One of the things I find unsettling about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat is that he’s the spitting image of Dan, impossible to tell apart from the former Bogsider and founder of the 20/20 Vision arts group.

Dan Baron Cohen lives in a Brazilian rain-forest now, whence he sends me an occasional e-mailed update on indigenous resistance to State-sponsored despoilers of the environment upon which we all depend.
The other thing I find unsettling about Sacha is that the victims of his raillery and skit are exclusively from the margins, not the mainstream, of society.
Kazakhs are easy meat for caricature and condescension. So are red-necked anti-semites.
Baron Cohen is a Jew from Golder’s Green. Would a Muslim from Southall get away with an equivalent routine? If he exposed people who object to the veil as contemptible buffoons?
The Israeli writer Gilad Atzmon goes too far when he argues that “Baron Cohen and his team are there to block or even to shutter any form of criticism of global Zionism in general and of Israel in particular.” But he has a point.
Incidentally, Dan’s funnier, too.

Documentary maker and former Workers’ Party big-wig Gerry Gregg so annoyed George Galloway at a debate in Cork that the Respect MP stormed out of the meeting at UCC and went for a kebab.
Apparently, Gregg had made reference to corruption and alleged that Galloway sucked up to dictators.
We’ll come to corruption in a moment, if we have space. In the meantime: dictators. If I were Gregg, I’d steer clear of dictators.
During Gregg’s time as one of the WP’s top ideologues, nothing made the party so dizzy with delight as applying the glottic organ to the arses of selected dictators. The suppurating anuses of Stalinist tyrants were regarded as especially tasty.
Take Pyongyang, North Korea, September 23, 1984. Gregg’s leader, Workers’ Party president Tomas Mac Giolla, was in town, accompanied by WP vice-president Seamus Lynch and “esteemed comrade general secretary” Sean Garland. The trio were guests at a sumptuous luncheon given by megalomaniac North Korean boss, Kim Il Sung.
Kim formally welcomed Gregg’s comrades with generous acknowledgement that the Workers’ Party “has waged a long-drawn-out arduous struggle to win back the independence of the nation and the sovereignty of your country, under the banner of Chajusong.”
(Actually, at the time, Gregg and his Sticky adherents were patrolling the canteens and corridors of RTE on red alert for any petit-bourgeois miscreant entertaining thoughts of opposing Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, the gagging law which kept Sinn Fein off the airwaves on the ground that all chatter about independence and national sovereignty was mere cover for Provo-Trot terrorism. But then, handling grotesque contradictions has always come easily to Sticks like Gregg. As we shall see.)
In reply, Mac Giolla happily confirmed for the Korean mass murderer that the people of Ireland were struggling for independence under the guidance of Kim’s theories. “We fully understand the concept and principle of the Juche,” he told the chuffed despot.
“It is very clear to us,” he continued, that the stupendous achievements of the Democratic Republic of Korea were entirely due to “the experience, the guidance, the great leadership of you, Your Excellency Comrade President Kim Il Sung. Led by the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, the Korean people will secure victory. All the people will be able to enjoy a peaceful and happy life under the leadership and guidance of Your Excellency Comrade President Kil Il Sung, your Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and the Workers’ Party of Korea.” (The second Kim, offspring and anointed successor of the first, currently presides over the humanitarian disaster-zone which North Korea has become under the Kim family¹s tragi-comical mis-management.)
Galloway, it is true, has, betimes, abased himself and embarrassed others with florid tributes to Arab dictators. But I do not believe he has ever delivered as shameful and shameless a panegyric to evil as tripped regularly from the lips of Workers’ Party leaders during the years when Gregg was an undissenting major figure in the party.  
It could be that Gregg has since belatedly listened to the arguments of people like myself, learnt the error of his ways and put obeisance to oppression behind him, in which case he could be said to have earned an entitlement to lash out at those left behind still kow-towing to dictatorship. But I don’t think so. If he’d recanted, we’d know. He’s never been shy about giving the public the benefit of his thoughts.
The more likely explanation is that Gregg cannot abide the dictators Galloway has bowed his head to, who have tended to be Muslims, unlike the Stalinists before whom Gregg and his ilk have prostrated themselves.  
Oh, yes. The reference to corruption. It will have to wait. I have space only now to mention that my contemporary copy of the Pyongyang Times tells that Mac Giolla, Lynch and Garland presented Kim Il Sung with a gift, and that “Comrade Kim Il Sung saw the gift on display and expressed thanks for it.”
But, strangely, I can find no mention of what the gift was.
A fistful of dollars, perhaps, Sean?

At the time of writing, Shelbourne seem set fair to lift the National League title. But if you went by the belligerent banter at the Brandywell and other grounds, you’d believe Ollie Byrne is a bosom companion of Beezlebub
The latest complaint has to do with the Tolka supremo’s campaign to have Shels credited with the three points taken by Bohs in beating Shels with a side that included an ineligible player.
Ollie originally wanted the points transferred to Shels without further ado. Then he wanted the match re-played. League and FAI officials contemplated both outcomes. The absurd manoeuvring which followed demeaned the league and demoralised fans.
A split second’s thought is sufficient for any rational person to realise that the original decision simply to deduct the points from Bohs was the only right verdict. A team cannot retrospectively be deemed winner of a match in which it has scored fewer goals than its opponent. Nor can a team which has breached rules be given a second go at the game rendered void by the illegality. The curtain went up on this farce when the dozy panjandrums of Merrion Square went into one of their traditional spasms of bewildered mendacity and agreed to thrash around looking for an alternative to the obviously correct outcome they had already arrived at.
None of the mess in which the league season is ending is down to Ollie Byrne. All of it is down to the drones, gobdaws, time-servers and terminal incompetents who have been running football in the Free State since ever I can recall.
Ollie is one of the great, enlivening, inspirational characters of Irish football in this era. He deserves all praise for fighting for Shels to the very last ground, oblivious to the opinions of others, and even to the dictates of logic. I can think of half a dozen National League sides who’d go down on their knees with gratitude for an Ollie Byrne of their own. Fair dues to him, say all true football folk.