Essays in Idleness

It would seem that the Lemming Party has swept Ireland this morning. From early returns the referendum count appears two-to-one in favour of “gay marriage.” In Dublin, it’s much higher than that; perhaps I am not surprised.

Upon calling up the Irish Independent to check for results first thing, what did I get? My laptop screen filled with a demand that I participate in a referendum on my “smartphone.” None of the questions made sense to me. For I do not own a smartphone, and have no intention of acquiring one. Or it may be more correct to say, as people do of their dogs today, “I am not a smartphone guardian.” Unless we are beyond that now. Many of my friends are married to their smartphones, in a manner of speaking: the two are never apart. Though really it is more like civil unions. (An old-fashioned person, I am against “sexting” with your smartphone.) To my mind, they are living in sin. Should they be allowed to marry their smartphones? I think not, but can’t come up with a media-plausible argument. Should smartphones be allowed to marry each other? I vote no.

My position on leprechauns is not for publication.

Cue now my Chief Irish Correspondent, a veterinarian somewhere in the west of that country (I shan’t be more precise than that), who mentions in email that he is girding himself for the tide of “gay” gloating, this morning. He adds that he must hide all his Bibles. I didn’t know what else to suggest. Fill spray guns with holy water?

Some days ago, I read a piece by my colleague Austin Ruse (beloved by me for the phrase, “The ugly claws and bared teeth of the pelvic Left”), over at Crisis “magazine.” He said he would not be surprised if the Irish voted “no” to “gay marriage” after saying “yes” to all the pollsters. This because people tell other people what they think the others want to hear. But I thought, I won’t be surprised if Ruse is surprised, after all. This because, we’re beyond that now.

Beyond hypocrisy, in a manner of speaking. People now think what they think others want them to think. And, “democracy” provides them with a way to prove this.

We have, as it were, “progressed” beyond the point when people would tell pollsters one thing, and then do another. They’re not hypocrites like that any more. They aren’t hiding anything. Verily, nothing left to hide. Not in Ireland. Nor, anywhere.

From Dublin, the new spirit is running across the island. I picture, in the far west, those magnificent cliffs.

There was an article in the Irish Examiner on lemmings, recently. It was a defence of lemmings. Apparently they are not as stupid as Walt Disney made out, in some 1958 wildlife documentary, entitled White Wilderness, that won an Oscar and many other prizes. His director needed footage of lemmings leaping, en masse, off a cliff into the sea. But it was hard to find, because lemmings don’t actually do that. At least, not voluntarily.

But this was a big budget film. The makers contrived to have some hundreds of lemmings trapped in a cliffless location, near Hudson Bay, then flown to a cliff in a sea-less location, near Calgary. Technicians constructed a turntable to fling them off the cliff, past their carefully placed cameras.

So now gentle reader has learnt something about lemmings, and something about the media. And perhaps, too, something about the Irish, captured by the media, en masse, and delivered to the metaphorical cliffs. Then asked a simple modern polling question:

“Why go to Hell in a handcart, when you can fly?”