With the pathetic revelations about Anthony Weiner’s online hobbies, we have yet another political “hero” brought down by personal failings. I am reminded of Joyce’s fixation with charismatic Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, and how Parnell’s personal failings set back the cause of Irish independence.
He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentlemen on the head with her umbrella because he had taken his hat off when the band played God Save the Queen at the end.
Mr. Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.
— Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an unfortunate priestridden race and always were and always will be till the end of the chapter
Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:
— A bad business! A bad business!
Mr. Dedalus repeated:
— A priestridden, Godforsaken race!
He pointed to a portrait of his grandfather on the wall to his right.
— Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said. He was a good Irishman when there was no money in the job. He was condemned to death as a whiteboy. But he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he would never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.
Dante broke in angrily:
— If we are a priestridden race then we ought to be proud of it! They are the apple of God’s eye. Touch them not, says Christ, for they are the apple of my eye.
— And can we not love our country then? asked Mr. Casey. Are we not to follow the man who was born to lead us?
— A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor, an adulterer! The priests were right to abandon him. The priests were always the true friends of Ireland.
— Were they, faith? said Mr. Casey.
He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one finger after another.
— Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and the priests sell the aspirations of their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confessionbox? And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terrence Bellew MacManus?
His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr. Dedalus uttered a guffaw of coarse scorn.
— O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of God’s eye!
Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr. Casey:
— Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion come first!
— James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
And so our leaders are done in by failings that have little if anything to do with their actual purpose in life. It’s a far stretch from Parnell to Weiner, but it’s the same at its core.
I remember thinking how foolish it was for Irish Catholics to abandon Parnell just because of his affair with Kitty O’Shea. And so, as annoying and pathetic as Weiner may be, there’s little point in turning our back on him … except, of course, besides little fits of pithiness toward his conservative colleagues, he hasn’t done anything worthy of support. It’s not like he’s Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders, after all … so it doesn’t really matter if we turn on him or not.
I am much more concerned with the “morally upright” politicians who destroy our nation (Mitch McConnell), and I reject demagogues for more than their “moral” failings (Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump). In the end, I always considered John Edwards’s biggest failing not to be the fact that he fathered a child out of wedlock and lied about it; but rather, the fact that he concealed a secret that gave John McCain’s zombie ghost the chance to win an election that he would have no chance at winning otherwise. Say it with me now: Sarah Palin, a heartbeat away!
[UPDATE: This blog post (courtesy Suzy Bright's Facebook page) is hands down the best discussion of the Weiner scandal. Please read it.]
