Same Olde Sod

In a rare escape from California, vacation was taken this summer on the coast of Ireland. There were castles and pubs and fairy forts to explore, and also there were newspapers. Each morning I’d drive several miles on a one-lane road to buy the papers, dodging flocks of commuter-sheep and tractors operated by old farmers dressed in tweeds.

For all the Irish exoctica, for all the signs that this was a place far removed from California, much of what filled the newspapers was surprisingly familiar. Beyond the coverage of the ongoing Northern Ireland troubles, it was uncanny how many of the stories--with the change of a few proper nouns--could pass for reportage from our own golden sod.

There was, for example, much printed discussion of suburban growth, and in particular the “relentless” march of new, often ostentatious houses across former farmland. “Writing off the Irish countryside,” was the headline over one overview, a piece that could just as easily been used to frame the sprawl debate raging in the San Joaquin Valley. As in California, concerns centered on the loss of irreplaceable open land, as well as the strain on water supplies and public services.

Fingers were pointed at ground-level politicians eager to please their developer-supporters. “Nothing,” the Irish Times noted, “is allowed to get in the way of clientilism.” A useful coinage, clientilism, one to file away for the next time the FBI’s investigation of Fresno land planning, Operation Rezone, makes the news.

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Immigrants, both legal and illegal, provided another hot running story, to the point where one human rights advocate felt obliged to call a press conference and accuse journalists of rhetorical overkill. As the Irish Times reported: “He quoted examples from many newspapers which he interpreted as suggesting a ‘flood or tide’ of refugees had arrived in Ireland; that the refugees were persistently associated with begging, petty theft and serious crime; that they were ‘bogus’ and were here to exploit the welfare system as economic refugees.”

Yes, and they keep coming too.

The strawberry harvest was underway, and as in California the focus was on pickers. One grower generated much publicity with his complaint that he couldn’t find anyone willing to work his fields. “You get people who just come and pick a few punnets and then give up,” farmer John Green told the Irish Independent, “and you never see them again. . . . You get a lot of people who think it would be nice to pick strawberries on a sunny day--they don’t realize that it is hard work.”

Medicinal marijuana was in the news, with author Paddy Doyle--painfully ill with a rare muscular disease--calling for a less inflammatory public discussion of legalization. “It seems to me,” he told an interviewer, “that because the whole subject of drugs is so emotive, anyone asking for a rational debate is automatically assumed to be some sort of gullible fool with criminal tendencies. . . . Why should I have to go down some dark alleyway and deal with sleazy people to get something that has been proven to help people with my condition?”

There were many sensational crimes to report, including the story of a young man from Wexford County who blasted his father with a shotgun. Afterword, he complained of a life of sexual abuse. “He crossed the line,” the suspect told the arresting officers. “He’s been doing it for years. Hasta la vista.”

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Add to this stories attacking lawyers for court backlogs, inflated damage claims and abuse-excuse defenses, accounts of excessive auto insurance rates, vicious pans of Roseanne’s farewell episode, tales from an ongoing real estate boom--Hot Properties, Dublin-style: “Nuns to Get 8M for Linden Home, Grounds”--angry letters to editors lamenting the pollution of beaches, assessments of the emergence of women in Irish sport and, well, the point is made.

At least the daily weather forecasts were different. In Southern California the challenge is to find new ways to report more of the same; in Ireland it’s a matter of crafting elegant phrases to cover all possibilities. “Rather cloudy at first,” went a typical prognostication, “becoming mostly dry later, apart from a few scattered showers, with some bright or sunny intervals developing.”

And what, then, is the cosmic lesson to be culled from this pile of California-esque clips brought back from County Donegal? Well, perhaps it’s only the obvious but easily forgotten notion that, chauvinistic journalism aside, there’s not a whole lot unique in this round world. People are people, newspaper reporters are newspaper reporters and, as farmers from Dinuba to Dunlough can attest, it’s always hard to find good pickers. Hasta la vista.