Comments on: Newspapers must be more than tomorrow’s chip paper…

By: Fabianus

Fabianus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:07:40 +0000

Zwingli

Thank you for the link to Reinhold Niebuhr. I don’t doubt the man’s scholarship and intellect for a moment. Compared to him Paisley is a cretin.

I was impressed by his championing of the rights of the Ford workers. A man ahead of his time. Wonder what he’d make of the sweat shops of the Far East. You know the ones I mean: they keep our high-street shops solvent.

However the fact remains that to call Niebuhr a great theologian is a little like calling Isaac Newton a great astrologer.

Niebuhr believed in “the supernatural inspiration of the Bible.” Surely that’s simply another way of describing, to use your own words, the “discredited Biblical fantasy wrapped in paranoid speculation with no factual foundation.”

In other words John O’Connell’s fantasy is just as valid—read “preposterous”—as Niebuhr’s or indeed as the fantasy of anybody who considers the Bible to be the written word of a supernatural being.

By: Zwingli

Zwingli — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:59:36 +0000

Fabianus:
here is Reinhold Niebuhr’s biography, written by a a scholar at Boston University:
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_770_niebuhrreinhold.htm
A distinguished Christian and public intellectual who was a household name in the 20s through 50s and maybe even into the early 60s. He is associated with the Serenity Prayer, i.e. -
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
No waffler he, like poor old Rowan Williams but a brilliant preacher and robust thinker and above all a tolerant man who favoured civil public discourse and argued courteously but robustly with his intellectual opponents and rivals.
The idea that Paisley is or was a theologian of any distinction is ludicrous. The only doctorate he has is an “honorary” won from an undistinguished US officially unaccredited college founded by fundamentalist Bob Jones. And no, I don’t think a doctorate is a prerequisite for Christian ministry of distinction but I do think some “book larnin’” should count for one’s cred as a theologian!

By: borderline

borderline — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:27:58 +0000

Zwingli,

It’s O’Connell, not McConnell.

We used to have a McConnell on Slugger. Every bit as mad as O’Connell, in his own way. We also have a Conall who has his moments.

As for a better theory for Paisley’s softening, well an ould Prod from these parts told me the wife, Eileen, got on to him. Told him he wasn’t going to live forever and the Catholics had been de-horned. So he softened up a bit.

By: Fabianus

Fabianus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:36:42 +0000

Zwingli

…the great American theologian…

What does it actually mean to be a “great” theologian? Given that the “theo” of the “logy” is theory as opposed to fact, does the “great” signify a superior ability to lie and/or dissemble?

By: Zwingli

Zwingli — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:59:36 +0000

Well, John McConnell, at least it’s a “rant” of the intellectual sort as opposed to a lot of conspiracy theory and discredited Biblical fantasy wrapped in paranoid speculation with no factual foundation or even the mildest theoretical respectability.
So the Paisleys, especially the Old Gulderer, will tell the truth sooner or later ? Maybe like never, while breathing…..
As for the 666 and Book of Revelation comments, this is what the great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr had to say about Revelation: he saw Revelation as an evocative “symbolic truth,” at the center of which is “the truth of the symbol.” Scholars have been trying to make sense of this confusing book for centuries. Some simpler more conspiracy driven souls get into this daft “666″ business with the “revelation” (lower case, please note) that, e.g., the letters in Saddam Hussein’s name (or Osama bin Laden’s, or Adolf Hitler’s, or whichever “leader” of the day add up to 666. This is a futile waste of time. At school, people used to joke that if you dialed 666 the coppers would come running upside down! Indeed there may be more chance of that result than any of the mad theorising of the dotty evangelicals and fundamentalists who proclaim such silliness.
Zzzzzz…….

By: John O'Connell

John O'Connell — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:02:18 +0000

Zwingli

That’s just a rant of an intellectual sort.

Clearly Paisley himself feels that he is repenting or changing, if you like, bigotry to a better position.

he didn’t speak of his fellow man and woman in the language of love and tolerance in the New Testament and specifically the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And who on earth in this day and age puts their faith in “666” and other nonsensical, utterly anti-intellectual claptrap, barring conspiracy theorists and Biblical literalists ?

Jesus Christ is said to have dictatated through an angel the Book of Revelation to the apostle John. Do you think he was joking and it wasn’t to be used some day?

That day has arrived for all the reasons you used to define Paisley and for the sake of putting Sinn Fein and the DUP into the dustbin of history as you desire.

Be consistent if you are going to persist in commenting. Christ always gets his way in the end and the notion that that outrage alone is going to bring down these evil parties is just fanciful.

By: DC

DC — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:49:36 +0000

Amen to that.

By: Zwingli

Zwingli — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:33:21 +0000

John O’Connell: “repentance,” is your definition of why Paisley switched from NEVER having SF in government and then having them in government ?
Only Godly men repent. But Ian Paisley ? No.
Utter ego and top-doggism and cynical opportunism of the worst sort. Paisley and the Provos, together, made NI a byword for bigotry, sectarianism, neo fascism — not democracy. He preached a Gospel of Old Light and the darkest parts of the Old Testament; he didn’t speak of his fellow man and woman in the language of love and tolerance in the New Testament and specifically the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And who on earth in this day and age puts their faith in “666″ and other nonsensical, utterly anti-intellectual claptrap, barring conspiracy theorists and Biblical literalists ? Only a paranoid and lunatic minority of intellectual fools believe in that bag of forlorn old tricks. For the moment, there are the Paisleys and their mediocre narrow fraternity and sorority, rejecting evolution despite all the evidence of science, saying being gay is a “choice” or “lifestyle” which can be put “right” by “nice little doctors” (and how insulting and bigoted that is). The sooner the Paisleys and many of the Bible thumping members of the DUP, and the bloody zealots of SF are put in the rubbish bin of history the better to achieve a pluralist NI. Like the Bourbons,these people have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Progress in NI comes dripping slow. Let’s not be “kind” to Ian Paisley who damaged so much of civil discourse between the communities. Just because he is old ? Forget it. Let him explain to his Maker why he behaved in such a destructive way. History will be kind to David Trimble, faults and all because he showed courage in sharing power, imperfect tho he was and
tough though it was with Paisley stabbing him in the back and front. History’s verdict on Paisley will be rightly negative.

By: John O'Connell

John O'Connell — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:07:08 +0000

I think it unfortunate that the author does not ascribe a moral reason for Paisley’s change, even if it is something that he himself (Paisley) would prefer not to own up to.

Paisley effectively repented of his past by accepting powersharing and bowing to the SDLP analysis. He has not changed all his views but sufficient to enable a clear and coherent author to define it as repentance.

That can only relate to the discovery that his name comes out at 666 on my numeric alphabet, which was conveyed to him, and which sent a chill up his spine. His belief that God was on his side changed then.

Anybody got a better explanation? I doubt it very much.

By: Framer

Framer — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:13:57 +0000

The DUP/SF deal would have been done months earlier had it not been for the Northern Bank job and then it was the influence of the Baroness who sealed it.

Read her first (only?) speech in the Lords.

By: Zwingli

Zwingli — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:48:18 +0000

Old Paisley did the St St. Andrew’s deal for one major reason — his massive ego. He always wanted to be top dog and thought the DUP flock would meekly follow, and most of them did. This ridiculous answer he gave, that the Brits and the Irish wd impose “joint authority” is a canard. We wd just have had direct rule again with a mildly greener tinge if even that. His saying that he did the deed because his own “people” (the Prods only of course) wd have been badly treated etc is so much nonsense. He was also able to do the deal because till No-Plan-B-Allister popped up and gained some strength he had NO opposition to speak of. He had opposed the GFA, sniped at Trimble and then ended up doing fundamentally the same deal which Trimble supported and battled for. And SF ditched and undermined Trimble and tht they could work with the DUP. Well they have so far — and have little to show for it. Paisley Incorporated is also dying, thank God. Where would Little Paisley be without the Dad ? No judgment, arrogant, a sense of entitlement, no common sense, a smart aleck but never smart, just glib. And of course Eileen sent to the Lords as part of the pay-off by London. Really quite sickening all round. At least Edward Carson and James Craig had some class and credibility beyond NI. Paisley ? None. An embarassment to the massive majority of people in NI. Only cred with his own bigoted supporters and now that has been damaged. The idea that Paisley saw his “mortality” and did the deal also because of that is so much fantasy. As I said before, it was ego, ego all the way. Good for David Gordon for chronicling the tawdry reasons for the Paisley climb down.

By: Mick Fealty

Mick Fealty — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:22:09 +0000

A tad purple c6cp, I grant you. I’ve reworded it. Now, what about commenting on the article above rather than on a book I imagine you’ve not yet had time to read.

By: 6countyprod

6countyprod — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:00:09 +0000

I have just clicked on the Slugger-Amazon link to have a wee look!

The comment there: ‘David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph is widely credited with the demise of Ian Paisley’ is the most ludicrous thing I have read in a long, long time.

Objectivity out the window!

By: granni trixie

granni trixie — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:51:54 +0000

I remember around 1968/9? when working in teleads in the Tele, being surprised that Paisley was kept waiting for hour and a half to see the editor of the time. B. Tele was refusing to print his ad for one of his rallys. Reason I was so surprised was that when I applied for a job with BT, ‘everbody’ said ” a Catholic won’t get a job in Bairds Tele”. Infact Bairds had sold the tele ten years or more before to Thompson but the point is that the 60s were a time of change for the Tele and everyone, even if Catholics perceived it as “protestant”.

I will buy and read David Gordons book with interest as I imagine that he will be ‘fair’ – unlike other kinds of biographers (particularly interested to see what he makes of the Paisley and the Maura Lyons affair, something that exercised everyone in W. Belfast at the time.

By: whitevanman

whitevanman — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:11:34 +0000

Very much judging a book by it’s cover, but why are there a load of Orangemen on it? Neither Jr. or Snr. Paisey are members as far as I’m aware.

By: 6countyprod

6countyprod — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:20:13 +0000

It’s interesting that the hit-piece isn’t even in the top ten ‘Most Viewed’ Telly articles, in spite of its prominent position and the link from Slugger. Doesn’t auger too well for the book, eh?

Don’t waste your money folks! It’ll be selling for 99p in Bargain Books by Christmas.

By: Belfast Gonzo

Belfast Gonzo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:43:47 +0000

*hastily closes window with cut and paste of Allister speech*

Is what Davy’s talking about essentially institutionalised bribery – guaranteed stability (or at least a lack of conflict) bought at the expense of good governance, responsibility for some higher functions (like tax-raising powers) and proper democracy?

By: Panic, These Ones Likes It Up Them.

Panic, These Ones Likes It Up Them. — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:37:49 +0000

Reply to Carsons Cat

I would suggest you give a United Ireland a chance

you would be happier there.

That is a great piece for the promotion of a United Ireland.

Certainly terrorists would have great difficulty getting into goverment in a United Ireland.

By: Mick Fealty

Mick Fealty — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:18:35 +0000

If people want to break embargoed speeches, can I suggest they do it on their own blog, not Slugger.

By: jone

jone — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:08:11 +0000

Way to kill a thread, my feline friend.

Can someone not cut and paste Jim’s opus into a new thread?