How will the SINDO spin the mahon tribunal?

jonsnow

Now that Berties reputation and legacy has been unequivocally destroyed by the mahon tribunal how will the Sindo cover it after having backed him for and slyly tried to undermine the tribunal for so long?

My guesses

1.Go on and on about the COSTS and the LAWYERS made a fortune.(forgetting that bertie designed the tribunal to be insanely expensive and awkward in order to drag it down after a few years and ensure that people had tribunal fatigue)

2.State that we must NEVER have a tribunal again as noone will be held to account anyway and we could spend the money on more gardai, teachers and nurses.

3.Give vague alternatives to tribunals that have proved unworkable in the past-gardai must do their job regardless of political fear or favour,the electorate must have higher standards,the DPP must thoroughly investigate etc etc

4.Eoghan Harris will cobble together some almost unintelligible psycho-philosophical rant about how corruption wasn,t proved, shadowy figures are out to get ahern and he still admires him and considers hims friend /alternatively he abandond ship feels betrayed and thinks that bertie has betrayed the party of de valera and lemass.Heads back to the fine gael mothership

5.Gene kerrigan will write a great article

steelcityblues

Mention a supposed 'anti-working class' stance of the lofty judges, because of 'plain men of the people' like Ahern and Flynn being seriously implicated.

I seriously wouldn't rule this out from them.

Motorist

jonsnow wrote: »

4.Eoghan Harris will cobble together some almost unintelligible psycho-philosophical rant about how corruption wasn,t proved, shadowy figures are out to get ahern and he still admires him and considers hims friend

"This man who built up our country and gave us peace in our time was hunted and harried, and finally brought down like a noble stag. We are a begrudging race, no doubt about it."

EchoO

This piece of fawning idiocy, written the Sunday after Ahern resigned, will be all but impossible to surpass....

They've got him -- and sunk to a new depth

The crocodile tears from some of Bertie's fiercest critics are a sight to behold, writes


Brendan O'Connor


Sunday April 06 2008



So. Happy now? Was that all worth it? With a media that is given to blowing up fits of indignant rage about everything from Kevin Myers to Dustin the Turkey, this was perhaps inevitable. This was the ultimate fit of righteousness. And now it's over and everyone has calmed down a bit. And what have we achieved exactly?
We have forced a change of leadership in Fianna Fail. In fact, in reality all that has happened is that the change in the leadership of Fianna Fail was pushed forward by a few months, maybe a year.
Was that worth suspending the running of the country for a year for? And now, as Eoghan Harris said on the Late Late, they will presumably come for Cowen. Cowen has become a kind of god this last year, the unquestioned, untested messiah who is going to save us all and save Fianna Fail. And who knows, maybe he will.
He is a popular choice as Taoiseach, he was charming and funny taking leaders' questions the other day; he seems like his own man; and Fianna Fail has stayed unified -- on the surface anyway.
But I wouldn't like to be Cowen now, would you? Is he really going to be a better leader than Bertie Ahern? Is he going to be more perfect? Is anything necessarily going to be improved now?
And tell me, have we purged some cancer in the body politic now? Does the country feel cleansed?
I don't get a feeling of cleanliness and renewal around the place do you? If anything, things feel a little bit grubbier than before, a little bit sadder and dirtier and seedier.
To mention Eoghan Harris again, the only commentator who seemed in tune with the public sentiment when he appeared on Prime Time on Wednesday night.
He was poetic and melancholic, almost bringing to mind a saddened, courtly lover. The gentleness and disappointment with which he spoke about Ahern's sweetness of character, with which he spoke about bereavement and love, was the most honest and accurate assessment of the country's mood at that time.
Most of the rest of them were lying on Wednesday because they knew they had done the wrong thing.
In a flash it had become clear that this was a bad bit of business, unbecoming of the Irish people. Most of them were ashamed of themselves and knew they were getting no thanks for what they'd done.
Did you see the frantic backpeddling, the assertions by Fine Gael that they didn't believe Ahern was corrupt; the assertions by Fintan O'Toole that if only Ahern had been clearer from the beginning it would all have been fine?
Did you see the Mail asking if it had to end like this?
It was a bit hard to take. The only honest reaction for Fine Gael, the Mail, and the Frank Connollys of this world would have been to run around the place cheering.
This is what they wanted; this is what they fought for. Now they should have the courage of their conviction of an innocent man and they should honestly celebrate.
But instead you will have noticed their extraordinarily athletic contortions of bull**** as soon as Bertie was cold in the grave. All of them, to a man, bull****ting, more in sadness than in anger, about how it didn't have to be this way, and how Bertie ultimately was the architect of his own misfortune and what a great guy he is apart from one or two blind spots.
Fintan O'Toole came across like one of those people in a job interview who, when asked what their weaknesses are, says 'I'm a perfectionist'. He basically announced the other night that Bertie's crime was that he cared too much. Too interested in getting the job done to the detriment of details. Well, that was a good reason to hound him out of office, wasn't it?
I'd like to think that if I had played a part in hounding Bertie out of office I'd at least have the balls to do a lap of honour today.
They won, they were right, why so bashful about cashing their cheques? Well, for starters, most of these guys would be terrified to be outside what they would view as the right-thinking consensus and when the right thinking consensus became "Poor Bertie. It's a shame really," they jumped on that one quick smart.
Not only are these guys not brave or original, most of them aren't that bright either.
The kind of guys who fed off tribunals wouldn't be the most dynamic or bright minds of their generations either. It was an easy one. They got the material leaked to them regularly and they even had Frank Connolly, or someone else, to point to the relevant stuff in it and spin it for them.
The proof of this lack of intelligence or originality was seen constantly in the way that it would often take days after the leak of something for these guys to spot what they were looking for in it.
Usually they would need it pointed out by someone brighter and then they'd jump on it. And while they were great at getting obsessed with little details, they really weren't very good at joining the dots and seeing the big picture, hence their shock when it all came together the other day.
I wouldn't like to be Frank Connolly or the Daily Mail, or any of the rest of them this week. No doubt there were cheers in certain newsrooms around the country on Wednesday morning.
But they too must have wondered, what now? Because I think the hysteria stopped abruptly on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday morning was a bit like that turning point that happens when a gang of guys have a bloke on the floor and they're kicking him in the head and suddenly someone realises it's gone too far, and they all run off home to their Mammies, terrified at what they've done.
Bertie's incredible performance on the plinth of Leinster House was that moment. I have to say I never really got Bertie Ahern's alleged charisma. Maybe it's an age thing, or a class thing, or because I'm not into sport, but I never felt the love myself.
Wednesday morning was the first time I managed to really admire Bertie Ahern, the man. While his speech was a stunning piece of oratory, I also thought it was very real, heartfelt, emotional, without being sentimental. And it was rather inspiring.
His evocations of history and the many patriotic men and women he mentioned and thanked kind of stirred my blood; even as my blood was running cold at what a dark day it was for this country.
And I wasn't the only one affected by the speech. It made a lot of people think. It calmed people suddenly out of the fit of madness that they'd gone along with for the last year or more and it rallied them.
Bertie looked the country in the eye and told us he had not cheated us and I think most people believed him. The details will be pored over again and again no doubt but in essence, since Wednesday, no one really believes Bertie Ahern was corrupt.
I think people looked at him on Wednesday, this rather odd, unknowable, lonely man, whose only vice seemed to be a lust to run the country, and they felt sorry for him and sorry for themselves a bit.
People could not but help thinking that it was a seedy,
dirty, ignominious end, not
only for this man who had devoted himself to doing so much for us, but for the whole Bertie era -- a time of such confidence and wealth and fun and progress in this country.
I am glad I had no part in it. I am glad I fought it. Not for great love of Bertie Ahern but for great love of this country and how we do things around here. When I'm older and my child asks me was I there when they crucified Bertie, I'm glad I'll be able to say that I was on the side of the angels. I don't have to bull**** like the rest of them today and I won't have to when people reminisce about these times.
And the ones on the other side? What did they get? Well Fine Gael, incredibly, seem to be the party most damaged by the events of the last year. Fianna Fail in a bizarre way seems rejuvenated, united.
As much as there is shock about Bertie, life goes on and there is a feelgood factor about the party and about Cowen right now. Fine Gael just look weaker and more muddled than ever.
At no point in all this did Fine Gael ever threaten to take power and now they look further from it than ever.
And they don't even have the option of getting rid of their damaged goods leader. Because there's no one else there to do the job. As against at Fianna Fail where there were at least half a dozen credible candidates to lead the party and the country.
The sections of the media that did Bertie down haven't done much better out of it. There's a bad smell off them now and people are starting to point the finger at them.
Eoghan Harris has suggested that the media campaign against Ahern was about circulation building. Well if the latest figures are anything to go by that didn't work. The readership figures for the Mail are testament to that.
Bertie Ahern, on the other hand, seems to be in the good place. For one thing, he seems relatively untainted by all this.
At UCD on Thursday he looked as if he had lost the 10 years and the 10 pounds he'd put on in the past year. There was lightness about him, a charm, an energy we hadn't seen in a while.
And best of all, it seems he is now going to really take the gloves off in fighting the tribunal. He was uncompromising in his defence of Grainne Carruth in a way he couldn't have been when he was Taoiseach.
And seeing Ahern, relaxed and in touch with his inner gurrier, take the time out to fight Carruth's corner, you had to think, maybe it's not such a bad week.
And maybe there is one decent man in all this, one brave man. And maybe, surprisingly, it's Bertie Ahern. And maybe, just maybe, we're only beginning to see the real Ahern and what he is capable of. And after all, everyone loves a second coming.


http://www.independent.ie/national-news/the-ahern-years/theyve-got-him-and-sunk-to-a-new-depth-1339720.html

EchoO

Looks like Bertie has given the Sindo an exclusive interview, so I expect more of the above from O'Conner and Harris.

"In an article in Ireland's Sunday Independent newspaper, Mr Ahern said news of a motion to expel him from the party had "deeply saddened" him."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17500449

copacetic

Pretty much as above guessed, front page given over to what Bertie says with Jody Corcoran in the now usual role of fawning lapdog writing what he is told to right.
They also print Aherns and Celia Larkins account alongside the various puff pieces and laughable point scoring against anyone and everything to suit the agenda.

As noted above Gene Kerrigan is the only one with any kind of integrity and writes a piece from that point of view based on the facts rather than a political agenda. I wonder how he stands to work with the rest of them. Did anyone else think the Sindo might actually change for the better with the editor change? I hoped it would since I thought it couldn't get worse, but it absolutely has, gone even more tabloid and biased.

O'Connor takes the weekly Sindo award for 180 degree just in opinion and changing moral position to suit political leanings with his piece

Sunday March 25 2012
Fifteen years and up to €300m has not been able to establish that Bertie is corrupt, says Brendan O'Connor

DON'T like Bertie Ahern. Never did. Never got it. Tried to respect that other people did, even though I found that hard. I had one personal experience with him and I thought it and its fallout revealed him and his people to be a fairly tough crew.

The Mahon tribunal, in so far as we can read between the lines, doesn't reveal a very nice person either -- a liar, and a guy who was clearly unyielding enough in his dealings with the women in his life. The tribunal reckons he lied through his teeth about pretty much everything. He certainly lied to it about some things. And really, it was brazen at times. You have to wonder why he wouldn't just come clean. What was he hiding?

As expected goes after the cost argument, buts it's hilarious reading compared to what he wrote in 2008,which was The FF position at the time.

kupus

Hitting the nail on the head lads, great prediction if only I could have backed it in Paddy Powers---easy money.

It really is embarrassing to read those pieces by BoC and the rest, how do they sleep at night after writing this tripe. I cant write anymore as I'm livid and I'll only get myself in trouble with mods. Im already after deleting paragraphs, but this is coming from a national newspaper and really makes my blood boil.
At least Lord Haw Haw had the grace to firmly nail his colors to the mast.