But you didn't show how. You didn't balance the good against the harm at all.
You also said way, way more than that and used some fairly high-level hyperbole. You said that just as all victors absorb the culture of the vanquished, the GAA's unstoppable machine had enveloped the Irish language, the erstwhile essence of the nation. Rhetorical nonsense.
You said "They use the language to make themselves Irish, but it is the language, not the modern invention of Gaelic football, that is essentially Irish". That doesn't make any sense, unless you are praising the GAA: if it is the language that is essentially Irish, then no wonder it is the language that they use to make themselves Irish. The modern invention of Gaelic football is left hung out to dry there in that sentence.
You then make a few good standard points, a few rousing old favourites, about the GAA hierarchy and football, but then you return to the shaky ground of your language theme and say that the GAA "has filled the void left by the language, which is, or was, essential to being Irish, and it has taken up the energy and imagination that otherwise would have gone into our real culture".
Indeed?
Putting aside the dodgy statement that there was any "void left by the language" to fill (the fact that the language has not yet left the building, the fact that the number of counties with any native speakers of athletics-playing age has changed only a tiny amount since the foundation of the GAA, and the questionable extent to which the Irish people viewed the language as essential in the 150 years up to the foundation of the GAA) I'd like to hear more about the opiate effect of the GAA's unstoppable machine on the cultural energy and imagination of the masses, and in particular how its members are less involved in these directions than they would otherwise have been.
How are the rest of the country getting on in that regard, for example? I mean the ones from communities uninfiltrated by the GAA, or the ones who saw that their sham nationalism would detract from their own honest Irishness. Show, or even hint at, the heightened instances of appreciation of "real culture" and/or appreciation of all things Gaelic amongst these non-GAA people and I might believe you. Or is your point that there is no real culture left for the non-GAA people as all the energy and imagination that would have gone into it has been taken up by the GAA?
And all of this, incidentally, coming after you say that there are plenty of Gaeilgeoirs in the association -- more than in the population generally -- and indeed that most of the GAA is probably well-meaning in its attitude to the language!
Was this well-meaning majority part of the unstoppable, all-conquering GAA machine at the time of its enveloping of the language, or were they and the Gaeilgeoirs enveloped along with the language? Or did they develop from within? Are they the ones that enabled the vanquished Irish language to be absorbed...?
Or is it the reality that the majority of the GAA who are (by your estimates) well-disposed towards Irish -- but don't speak it -- are so inclined
despite the attitude of the hierarchy of the GAA? Would that not give the lie to your whole argument concerning the insidious effect the hardcore tokenist leadership has had, and indicate that we are dealing in innocent cross-sections of a population in which there are varying degrees of appreciation of the Irish language, independent of the efforts of State or sporting body or cultural institution?
The language of the GAA is overwhelmingly English only because the majority of GAA members you say are well-disposed to the language don't bother their barney learning it or speaking it and they are unmoved by the efforts of the GAA, good and bad, for the language. If this Irish-fond majority wanted to, they would be lapping up every bit of tokenism and craving more.
Would this not indicate that your argument is a spurious but fabulously imaginative stick to beat the GAA with?
Speaking of which, I fail to understand the exact logic of your complaint that the GAA have some cheek putting Irish names on the clubhouses where their members -- of whom you reckon a higher percentage are Gaeilgeoirs than of the population at large and the majority of whom you reckon are well-disposed towards Irish -- gather. Can it really be that you think this is bad because "most of those living nearby can hardly pronounce them"? That is outstanding anti-GAA straw-graspery.
And I'd like -- honestly -- to hear more about how, exactly, we could have been a country that played great football and proudly spoke and wrote in our own language and in English. This is the kind of insight the Department of the Gaeltacht are constantly crying out for, even if it is retrospective. (The revival of Hebrew is unique in history and completely dissimilar to any possible Irish situation, but it was a nice dig at US foreign policy.)
Your breathlessness is adequate.
But I think it is possible to prefer a cobbled-together, makey-uppy sport massively promoted on a worldwide basis to a cobbled-together, makey-uppy sport massively promoted on a national basis without necessarily thinking either to be superior or inferior.
It is precisely the usage of such words unsuited to the description of sports (though not, perhaps, languages
) as 'inferior' or 'foreign' that causes trouble, no?
QuoteOriginally Posted by BohDiddley
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