Several people (six, I counted) have asked me to comment on this episode of Ross Douthat's idiot ongoing series, so I suppose I will. The things I'll do for my six fans.
For an American tourist weaned on Gaelic kitsch and screenings of “The Quiet Man,” the landscape of contemporary Ireland comes as something of a shock.
"Weaned"? Whatever it took to get your mother off her tit, I guess, I won't judge her. But a "Quiet Man' reference in the first sentence of an article about Ireland? What, the Lucky Charms leprechaun was too fucking highbrow for you?
There are two dead giveaways for "here we are about to talk shit about Ireland, a place of which we know nothing." ONE. A semi-self-deprecating reference to"The Quiet Man." TWO. A failure to understand that semi-self-deprecating references to "The Quiet Man" indicate, infallibly, that the speaker is about to talk shit about Ireland, a place of which he knows nothing.
Gah. The column, please, so I can get on with Life.
Drive from Dublin to the western coast and back, as I did two months ago, and you’ll still find all the thatched-roof farmhouses, winding stone walls and placid sheep that the postcards would lead you to expect. But round every green hill, there’s a swath of miniature McMansions.
I don't know what the fuck he is talking about. "Thatched roofs"? Half the inhabited farmhouses visible from the M6 have thatched roofs?
I'd be nitpicking, or twit-snickering, except Douthat is engaging in very typical Paddy-Punditry.
I'm probably not going to get this right, exactly, but bear with me. Ireland is in the wider public conversation in the US -- the amorphous Public Discourse -- an Interesting Conversational Gambit. And no more. That there are people living in Ireland, meh. DETAILS!
There are specifically Irish issues, with the peace process and so forth. But by and large, even with these, when they get discussed, it's from an axe-grinding perspective.
Which is to say that the commentary you get about Ireland is pretty much what Douthat gives you, which is, he has his ideas about thatched roofs and shit, his binary new/old crap: but whatever, the real issue is how Ireland is a parable or frickin' laboratory for his preconceived ridiculous trendy economic horseshit.
Via Duncan, here's basically what I mean:
It is obvious to me that the Irish-British model is the way of the future, and the only question is when Germany and France will face reality: either they become Ireland or they become museums. That is their real choice over the next few years – it’s either the leprechaun way or the Louvre.
Because I am convinced of that, I am also convinced that the German and French political systems will experience real shocks in the coming years as both nations are asked to work harder and embrace either more outsourcing or more young Muslim and Eastern European immigrants to remain competitive.
As an Irish public relations executive in Dublin remarked to me: “How would you like to be the French leader who tells the French people they have to follow Ireland?” Or even worse, Tony Blair!
Part of what we learn here is that (shockingly) Friedman is pathologically credulous. "Here is the testimony of a public relations executive. How dispositive. After 'cab driver,' how authoritative could you even get?"
But that's not quite what I want to get at overall. This latest spectacular Irish fuckup is interesting I think not because it's so new and remarkable, but because if you look at the history of the post '21 state carefully, it's the same pattern over and over again: try to be more modern and advanced than what is considered modern and advanced in Britain at the moment, go a step further to get ahead... and fuck up. Ireland never looked so backwards as when it was trying to be forwarder than Britain -- the censorship laws are a perfect example.
Yes, I'm trying to ignore Douthat.
In sleepy fishing villages that date to the days of Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s Pirate Queen (she was the Sarah Palin of the 16th century)
Fuck you.
It’s as if there were only two eras in Irish history: the Middle Ages and the housing bubble.
Thanks for your insight -- you looked out a car window!
This actually isn’t a bad way of thinking about Ireland’s 20th century.
If you don't want to understand it, sure.
The island spent decade after decade isolated, premodern and rural — and then in just a few short years, boom, modernity! The Irish sometimes say that their 1960s didn’t happen until the 1990s, when secularization and the sexual revolution finally began in earnest in what had been one of the most conservative and Catholic countries in the world. But Ireland caught up fast: the kind of social and economic change that took 50 years or more in many places was compressed into a single revolutionary burst.
"The Irish sometimes say...?"
Where does Douthat even get off talking like this? He just said he knows nothing about Ireland except what he knows from shit movies and from driving around. Who cares! he has a POINT!
Progressives and secularists suggested that Ireland was thriving because it had finally escaped the Catholic Church’s repressive grip, which kept horizons narrow and families large, and limited female economic opportunity.
That is NOT what "progressives" said, nor "secularists." Omigod. For fucking openers.
The punchline is sublime, though. Honestly, no tampering! This is what Douthat seriously believes the Grownups can learn from the Paddies:
As for the Irish themselves, their idyllic initiation into global capitalism is over, and now they probably understand the nature of modernity a little better. At times, it can seem to deliver everything you ever wanted, and wealth beyond your dreams. But you always have to pay for it.
Even "fuck" fails me here. This is... well, crystalline. An apotheosis!