Ryder Cup logo might well replace harp as our national emblem
The Ryder Cup is building up to the same momentous dynamic.
So ubiquitous is the tournament logo that it might replace the harp as the national emblem.
Shimmering road surfaces have been laid across Kildare. Meandering hedges are being trimmed, shop fronts painted and opportunist householders are spritzing their en suites with Mister Muscle before the 20-grand-for-the-week suckers arrive.
The proverbial Martian watching the sponsors' epic TV commercials or encountering one of the newly-sprouted road signs welcoming motorists to the land of the Ryder Cup would wonder how so many people could be so exercised about a good walk spoilt.
Whereupon, we earthlings would reply, 'it's not sport, stupid, it's business.'
Compared to the joyousness of the Special Olympics, there is a hard-nosedness to the Ryder Cup at the K Club.
It's a cash cow: hotel beds, inflated green fees on outlying courses, prostitutes from abroad making a beeline for the honeypot, and lucrative media rights.
Diehard fans of the every-two-years contest between the US and Europe protest that its attraction is the titanic struggle between two golf superpowers, but even Dr Michael Smurfit acknowledges its Midas exigencies.
In a letter he sent to the Taoiseach last January, the septuagenarian packaging multimillionaire said it would be a "tragedy" if the Ryder Cup were made free-to-view on television.
The government was engaged at the time in reviewing the list of sports fixtures available to the general tv audience, as opposed to the mega-bucks rights-bidding channels. "It would be a grave error on behalf of the government", Dr Smurfit warned, if it did not stick an exclusive-to-buyer tag on the Ryder Cup.
Our sports-mad Taoiseach, it would seem, concurred, even though the taxpayer is shelling out more than ?5m to subsidise next month's event.
Bertie, you will remember, performed the official "opening" of Dr Smurfit's new mansion in the grounds of the K Club, without a flicker of amusement trespassing his lips at the notion of the head of government cutting the ribbon on a non-tax resident's country pile.
An even richer non-tax resident (they dislike the description, "tax exile") wrote another letter to the Taoiseach some time ago.
The correspondent that time was Dermot Desmond and the topic of his letter was his proposal that the national theatre be relocated to his beloved IFSC.
And guess where the Abbey is off to?
It must be the Taoiseach's notorious linquistic delinquency that has his brain addled underneath his newest cap, the self-styled Comrade Bertie.
Comrade to the plebs, maybe, but buddy of the ultra-HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals), be it the builders in the Fianna Fail tent, or the businessman currently before the law courts on the site of his burgeoning hotel.
At the same time, he is encouraging the mass of ordinary citizens to embrace the volunteer spirit of social capitalism.
There is no proof that the private correspondence from either Michael Smurfit or Dermot Desmond influenced the Taoiseach's deliberations on which TV channel should broadcast the Ryder Cup or where to put the Abbey Theatre.
What there is compelling evidence of is that certain very rich people have no compunction about writing to him directly on matters of national consequence, or even inviting him to "open" their new house.
For the hundred thousand people who marched against the invasion of Iraq and who are still wondering what they have to do for their wishes to be heard, this rich man's attitude of right-of-audience is a marvel.
Monied arrogance would not be sufficient to sustain it in the absence of a ready ear.
Unlike others in his party, Bertie Ahern is regarded as a pair of clean hands in the murky backrooms of the brown envelope.
But his easy virtue whenever a richman hooks a finger at him is deepening the sense of them-and-us.
His doorstep dissertations on socialism will make rivetting listening come next summer, when the tax-resident come out to vote.
