Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
Which Lord Mayor of London was always on the Internet? Click Whittington. This is arguably one of the worst jokes in all the history of humour, and therefore easily the worst joke concerning the Mayoral office. However, perhaps the news emanating from Limerick this morning might just give that abysmal witticism a run for its money in the appalling comedy stakes. Jim Long, the town Mayor, is to refer a fake Twitter account to Gardaí for investigation, with the ultimate aim of getting it removed from the Internet.
The Twitter account in question, @MayorJimbo, a spoof of Cllr Long, makes several references to the undertakings of his profession, in what (at least in my opinion) are largely harmless, amusing, and obviously fake tweets. And yet the deputy Mayor Kevin Kiely condemned the people responsible for this account as “sick”, noting that they should “refer themselves to a psychiatrist”. My goodness. Evidently Kiely does not exaggerate, for one of these undeniably sick musings reads: “Shud I sheav off da tash? Kiley sez it is a mark of rirsresprct [sic] bad manners to da Ceinee lads. I tink he is taken da piss.” Ghastly stuff, to be sure. I would go as far as to say that this brand of vile humour is so edgily dark that it would unnerve Frankie Boyle himself.
If this case proves anything, it is that politicians have not so much lost touch with society, as never had any real connection with it in the first place. It is all very well to defend yourself against slander and character defamation, but to confuse satire with both of those things is the mark of a pious fool. The mayor has even gone so far as to indicate that he will launch a private case against the offender when they are caught. Perhaps I’m being too hard on him, but doesn’t Cllr Long have other hedgehogs to comb? Mayor Long is due to leave for China this week, accompanied by none other than amateur psychiatrist himself, Mr. Kiely, in order to sign a “memorandum of friendship” between Limerick and Nanjing. Indeed, as the aforementioned Twitter account reveals, Long is “Off to Chineeland telling the forginers what ta do.” One would have thought such an important trip would be playing on his mind a great deal more than the trivial matter of an impostor satirizing him on the Internet.
Some comfort can at least be drawn from the revelation that the real Mayor and his sidekick will not be travelling in style to the Land of the Dragon. Both Cllr Long and Cllr Kiely are travelling with the common folk, as the Mayor noted last week that he “actually declined business class”. It is interesting to note how a comment like this seems to imply that this kind of decision is some sort of sacrifice, an encumbrance Long is willing to tolerate for the contentment of the Limerick people. Perhaps if he concentrated somewhat more on the problems in his own city, rather than hindering the police force from doing their jobs in a place perceived as the crime capital of Europe, there wouldn’t be any need for such lampoonery in the first place. But alas, as the old Chinese proverb rather fittingly states, “The sky is high and the emperor is far away”.
