We all have limits, personal and professional, and sometimes they blur, one into the other, producing thoughts that are plainly unacceptable in our 21st century woke culture.
Thank goodness we are allowed to express dislike of politicians’ policies and on occasion even admit to disliking a politician or two, for their failings; their corrupt or ambitious natures.
What you cannot do is say you dislike a politician’s appearance. How many times did this colyoomist want to write about Charlie McCreevy’s teeth, but no.
Beyond the confines of morally respectable prose, I have a personal loathing of disingenuous behaviour, so I’m not going to write some kind of half-humorous apology for my struggle.
I’ll just cough it up and take the flak.
There are at the moment so many reasons to disagree with Arlene Foster, so many causes threatened by her policies that we could all fill many pages with heartfelt discord and righteous debate.
Yet my feeble spirit has already lost the plot.
I have gone from feeling mildly irritated by her, to outraged that the British and Irish people are being held to ransom by her, to so viscerally furious with her that my insides cramp as I see her floating around the corridors of Brussels in her special white dress, twitching with excitement, her hubristic hands writhing over each other with the evangelical enthusiasm of a person who knows that this is their moment.
Her tiny life is suddenly being played on a world stage. She’s got the UK government by their short and curlies, to such an extent that Theresa has had to resort to pleading with moderate Labour MPs opposite to support her uniquely unpopular plan.
If it were simply a matter of intractable political differences that’d be fine, because that’s just falling to see somebody else’s point of view.
But that’s not it.
It’s her nose.
There, I said it.
Hands up, folks: this is below me. The only reason I’m sharing it with you is because this feeling troubles me so deeply, excuse the painful pun.
I wouldn’t take kindly to another scribbler writing about my asteroid of a belly, or the orchestral bowel brass section that is the soundtrack of my morning ablutions. If anyone’s going to have a go at me on a base physical level, it’ll be me. That’s my job.
I can write about me but you can’t, so it’s bugging the hell out me that I’m so obsessed with Arlene Foster’s nose, but I am.
Maybe it’s a mental defence mechanism. She offends so many different aspects of the values I hold dear, that now, as she smiles with the knowledge that for this instant her hand is writing the book of History, my brain retreats back inside itself to stay safe.
I know I have to see her, listen to her and read about her, because I am fully obsessed with the future of this island, so I need an escape route.
But really, why did it have to be something physical?
I’ve managed to embarrass myself all by myself, and confess as I wrote that just now, I resisted the urge to cry aloud with maniacal roar
“And it’s all YOUR fault, Arlene, yes it is! Haaaa-ha-haaaaaaa!”
Who am I?
When I see her, my eyes and mind now focus only on her nose. Away from matters personal and politically incorrect, it’s all so unprofessional.
Who might ever take my work seriously if I witter on about pantomime step-sister noses, and now this colyoom must change tack, for fear it drifts into the aforementioned disingenuous tripe.
Judging a person on how they look feels utterly infantile. I suspect my reaction comes from encountering hypocrisy on so many and such fundamental levels, I feel free to share instinctive responses.
This has become biological, because hypocrisy twists my guts like nothing else.
On the BBC 6 o’clock news a couple of weeks ago I watched Foster insist that her red line was very simple.
There was no way under any circumstances whatsoever that Northern Ireland could ever be considered different to the rest of the UK. That was not up for negotiation. Never would be, in any way, shape or fashion.
Three items later came the cake story. On its own the case and controversy created a very healthy debate about the conflicting differences between the freedoms of worship and expression, but it was not a story that could ever run in Manchester. It‘d not happen in Halifax.
It had to be in the 6 counties of Northern Ireland, where LGBT rights are completely different to the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
Most of any modernising legislation against such vile discrimination in Northern Ireland has come despite the worst efforts of the DUP, via direct rule from Westminster or lengthy hard-won court cases.
As a Jew only two generations from the holocaust, I am very aware that we were not the only community gassed to death. I will not turn my back on the LGBT community who died alongside us and still struggle for freedom.
Don’t even get me started on how Northern Irish abortion law differs from Britain.
Good! Discovered what’s wrong with me.
There are just too many reasons to dislike the DUP and disagree with Foster.
There’s too much at stake for her and them to hold so much power at this crucial time.
I’ve regressed and now just watch a nose.
©Charlie Adley
21.10.2018.
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