It was slick. It was savvy. And it could well prove to be Team Murdoch’s saviour.
 
Rupert Murdoch’s performance at the select parliamentary committee in London, where he was grilled for two hours, was a polished, professional and painstakingly manufactured PR master class.
 
As father and son sat down looking like Mr Burns and Smithers, the phone hacking scandal had already knocked 12pc off the value of News Corp shares, which cost the Murdoch family a cool $750m (don’t shed to many tears, the family’s stake is still worth about $5.2 billion).
 
However, as Murdoch Senior masterfully handled his inquisitors and his wife busily batted away shaving-foam pies, the share price of his media empire News Corp began to soar.
 
At 80-years-old, Murdoch’s public relations strategy has at times seemed as frail as the man himself. As the raging inferno of the phone hacking scandal engulfed News Corp, Murdoch looked out of touch as he lurched from crisis to crisis after one shock revelation followed another.
 
However, when he eventually assembled his dream team of PR advisors, their finger prints could soon be seen all over his statements, apologies and parliamentary performance.
 
Right from the get-go Murdoch’s coaching was apparent. Just examine his opening statement — “This is the most humble day of my life.”
 
This was contrived as a sound bite his handlers knew would be repeated in news bulletins and newspaper coverage. It may have been a bit early when he delivered it, but it none the less proved to be one of the quotes of the day.
 
The massive audience that tuned in to see a ruthless, all powerful, media mogul get his comeuppance, would have been shocked at the frail, tired man that looked every one of his 80 years.
 
It is very unlikely this just happened to be one of Murdoch’s off days. Remember, this is the same man who was snapped earlier in the week out jogging with his personal trainer.
 
Again, his appearance as he sat in the glare of the media spotlight was well manufactured to evoke the sympathy an old man unaware of the shenanigans the bright young bucks his company had hired were getting up to deserved.
 
His son James was a little stiffer in his presentation, but stuck to fixed responses and used meaningless but complex phrases when he got the chance.
 
It was also noticeable that when Rebekah Brooks took the hot seat she was dressed almost nun-like, her hair colour darkened and her delivery slow and precise.
 
Her quietly spoken performance was miles away from the Alpha Male environment of the newsroom, which she dominated during her time as editor of the Sun and News of the World. Indeed, her polished performance aimed at showing dignified remorse tried to have us believe newspaper offices are a picture of calmness and politeness.
 
The phantom pie flinger was something of a distraction, but it very much worked to Murdoch’s advantage.
 
How could someone try to attack a frail old man like that? When his wife leapt to his defence, she suddenly became the hero of the day. Indeed, the whole episode brought a very real human side to the ruthless billionaire and even an outpouring of sympathy.
 
Yes, cynics out there are already wondering if it was all part of a well-choreographed carnival. And with the levels these people have stooped to in the past, who knows?
 
Now Murdoch moves on, battle scared and weary, still wounded, but knowing that his excellent performance may well have helped save his bacon.
 
As the attention now turns away from the media mogul to focus on the Prime Minister’s part in this sordid tale, without question Murdoch has his handlers to thank. It was a rare opportunity to see how they subtly helped change people’s perceptions of Team Murdoch by focusing on how they spoke, looked and communicated. So while it was no doubt a good day for Murdoch, it was an even better day for the art of public relations.
 
Paul Allen, Managing Director of Paul Allen and Associates PR, www.prireland.

Who is winning the gay marriage debate? Is is not the gays says a leading Catholic organization despite the New York State victory.

I never thought I'd have the American oath of allegiance, taken when you become a US citizen, quoted at me as a negative but it happened on a radio show here to me.

“Imagine a dating community where EVERYONE is actually beautiful …”

Read more: Top ten most annoying things about Ireland

Read more: Top ten must see places in Ireland - PHOTOS

The volunteer job that I applied for last December has started. It took this long to set up because of references and police vetting procedures. It is ‘Coordinator of the Galway region for Irish Therapy Dogs’. I will be dealing with administration, setting up programmes with care centres and assessing the local teams.

Following a stint as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy, Trina Vargo has emerged as a major player in the relationship between Ireland and the United States.

Read more: 'The New York Times' refers to Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny as a woman

It was International Women’s day last week and only 23 female TDs were elected to the new Dail.

Irish teenagers growing up in British cities in the 1970s and 1980s knew what it was like to be part of a suspect community. We knew that anti-terrorism legislation passed in the aftermath of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings was aimed at us, the Irish.

One of the first actions of the new Irish government when it is elected should be to invite President Obama to Ireland.

“An Irishman’s heart is nothing but his imagination.”
– George Bernard Shaw (John Bull’s Other Island)

With gunshots still echoing, the first news reports from Tucson hit the wires: Congresswoman Gabby Giffords shot and critically injured, many others killed and wounded.  Within two hours of the event the spinners in the main stream media started politicizing the tragedy: Gunman was a Tea Partier, he was a militia member, he was inflamed by the hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric from Sarah Palin and  the right wing ... Even the local sheriff, Dupnik, jumped in the fray and blamed the act on the overheated rhetoric put out by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. Glaringly, the sheriff is not ready for prime time.  The 3rd in command of the democrats in Congress, Clyburn flat out said Sarah Palin "didn’t grasp why her rhetoric was so troubling, regardless of the motivations of the alleged shooter."  All of this was eagerly lapped up by the main stream media and dished out to the world.

This is the story of a Guinness baseball hat designed for American tourists, and a Meath football legend’s battle against cancer at a time when he should be enjoying his life.

I’ve just kissed my daughter on the cheek after drilling her on her Confirmation questions; I was shocked at how many of the answers I remember from my own Catholic rite of passage 31 years ago.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan has come out swinging against The New York Times, accusing it of anti-Catholic bias in two recent articles.

In passing over Dublin’s courageous Archbishop Diarmuid Martin when he named a batch of new cardinals at the Vatican today, Pope Benedict XVI has finally closed the book on the shocking child sex-abuse scandal and its cover-up in Ireland.

A lot has been written around the tragic suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, the victim of online bullying and intolerance. For anyone who was ever bullied in the past, you could certainly identify with both the feelings of hopelessness and isolation that apparently drove that poor young man to his death.

Read more - President Mary McAleese declines St. Patrick's Day NYC Grand Marshal invite

Virulent anti-Catholicism is alive and well in modern Britain. It is particularly interesting to watch this spectacle of hatred from the neighbouring island to the west - one which has felt first-hand the depth of British hatred of Catholicism for many centuries.
 
There was rabid anti-Catholicism in Cromwell’s massacres of thousands of innocent Irish people in the 1600s. There was anti-Catholicism in the British authorities who subjected millions of Irish to dispossession, death, disease and oppression in their own country throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
 
There was anti-Catholicism in the British troops who fired over the head of my grandmother when, as 6-year-old, she hid from them in the hedgerows on her way to school. It seethed in the British soldiers who burned my home city of Cork to the ground in 1920. More recently, it lurked in the Paratroopers who shot dead 13 innocent Catholic civil rights marchers in Derry in 1972.
 
For a while it seemed that this old hostility had expired, but the shrieking intensity of anti-Catholic hatred in recent months has shown that it was merely resting.
 
Its resurgence has troubled even prominent UK-based atheists like Padraig Reidy, who recently wrote in the Observer that “Catholicism is viewed with suspicion by significant sections of the British left” and traces the present vitriol back to these ancient hatreds.
 
Brendan O’Neill of Spiked, says “the campaigning against [the pope’s] visit has become so shrill that soon only dogs will be able to hear it. And the great irony of this allegedly rationalist protest against the pope is that it is indulging in precisely the kind of demonology that the Catholic Church once excelled at. Campaigners have turned Benedict into a Satan for secularists, an Antichrist for atheists, against whom they desperately hope to define and advertise their own moral integrity.
 
Indeed, I cannot think of an instance in modern European history where any nation was so convulsed by vitriolic hatred of a particular religion since the Nuremburg Rallies, which themselves have recently featured nightly on the BBC: no news item on the pope is complete without a sinister soundtrack and archive footage of goose-stepping Nazis. Yet this hatred comes not from the old establishment right. It is primarily from the left.
 
Much of it stems from plain cowardice: The fact is that radical Islam, not Catholicism, is the big religious problem that British society faces, but most commentators are afraid of their lives, quite literally, to speak out against its tenets; and so they treat the Catholic Church as a punch bag for their repressed hostility to Islam. This was made clear in Polly Toynbee’s recent column for the Guardian where she bizarrely conflated Catholicism and Islam. Hence too Richard Dawkins’ comment that Catholicism is the world’s “second most evil religion.”
The pope is expected to praise Britain’s record of tolerance, yet as The Irish Times noted this morning: “in practice, that has been extended to Catholics only in the last century and a half.”

A new Irish language blog  by Muiris Bric, a West Kerry native who this week writes about changing times in Ireland
                     
Tháim díreach tar éis teacht thar nais ó thír glass, blasta na hÉireann tar éis trí seachtaine a chaitheamh ann agus deirim se leat go mbaineas taithneamh as. Ní raibh an ghrian ag scoltadh na gcrann gach lá, b’fhada uaidh é a chroí, ach ní chuige sin a théim ann ar aon tslí. Is breá lem’ chroí a bheith ag bháilcaireacht ar fuaid na háite agus ag tabhairt faoi ndearra an tathrú atá imithe ar an saol ó d’fágas breis agus dachad bliain ó shin. Bhí an saol go deallamh bocht an uair sin agus bhí sé deacair cúpla punt a chur le chéile chun ámharín sult a bhaint as. Is minic a bhíodh lá oibre agam anso ‘san siúd ach is minic leis ná fuaireas díolta as agus níorbh iad na daoine fhéin faoí ndearra é ach oiread mar ná raibh aon ní acu le tabhairt dom. B’shin an saol an uair sin, bhí gach éinne ag iarraidh slí bheatha éigin a bhaint amach.
 
Ach bhí rud amháin a bhí thar barr an uair sin agus bhí san ann go fluirseach agus sé sin an chomharsanacht. Bhí deich cínn de thighthe im’ bhaile seo agus ní raibh easpa cabhrach ar éinne dá mbéarfaí orthu. Is amhlaidh a bhíodh áthas ar dhaoine cabhair a thabhairt. Is cuimhin liom cúpla bobhta nuair a thárla cruacás éigin, chur m’athair stad le pé obair a bhí ar siul againn  agus seo linn chun siúil ag cabhrú.  Feirmeacha beaga a bhí ann agus bhí go leor portaig ina measc agus théadh ba, gamhanna agus uaireannta capal ar mí-chorm ann. Bhí gá le morán cabhrach chun ainmhí a thógaint as pholl portaig. Cúis gáire abea é leis, go mór mhór nuair a bhíodh an áit sleamhain agus is minic a chífeá fear ag sleamhnú isteach sa pholl agus é ansúd ar nós amadán le hais an ainmhí bocht.  Bhí na daoine an ghreanmhar an uair sin agus ní mór a thógadh sé scarta gáire a bhaint astu.
 
B’shin an t-am go raibh an focal “mitheal” go coitianta i mbéal na ndaoine. Bhíodh mitheal ann chun an mhóin a bhaint sa phortach agus ba dheas an lá oibre agus  sport a bhíodh ann. Bíodh mitheal balaithe chun an féar a shábháil agus chun coca nó cruach a dhéanamh do san chlós a bhí cois le scioból na mba. Agus bé’n mitheal deireannach ná’n ceann a bhíodh balaithe chun an t-arbhar a bhualadh i ndeire an Fhomhair. Á, ba dheas iad. Bhí compord agus sualcas ag baint leo. Théadh dólás go sólás le teas na gréine agus agus muintreas na ndaoine. Bhíodh na matáin tinn, tuirseach ach ní mhothaíodh éinne aon phian ná tinneas mar d’ibir fluirse na cainte agus scéalta gach a raibh neacheart leis an saol. Saol eile is dócha  a bhí ann ach is oth liom a rá go bhfuil an saol san imithe.
 
Níl aon mhitheal ann inniu is baol liom. Tá na daoine neamhspleach anois ag inill agus giuirléidí atá comhachtach de bharr nuatheicneolaíocht na haoise seo. Ní bhaintear móin anois agus níl ach cúpla uair a chloig le caitheamh chun an fomhar a bhaint agus a shábháil. Is cuimhin liom go dtógadh sé mí fada, reamhar na prátaí a bhaint agus íad a thabhairt abhaile i gcóir an gheimhridh. Tagann ineall bainte isteach sa ghort anois agus deintear an obair chéanna laistig de uair a chloig. Tá ré an alais thart agus, imithe leis tá ré na gcomharsanacht agus cuid mhait de’n mhuintreas chó maith.
 
Is trua é sin.                                                        

It’s difficult to be away from home when the people back there are hurting.

One year ago today I boarded a plane in Dublin, JFK bound for what I thought was going to be a year abroad. One year to garner some experience, broaden my horizons and leave an economic storm in Ireland behind me.

An article in yesterday afternoon’s Evening Echo, a local Cork evening paper, captured the phenomenon of graduate emigration in Ireland very well.

For a country so hell-bent on becoming a ‘smart economy’, Ireland’s lack of broadband coverage is simply astonishing.
 
As I write this post, in the lobby of  the O’Donovans Hotel, nestled amidst the seaside town of Clonakilty, in West Cork, I’ve just driven 5 miles from an even smaller village in order to gain internet access, meandering through country roads just to check what’s in my inbox.
 
O2, Meteor, Eircom, and the rest of the Irish telecom sector have all been unable to bring anything but dial up internet to large swathes of county Cork - and indeed Ireland.
 
Despite Ireland’s best endeavours to kick itself out of recession, and woo back the many foreign investors who jumped ship when they saw a squall on the horizon, if it doesn’t put effort into ensuring that it has an adequate and nationwide broadband network, things aren’t going to get very far.
 
In the year 2010 the internet is as valuable a commodity as they come. A business trying to export goods in the back and beyonds of County Cork could probably manage better without running water than the internet (provided, of course, that there were Ireland’s famous lush green fields to make do as toilets), yet this precise internet-dilemma is one facing many hundreds of potential and current start-ups around the country.
 
And if the the internet began as the  preserve of geeks, then of pornographers, and finally of social networking junkies, the era has finally dawned when the internet has gained widespread use and acceptance as an invaluable tool for everybody.
 
Everyone from tele-workers to research academics to high-flying enterprises are using the ‘net to do business, forge inter-continental contacts, and promote their businesses in ways which never would have been possible before the net-age.
 
Yet if that’s the case, why are we so slow to roll-out nationwide broadband, and why -  as an article in the latest Sunday Business Post noted - are our hotels charging customs an average $25 just to get on the internet? If it doesn’t beggar belief, it certainly defies logic.
 
The problem is perhaps best described as a typical case of the ‘Dublinitis’, as some Corkonians are fond of saying.  As anyone who’s ever holidayed in Ireland is probably aware, when the weather forecaster heralds some ever-scarce ‘bright weather’ for tomorrow, it means that Dublin - but not necessarily the majority rest of the country - is going to enjoy sun.
 
Likewise with broadband. Although Dublin and Ireland’s metropolitan areas enjoy fairly decent broadband coverage, there are large chunks of the country  - almost all rural - which do not, and despite the fact that these rural regions often tend to be sparsely populated, lower income, and geographically peripheral, depriving them of broadband access is a bit like kicking a man who’s down in the teeth.
 
A local Fianna Fail councilor  last week summed up the wistful attitude of residents here to the broadband problem very well.
 
With the kind of refreshing technical don’t-know-how that you only nowadays get from your grandparents, he told the Southern Star newspaper that an “information superhighway” was available just off the southern Cork coast, and although he confessed that he wasn’t “the most technologically aware” himself, he felt that , “We [Irish] should be tapping into it.”
 
The problem is that many of us can’t.
 
If the Irish government would return from their summer-long hibernation and realize that there are more pressing issues than stag hunting legislation such as not having a reliable and nationwide broadband network  then we could perhaps have some faith that things will finally turn around - as they keep promising.

I saw a poster stapled to a telephone poll announcing the Middlesex County Fair the other day, and it instantly took me back to a time in my youth and a place where the air was thick with cotton candy and horse dung as prize pigs waddled through the crowd on their way to the judging pens.

The recent stag hunting debate highlighted an increasing divide in Irish society: Dublin vs. the rest.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision that upholds a ban on all material support to terrorist organizations would likely have meant no IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland and no Irish peace process.

Cases of disappearing lakes have been reported around the world, from Chile to Russia, the phenomenon shocks onlookers and bemuses many but in the West of Ireland there is a very good explanation. In fact Ireland has its very own kind of disappearing lake, the turlough.

With discontent flying high within the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties of Ireland, there is now speculation that action will be taken in the coming months to establish a new political party.

Former First Lady Laura Bush has come out against the Arizona immigration law, pointing to the discrimination that her own Irish ancestors, named Welch, faced in their time.

Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove went at it on the "O'Reilly Factor" the other night on immigration.

• Latest news / Phoebe Prince in her own words from blog in Ireland / Click here

READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/Phoebe-Prince-was-thrown-to-the-wolves-90562519.html http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/Phoebe-Prince-was-thrown-to-the-wolves-90562519.html Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:17:49 PDT
By: FORREST HALLER

I had hoped that by now I would’ve mostly let go of this tragic story. I mean, I didn’t know any of these people, and live in another state.
 
I wasn’t ever bullied; I’m grown now, an older guy luckily retired early with money. I should be enjoying life . . . live and let live . . . mind my own concerns.
 
And yet, the more it goes on, the more I know, the more furious I become.
 
Picturing the small but pretty little Irish lass, a kind girl with the “infectious laugh,” trying to all alone find her way, to make friends, in a new environ, a cold unwelcoming environ, being surrounded, outnumbered, berated, humiliated, threatened and frightened by larger, meaner, uglier strangers in the informal gangs that took evil pleasure from turning her infectious laugh into trembling tears at every opportunity.
 
Wolves. She was thrown to the wolves.

Sorry, but the big immigration rallies taking place in several cities for immigration reform will not work.

Phoebe Prince's mother must feel like she is living in a nightmare.

• Niall O'Dowd / Phoebe Prince had sweet life in Ireland before U.S. nightmare / Click here

READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/Spring-dawns-as-the-fate-of-the-Catholic-Church-in-Ireland-hangs-in-the-balance-89305577.html http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/Spring-dawns-as-the-fate-of-the-Catholic-Church-in-Ireland-hangs-in-the-balance-89305577.html Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:24:44 PDT
By: RORY FITZGERALD

Ireland is mired deep in a “dark night of the soul.” In Catholic thought, such a "dark night" can bring purification. Might it be the same for Ireland?

As the Irish church sex abuse scandals tightened around the Vatican this past week, I couldn’t help but think how better communication could heal things. Once again, the old adage of the cover-up being worse than the crime was proven true.

When Bill O'Reilly met Maureen Dowd at the recent IrishCentral.com media awards, many who witnessed the meeting expected fireworks. After all here were the two titans of the media world, on opposite sides on most issues.

An Australian doctor has held a workshop in Dublin advising people on how to end their lives.

1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.

Last night I was sitting by the fireside in my old farmhouse in rural West Cork. The wind was rustling in the trees and I could hear the stream gurgling under the old stone bridge outside my front door.

• Special section / Saint Patrick's Day! Stories, music, videos, recipes, more! / Click here

READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/saint_patricks_day/Work-on-St-Patricks-Day-Nunsense-87719017.html http://www.irishcentral.com/saint_patricks_day/Work-on-St-Patricks-Day-Nunsense-87719017.html Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:35:31 PDT
By: MICHAEL FARRAGHER

• Special section / Saint Patrick's Day! Stories, music, videos, recipes, more! / Click here

READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/business/The-Irish-American-Media-Top-30---The-great-Irish-communicators-87646662.html http://www.irishcentral.com/business/The-Irish-American-Media-Top-30---The-great-Irish-communicators-87646662.html Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:36:33 PDT
By: NIALL O'DOWD

• Special section / The Irish American Media Top 30 profiles / Click here

READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/IrishAmerica/Touring-Irish-America-87234732.html http://www.irishcentral.com/IrishAmerica/Touring-Irish-America-87234732.html Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:33:05 PST
By: Mary Pat Kelly

 If you are reading this, I’ll bet I’ve met you.

I’m still thinking about the brown bread.

Charleston, South Carolina is everyone’s idea of the captivating U.S. South. The city draws more than four million visitors a year to sample its atmospheric evocations of everything from slave-based plantation lifestyles to stirrings of the revolution still referred to as ‘the recent unpleasantness’ (some hold that the first military action of the Civil War took place here in January 1861, when Citadel college cadets fired on a Union warship).