“Sample exchange from Stalker O’Toole yesterday”

Nice skit from Squinter on Slugger today…

And so the latest offensive in Operation Bury Gerry never made it out of the landing craft, although floating in the breakers are many casualties. One of them, through Squinter’s rear-line vantage point at least, is the political and cultural website Slugger O’Toole, which, sad to say, in recent months has been utterly unblushing in its obsession with the Bearded One, to the extent that it makes the Sunday Tribune look like An Phoblacht.

It’s okay for Squinter to be an unashamed West Belfast republican lout, but surely a bit of perspective is required from such a paragon of considered cross-community analysis. Not a bit of it, for it seems half the topics are getting smart with Gearóid Mór, while the ones that aren’t usually don’t take long to get with the programme. Sample exchange from Stalker O’Toole yesterday:

Today’s Guardian has a very interesting article on how the Keynesian dialectic is increasingly irrelevant in Gordon Brown’s macro-economic policies.

– I always thought it was strange how a fundamentally collectivist doctrine found favour with so many European Christian democrat parties.
– Collectivist – isn’t that the same as communist?
– Don’t talk to me about communists, it was communists that blew up La Mon and disappeared Jean McConville.
– Those ghetto-freaks in West Belfast just keep on voting for Gerry Adams, though. Why, I oughta…

(and so on among the same four people for another eight pages.)

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty