Dublin Disconnected

paddycullivan

These are strange times. Disparate. Odd. Business is being done (or not done) in the most un-businesslike manner. The most anti-religious hipster won’t open their restaurant doors on a Sunday because ‘it’s Sunday’. Powerful people with supposedly intelligent advisors in their employ come out with the most ridiculous statements ever. For the most connected time in history, we are truly living in the age of ‘The Disconnect’. Maybe it’s my sobriety, but I’m finding that nothing’s making sense. Nothing works. It’s frankly scary.

I’m sure studies will be done that will discover that the amount of time we spent on Social Media when we should have been doing something else filleted our concentration levels and fried our thought processes. But that can’t be it. How did everyone become so stupid, so irresponsible, so quickly, and all at the same time?

It started small, like the Ebola virus. The first symptoms were seen a few years ago when the Black Eyed Peas played in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and thanked ‘Portugal’ to the sound of 150,000 people booing. Did anyone in the entire BEP organization know that Brazil is a country that speaks the Portuguese language, but isn’t actually Portugal?

That was then. It was rare. Now that type of thing happens every day, in Ireland, the land of Saints and Scholars (supposedly). Though he knew that everyone hates him and is enraged about Irish Water, John Tierney came out and said he had the ‘hardest job in the world’ and he was ‘humbled’ when he saw the work Irish Water workers were doing on our behalf. Not really what anyone wanted to hear, and coming from a place of such disconnect it’s mind-boggling. They’ve probably spent millions on consultants and PR advice. Not that you’d know…

Then Ronan Keating said were he to marry his girlfriend Storm, he would like a ‘Game of Thrones’ themed wedding. Now, either he’s a cynical comic genius (all weddings in Game of Thrones end in horrific massacres or the death of the groom), or he really liked the costumes. Either way celebrity ‘news’ outlets reported it with a straight face.

Leo Varadkar made everyone feel great when he said, if an Irish person in West Africa contracted Ebola, he would have to bring him home to be treated here. Not only did he not ask us how we felt about that, but can you imagine the conversation? ‘Hello Irish Ebola victim’ says Leo…’we’re taking you back to Ireland’, to which the unfortunate sufferer says ‘Go back… To that Health System? You’re grand – I’ll take my chances here.’

Yes, it would seem that common sense and logic have gone out the window and we truly are living in the age of ‘The Disconnect’.