Simpering sycophants and country bumpkins

Brian Feeney gets wired into Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness for the second week in a row in his Irish News column. He mocks both for their meeting with US president George W. Bush and says that Bush was “laughing at them [Feeney's emphasis]. He was laughing at them because he recognised them for what they are – two country bumpkins star-struck by being in Washington and sitting in the White House with the president.”

Feeney thinks it was a relief for Bush to have these “two sycophants” for company as all Bush’s other political allies have been cast aside: “Which raises the question what Martin McGuinness was doing fawning over this guy? Paisley you can understand since he has ideas even more daft than Bush but McGuinness, whose party opposes everything Bush has ever done? … Yet there’s Martin McGuinness grinning and simpering as if he was in the presence of a respected statesman.”

Feeney thinks that McGuinness’s “White House smarm-in got virtually zero coverage in the US, so what was the point in letting people here see him glad-handling the man every Sinn Féin voter despises?” Bush, writes Feeney, will never visit the North and the Chuckle Brothers were not able to announce a single investment deal as a result of their visit.

In this season of good-will to all men – except Paisley and McGuinness – would anyone like to bet that Feeney’s article next week will be in praise of Mark Durkan and the SDLP?

Ho! Ho! Ho!