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History is the business of judging people who can't answer back. That's why it was almost refreshing to hear Cllr Maureen O'Sullivan use last week's funeral of Tony Gregory to lambast "certain politicians" who lavished praise on the late TD in death while having little time for him in life. She's not far wrong. It was all a lot of sentimental, superstitious hypocrisy.
And yet, and yet . . . When Brian Cowen praised Gregory's "commitment to the disadvantaged in our society", he wasn't suddenly saying that he thought the inner-city Dublin TD was infallible in how he thought deep-seated social problems should be tackled; nor Enda Kenny when he called Gregory a "fearless defender" of his community. They were both simply trying to do the right thing at a difficult time for the man's family and friends. They were recognising that now wasn't the time for arguing the toss over politics. They were acknowledging the eternal truth of death over the trivial ephemera of life. Not only is that hardly a crime, it's not even a misdemeanour. Sniping at them from the pulpit is the real bad manners.
Besides, can you imagine the furore if they'd used the opportunity of Gregory's death to pour scorn on his philosophy and legacy? Can't you just hear the shrill cries of outrage from his legion of admirers? Fellow politicians are damned if they do and damned if they don't -- and doubly damned in the case of Gregory, since it's pretty clear that a process of sanctification has already begun around his reputation in the short days since his untimely death from stomach cancer.
No one side has a monopoly on civic virtue; but time and again, the Irish media peddles this ludicrous myth of the caring, selfless, high-minded left-wing idealist ministering to the poor, which is then set crudely alongside a caricature of some shallow, self-serving, right-wing chancer trampling on the needy.
