By the standards of any politician, Bertie Ahern's send-off has been extraordinary. By the standards of "disgraced" politicians it has been nothing short of incredible.

There were plenty of high-profile set pieces, and plenty of reminders of the fact that he brought peace to the North and that he presided over the most prosperous times ever seen in this country. The latter has particular resonance at a time when the prosperity we have learnt so quickly to take for granted seems to be on the wane for now.

On this unprecedented lap of honour Bertie was cheered along by statesmen from Tony Blair to Ted Kennedy to Ian Paisley. The public also responded extraordinarily to it.

And most unbelievably, the very media that hounded Bertie out of office became cheerleaders for him in the month or so since he announced his departure.

The sympathy and support of statesmen one can understand, and the love from the public, well, one could argue that that never really went away despite all the travails of the last two years.

The media is the real weird one though. Lining up to kiss his ass they were. And it seemed the more savage you'd been about Bertie, the more you had to become chief mourner at his political wake.

Of course, it would be an old tradition at Irish funerals that the wife who bitched non-stop about the husband would grieve the hardest of any spouse ever, that the friend who had fallen out with him would be the most inconsolable. But this really was taking the piss.

Reading the coverage as it came to a crescendo, you started wondering why Bertie had to go at all. His worst enemies were saying he was the greatest politician the country had seen since independence, if slightly tainted by unorthodox political fundraising that was all the rage back in the day.

And the public were loving him. He must have wondered himself why he had to go. In fact, that little matter of the tribunal and the resignation was all but forgotten in recent weeks.

Even Mahon himself seemed to be joining in the volte face as it became clear the tribunal was dropping the investigation into Bertie Ahern's purchase of his house, which was one of the central issues that was supposedly dogging him over the last few years.

And the courts seemed to row in with the general mood of regret, with the High Court handing victory to Ahern on Thursday in his challenge to aspects of the tribunal's prying.

Belatedly perhaps, the High Court ruled that Bertie Ahern was entitled to his good name and entitled, before the tribunal, to the constitutional protections afforded to all citizens in similar forums. The whole thing began to seem more and more surreal.

Of course you could argue that a healthy dose of hypocrisy is only decent at a time like this, that, to reverse Marc Anthony's dictum -- 'the good that men do should live after them; while the evil is oft interred with their bones.' Or, to quote the song, that you've got to accentuate the positive.

But it would have been sufficient hypocrisy for those who hounded Bertie out of office to keep their traps shut these past few weeks.

Did they really need to join so enthusiastically in the eulogising? Personally, if I had managed to do what they did, and unseat someone who I felt was a cancer on the State, I'd be enjoying having been proven right. At the very least I'd refuse to join in the backslapping.

In fact, I'd imagine if I had a very deep conviction that the guy in question was a corrupt liar who needed to be hounded out of office, then I think I would find all the backslapping and the eulogising rather surreal and I'd leave the country for a week to avoid it.

But most of the organs who went for Bertie consistently, in a most savage way, for two years, seemed to be perfectly comfortable to join in the lamenting that we were losing this great man.

Take Wednesday's eight-page Bertie special in the Irish Times, the newspaper that could be credited with having started all this, and that played a hugely active part in making it impossible for Bertie Ahern to stay in office.

They kicked it off with a giant headline -- with I think the biggest lettering I've ever seen in the Irish Times -- saying "Poor Old Unlucky Bertie", which appeared over a nuanced but affectionate profile by Miriam Lord.

You could argue the Irish Times was being ironic in the headline. But the Irish Times, even more so than Americans, doesn't do irony and people take their headlines on face value. This one was hugely symbolic, practically an apology.

Then we had seven more pages which rammed home -- with all the subtlety of a Brian Cowen putdown -- the Irish Times' new party line.

This party line was crystallised in the paper's leader article that day which talked about Bertie's "extraordinary contribution" to the State in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, in being responsible for the Celtic Tiger, in unifying Fianna Fail and in enhancing this country's relationships abroad both within and beyond the EU.

The Old Lady even came over all teenager-y, saying that "His achievements, to coin the phrase of the celebrity culture in which he lives, are awesome".

Awesome? Does he, like, totally rock, you guys? Would you say that you, totally, like, would, if you had a chance?

They went on to suggest that "his achievements would outstrip any those of any other Fianna Fail leader or Taoiseach in their day". It would have been an extraordinary validation of any politician but for a politician that the Irish Times felt, just weeks ago, was not fit for office, it was unbelievable and bizarre.

The writers in the supplement all sang off the hymn sheet laid down by the leader article.

John Bowman wrote on how Bertie's responsibility for "the greatest ever act of self determination by the people of Ireland ensured him an honoured place in history". John Waters (of the Irish Times and the Mail, so double tragedy/jeopardy) called Bertie's career "perhaps the most glorious political career since independence".

Stephen Collins similarly eulogised him and even went so far as to suggest that Bertie's only 'crime', if a crime it was, was that his highly-successful constituency machine led to financial unorthodoxy.

So, remind us again why he had to go guys? Apart from that he did a load of awesome stuff, and he really didn't commit any crime.

The Irish Times supplement was just one of the more glaring examples of it, but to be fair to the Times the others were all at it too.

You could put this extraordinary and surreal volte face down to common or garden denial. Consistency and self awareness is never a strong point with journalists and they move on easily, so it could be quite simply that they don't realise they were the ones who caused this situation, so they felt free to bemoan it.

But even journalists aren't that deluded. The truth is that once the media saw how all this was panning out they ran a mile to distance themselves from having hounded Ahern out of office and to stand four square behind his achievements and his reputation and the love that the Irish people have for him.

Not being, in the main, very bright or original people, most Irish journalists feel safest in a mob. When the mob was marching on Drumcondra with lit torches it was there they chose to be, and when they realised the mob had turned, they turned quickly with it.

What brave soul in the Mail or the Times will stand up now and say "I was there. I egged them on while they crucified him. I demanded his head on a plate. And now I've got it and I have no regrets".

None of them. They could think of nothing more terrifying than taking responsibility for what everyone is realising very rapidly was a bad bit of business, a collective fit of madness.

So the hit on Ahern was very much a hit and run. They were willing to strike, even to wound, but when they discovered they had killed him and that no one was really feeling good about it, they legged it.

Worst of all -- and this must be their biggest fear -- is that between the tribunal and the High Court in the last week, things seem to be turning in Bertie Ahern's favour. It could start looking like the media killed an innocent man, like they got the wrong guy.

Their error is irreversible. And if they have made a mistake of this magnitude, they know they will never live it down.

Already you can see them justifying why Ahern had to go. The general party line seems to be that the public were uneasy with the Grainne Carruth business. Watch and you'll see that line popping up everywhere.

No one is saying that Ahern had to go because he was corrupt, or because he was no longer fit to govern. They are basically saying now that the public put Ahern out of office because of unease with one small optical issue of the tribunal. And so the hand washing and the running a mile goes on. It was the public mood, not us. He hurt a woman, and none of us can stand for that.

If that's the case, that when one small incident in someone's career looks bad, that when a woman is upset and people don't like it, if that is enough to bring down a politician that everyone seems to now agree was the greatest leader in the history of our State, then every other politician might as well give up now.

Because every politician -- everyone in life -- will have incidents that look bad. And other politicians, or the rest of us, don't have all the stuff on the other side of the balance sheet that Ahern has. By these standards no existing politician, or anyone thinking of going into politics, will ever be fit to hold office. And when you remember that it was the tribunal and not Bertie that made Grainne Carruth cry, it makes this reasoning as to why he had to go even more spurious.

You have to worry too at the effect this massive miscarriage of politics will have on Bertie. I don't even have any great gra for him as a man and, even at that, this whole thing bothers me more intensely than any non-IRA related political situation in this country ever has. Those who genuinely love him must be feeling even more duped and cheated. And the man himself? God knows how he must feel.

Here is a man who has lost his whole life. Even Bertie's greatest detractors would agree that he sacrificed everything -- personal life, relationships, home life, downtime, even the chance to be rich, for politics and for public service. None of us can begin to imagine how bereft he must feeling at losing this one passion for which he gave up everything else, and at losing it so unfairly.

Very few of us are lucky or unlucky enough to have such an all-consuming passion in our lives. But not only does Bertie need to cope with losing that life-defining passion, he is also having to cope with it in the knowledge that he didn't deserve to lose, that no one really feels now it should have happened, that everyone in this country regards him as a great man who performed superhuman deeds and single-handedly appears to have shaped our history in the way that others couldn't have done.

Bertie Ahern has changed millions of lives in this country, and the seemingly impossible peace he brokered will change millions more lives in generations to come. And he was hounded out of office on a whim, unfairly.

He has been left feeling like a victim, a man who got a raw deal. The frustration and anger and bitterness that must be threatening to consume Bertie Ahern's every waking and sleeping hour now must be unimaginable.

And the people who did this to him, who cheated him of the final act of his extraordinary career, aren't even willing to take responsibility.

He must feel at times like hunting them down one by one and making them account for themselves: You did this because you needed a bit of copy? You did this because you were afraid of being outside the consensus? You did this to build circulation? You perpetrated this essentially for a lark? Did you not think of the consequences? Did you not realise it was a real person you were playing with?

Bertie Ahern will become obsessive, paralysed and ruined unless he deals with this now. He needs to focus on the few things he seems to have salvaged outside of politics -- his relationship with his girls and with his grandchildren and with some of his friends, his genuine love of sport.

Most of all, Bertie Ahern needs to move onto a new stage of his career and needs to be vindicated. President might do it. President of the EU might do it.

One thing is for sure. Bertie Ahern can't let it end like this or he will live out his days twisted and gnarled with bitterness, all the good that he did irrelevant to him, and only the evil that was done to him, left.