"We are out of the dark ages now!" - Healy Rae

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">From the Examiner, by Dan Collins :

AFTER a long day working the mist stockinged hills of rural Ireland there’s nothing the playboys of the western world like better than to settle down with the latest issue of, well, Playboy. The magazine — renowned for its wonderfully creative articles, plus the odd page of scantily clad, air brushed, silicone enhanced comely maidens — sells as well as the Farmer’s Journal in one Kerry village. Now, if someone were to come up with an alternative like Rustler or Outhouse that would probably sell with as much fevered enthusiasm, but until then, Hugh Hefner’s monthly man’s mammary mag will have to do. The playboy of the western world mecca is Kilgarvan (pop 82 males, 93 females), the home of sheep, wool, mutton, lamb, Independent TD Jackie Healy Rae and his son, Kerry Cllr Michael Healy Rae. The latter is the owner of the village shop where Playboy outstrips the Journal. The interest in the glossy, girlie gladrag was not because of any decline in rural matters, but what he termed a more cosmopolitan approach to life in Kilgarvan. And he had no intention of issuing a Muslim style fatwa on the publishers of Playboy, he told a local newspaper. Cllr Healy Rae recently called for a fatwa, no less, on author Brian O’Doherty, whose book The Deposition of Fr McGreevy contained descriptions of intimate relations between a Kerry bachelor and a sheep. The book had been nominated for the prestigious Booker award. “Sex is still a very popular national pastime — Thank God. But there is an awful difference between natural sex and sex with sheep,” he stated. Cllr Healy Rae, recognising that not all Kilgarvan locals are male or sheep, stocks a number of titles for women also. “I consider buying any of these magazines the same as buying the Farmer’s Journal — they are both types of entertainment,” he said. “We are out of the Dark Ages now,” he added. Cllr Healy Rae describes himself as a liberal minded young man in these matters and has been careful to stock women’s versions of Playboy magazines — in the interests of fair play.
</font>