Madame, we're no longer Paddies
I just MUST be allowed respond to the beautifully meaty letter from the French lady. So many tasty inducements heaped one on top of another like some gastronomic delicacy in one of those overly expensive Paris restaurants.
Well, Madame will be happy that I regard 99 per cent of her jackboot appraisal of us Irish to be 100 per cent correct. We are indeed largely ignorant of anything that isn't on TV, we do tend to be self-obsessed and we truly have some God-awful accents. We are slaves to money and objects, we believe the world watches us 24/7, we believe frowning fiddle players are the essence of culture and we believe our small capital, created by Norsemen and built by the British, to be one of the truly great world cities. In brief, we have a highly over-valued sense of self. So much for the facts, but why the ravenous hatred?
Is she perhaps going through a rough period in her marriage to her accentually androgynous Irishman?
People don't hate without reason. Madame has her reasons, and I'd guess some of them have to do with the sobering (for Europe) fact that we Irish no longer play the "Paddy". We are no longer harmless "idiots". We are dangerous, calculating, secretive, manipulative business people who would sell our own mothers for success.
Paul Kearney,
Dunleer, Co Louth
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The writer's bilious tirade contained some of the most overtly racist remarks I have ever seen in a newspaper but it should be no real surprise that a French person, in particular a person from Brittany, should harbour such potential. France is well known as a country with deep-seated racial and anti-Semitic resentments and the country still has many skeletons in the closet with respect to collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War .
On a positive note, however, I would like to thank the Sunday Independent for printing such an inflammatory letter.
G O'Rourke,
London SW19
