It Occurs to Me: Dolly’s parting

You may have seen a shot of Donald Trump and the late Dolly Parton together on social media, but rest assured, it’s a fake.

Although Dolly kept politics out of her pronouncements, she and Trump were like chalk and cheese.

They were both 80, one was born with nothing, one was born with everything. One lived a life defined by love, kindness and generosity. One built his life around hate, revenge and grievance.

One could have become a billionaire but choose to give millions away.

One has amassed enormous wealth while ordinary people struggle.

One is adored. One is abhorred.

One is mourned around the world. The other’s passing will be celebrated.

“I knew her a little bit,” Trump boasted about Dolly on Glenn Beck’s radio show (Beck is a Trumpite).

“She really liked me, I will tell you!”

Beck’s response was to laugh out loud.

Laughter was a big part of Dolly’s life, and I loved her self-deprecating humour.

“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb — and I’m not blonde either.”

“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.”

“It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap.

“It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.”

“I’m very real where it counts, and that’s inside.”

“I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, as a writer, as a professional, as a human being. A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond.”

“People say, ‘You always look so happy.’ I say, ‘That’s because of the Botox.’ “I’m a self-made woman and I have the doctor’s bills to prove it.”

On her secret for a lasting marriage

“I stay gone…He’s a good guy; we know each other so well. I know every line in his face, and he knows every hair in my wig.”

Ní fheicfimid a leithéid arís go deo.

Remembering the footballing priest

I loved Pat McGarty’s story in the Indo about former Cavan footballer Bill Doonan, who served as a British Army radio operator in Italy during the second world war.

During the 1943 All-Ireland Final between Cavan and Roscommon, Bill went missing from his unit near Monte Cassino in Southern Italy.

Fearing he’d been killed in the fierce battle, his comrades searched for him, only to find him up a tree, using the army wireless to tune into the faint signals from Croke Park! Peter Paul Galligan played that day, but Cavan lost.

Bill, however, survived the war, and won two All-Ireland’s in 19747 and 1948. I was reminded of another radio story which happened two years later, and again involved Peter Paul, who was a priest.

Father Peter Paul Galligan, died in Sydney, Australia, in July 2004, where he had been a missionary priest since 1946. He was a member of the Cavan minor team that retained the All Ireland minor crown in 1938.

Having played for St Patrick’s College, Cavan MacRory Cup team, he then went on to St. Mary’s College, Carlow to study for the priesthood.

During this period of his life, Peter Paul, threw in his lot with the then famous Cornafean club, where he lined out alongside such greats as Big Tom O’Reilly, Seamus Maguire and Mick Dinneny.

During his time at Cornafean he won three senior championship medals and was rewarded with recognition by the county team when he was selected to play at left back. He quickly claimed the position as his own and won six Ulster championship medals with Cavan.

A player noted for producing his best performances on the big stage, Peter Paul will be remembered for his display against Roscommon in the 1943 All Ireland final before 68,000 fans when he held Roscommon’s star forward Derry McDermott scoreless.

Once again in 1945, Peter Paul was back in Croke Park with Cavan where they met Cork.

On this occasion, he had the unenviable task of marking dual star, Jack Lynch (future Taoiseach), where his display on that occasion earned him ‘man of the match’. Sadly, his displays in 1943 and 1945 did not win him an All-Ireland medal.

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During the 1945 final, legend has it that in the area of Cavan where my father grew up, one family had a wireless around which half a parish congregated on All-Ireland day.

On this memorable occasion, when Cavan were getting it tight - a cousin of my grandfather took great umbrage at what he considered an implicit anti-Galligan bias on the part of Michael O'Hehir who hadn’t mentioned Peter Paul too often, and shouted at the radio, " Come out of that wee box, you cowardly Clare huer ya, and say it to his people straight!"

Off the field, Peter Paul was a warm, affable man, not averse to a bit of craic, and loved to tell of his encounter with a Cavan man in Sydney, some fifty years after his All-Ireland runner-up games.

Says your man: “I have you now, father, you’re the priest who played in two All-Ireland Finals and won none! Good luck!”

Immigrants: the new targets

In June, during the Belfast riots, the Belfast Telegraph headline was stark: “Far-right Irish thugs spent night drinking with UDA in Belfast loyalist bar

“Tricolour waving anti-immigrant agitators from Dublin treated like ‘heroes’ after day of violence.”

Isn’t it fascinating how bigots find bedfellows in what were once opposite camps?

There has long been an extremist rump in Loyalism which has needed ‘another crowd’ to hate.

Swap immigrants for Catholics and you get the picture. Not that the tricolour waving hoods would know of that history…you can’t fix stupid.

Then, we had the situation after those riots when members of a US “right-wing extremist” group toured Belfast and many were asking why they were granted visas to visit the UK?

Enrique Tarrio and Barry Ramey, members of the ‘Proud Boys’, travelled to Northern Ireland and met with various right-wing, anti-Muslim and loyalist activists.

In September 2023, US District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Tarrio to 22 years in federal prison. This was the longest sentence handed down to any individual in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.

On his first day back in office on January 20, 2025, Trump issued a full presidential pardon to Tarrio, alongside commutations and pardons for more than 1,500 other January 6 defendants.

Tarrio was released from a federal facility in Louisiana on January 21, 2025. That was the first obscenity. The second is that he can get a visa to travel. Imagine me and a few other colleagues trying to get into the US having criticised Trump for years? Not that it bothers me. I’ll wait until it’s a democracy again. I’ll be waiting.

Then we have Trump’s friend Elon Musk amplifying calls for protest across Britain from anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson, writing to his 240 million followers on X: "Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change."

He also boosted anti-immigration posts and messages from Rupert Lowe, leader of the fringe hard-right party Restore Britain, extending his reach to millions of users on the platform.

Researchers from the nonprofit tech watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reported that the trio's posts about Belfast collectively garnered more than 115 million views across their accounts, with Musk accounting for 55 percent of the total.

"Musk's amplification has been instrumental," contributing 64 million views, CCDH said in a report.

"As the owner of X and its most followed user, Musk has unparalleled power to shape what people see online. With that power comes responsibility for the content and conduct his platform promotes," said Imran Ahmed, CCDH's founder and chief executive.

A vowel movement?

I’d like to thank my old college classmate Denis McCaffrey for this cracker. Back then, we used the acronym HOMES to remember the Great Lakes - Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. Now that Trump has changed (Lake) Ontario to America, he’s made a proper HAMES of it! The other appropriate acronym is SHAME.