelligent white men

I remember, some years ago, getting a lift from a memorial service to a pub from my Hot Press colleague Eamonn McCann. I’d never met the great man before, but I was familiar with his work and admired it greatly. And while the journey itself was thoroughly unremarkable even by lift-to-the-pub standards, the reason I remember it so vividly is because of my unspeakable fear that he’d ask me to venture an opinion on one or other of the burning political issues of the day.

It’s not that Eamonn is a scary fellow, because he isn’t. It’s just that every fortnight after reading his invariably excellent column in this august organ, I invariably find myself feeling exceedingly dim, wondering HOW THE DEVIL CAN ONE MAN POSSIBLY KNOW SO MUCH STUFF ABOUT EVERYTHING?

Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. We all know how he operates. He’ll quote an article from some periodical or book you’d think no human being in Ireland could possibly have any business reading and then explain, with the aid of several facts no human being living in 21st century Ireland could possibly have any business knowing, why it’s all a load of bollocks. QED.

What makes it more dispiriting is that McCann, seems to spend every waking hour either on his way to a demonstration where he will stand on the back of a lorry and talk into a megaphone, at a demonstration standing on the back of a lorry talking into a megaphone or on his way home from a demonstration where he’s been standing on the back of a lorry talking into a megaphone. Which begs the question: where does he find the time to read, remember and disagree with things like New York Times editorials from December 12, 1999, headed “Rhetoric and Reality on Iraq”?

The late Bill Hicks was a similar animal, while exposure to the work of American film maker Michael Moore also triggers that familiar throbbing ache of ignorance on my part. Although I’ve always found his TV persona a smidge too hectoring for my tastes, Moore’s best-selling tome Stupid White Men … And Other Sorry Excuses For The State Of The Nation! is a work of genius.

Recently, for example, I laughed hysterically at someone who ventured the opinion that George W. Bush seemed like a good president. When challenged as to why I disagreed, I suddenly realised that although I knew he was an evil fuckwit of the highest order, I didn’t really know precisely why. All I knew for certain was that it wasn’t because he couldn’t spell potatoes – that was Dan Quayle.

Thanks to the likes of Moore and McCann, in the unlikely event of anyone else suggesting that Dubya is a good man who knows what he’s doing, I’ll be able to torpedo them out of the water (not an ideal expression to use in the circumstances, I know) with aplomb.

For example, we all know that Gorgeous George was never actually elected president of the USA, due in no small part to the co-operation of his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida. But until reading Moore’s book, I, for one, had no idea that between them, the Bush brothers had about 173,000 voters (predominantly black, and therefore likely to vote Democrat) permanently expunged from the electoral register in the run-up to the election.

Although it’s mildly amusing, I don’t think I laughed out loud once while reading Stupid White Men. Having said that, immediately after putting it down, I found myself picking my jaw off the floor, such was my total astonishment at the information contained within.

Like the collected works of Messrs Hicks and McCann, Stupid White Men is essential reading about a dangerous regime that should be on the school curriculum.

The only thing that worries me is, if those fellows are as smart as I think they are, why aren’t they in charge?

To another matter entirely: at the time of writing, the FA’s Dubious Goals Committee have yet to decide whether or not the opening goal of Sunderland’s recent Premiership drubbing at the hands of Charlton should go down in the record books as an own goal, or be credited to the London side’s South Africa international Mark Fish.

If it’s deemed to be the former, the Wearside club will have pulled off the extraordinary feat of scoring three (count ’em) own goals in a seven minute period of one match. Considering the only other thing beleaguered fans of Sunderland have had to celebrate recently is the occasional substitution of the hapless Phil Babb, it would be mealy-mouthed in the extreme if the Dubious Goals committee were to deny us our dubious honour.