Since Bernie is away I’ll take over covering what the Sunday Tribune is saying about IrishBlogs until Bernie comes back, and here we go…
That’s When I Fell for the Leader of Iraq
There was an election this week, apparently, on that other island, and a bit of this one. Much of the last phase of the campaign had been about re-fighting the Iraq War, so it was fitting that one of the world’s most famous bloggers, Salam Pax, who became famous for blogging the Iraq War from Baghdad as it happened, got into the mix.
He’s been filing reports from the heavily Muslim Bethnal Green constituency, where George Galloway is running as an anti-war candidate. Harry’s Place chronicles the pro-Iraq War Iraqi trailing the dyspeptically anti-Iraq War/pro-Saddam Hussein Galloway.
And Best of Both Worlds notes that Salam Pax isn’t the only visitor with a stake in the election – there are all the “Overpollstered, overpaid, and over here” American political consultants, like those mentioned by the New York Times in its coverage this week.
BOBW quotes the NYT as mentioning one adviser known in certain Irish back rooms – like St. Luke ‘ … a senior adviser to Senator Kerry’s campaign, is a friend and sometime adviser to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer and almost certain successor to Mr. Blair eventually – it’s Bob Shrum”
And it adds “No doubt Shrum can take advantage of his visits to England to see another client — Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who’ll need advice on the latest rabble-rousing policy proposals to disguise the abject incompetence and cravenness of his government. ”
Meanwhile , American blogger It Comes in Pints? revealed that he once worked with Conservative MP and Spectator editor Boris Johnson in the Conservative Research Department in the mid-1990s, so he had a front-row seat on the Tory meltdown from which they have yet to recover, recycling the observation that “the worst thing that ever happened to the Tories was winning the 1992 election.”
Take him out? Ooh, I’d Rather Just Take Him
Twenty Major made some satrtling “revelations” about a Dublin criminal known as the Little General:
“His real name has not been released but I know who he is. Obviously then I can’t name him but I can tell you some things about him and you should tell all your friends so that when they hear about the Little General they immediately associate these things with him.
So here are some facts about the Little General from Dublin:
He likes to dress up in women’s clothes, particularly ‘sexy’ basques and suspenders which he buys from Ann Summers.
His favourite TV show is ‘Will and Grace’
He likes to sing songs by Barbara Streisand, Liza Minelli and Brian Kennedy
He’s an enormous fan of Siegfried and Roy and personally sent a bunch of pansies to Roy when he had his head nearly bitten off by one of their tigers
We’re not sure Twenty has a future in crime reporting.