Michael McDowell

Disclaimer – there are no political, social, cultural, electoral insights in this post. What I am about to share might alienate many people, confuse more and send others reaching for a strait jacket to restrain me.

I think I fancy Michael McDowell.

The incidents of the last few days has crystallised this for me (check out Sarah Carey and Potato) all of whom provide proper political analysis and debunking (Dossing) of the McDowell-Bruton standoff.

Minister McDowell, while old enough to be my father, is not as old as my father (always a good thing). He is married and has teenage children. He is not as classically handsome as say, Matthew McConaughey, but for some unfathomable reason, I kinda fancy him.
Perhaps this inexplicable springing of wishful ardour is the result of days of exam study punctuated with news clips of the quivering McDowell, resplendent in conservative suits. Maybe the chemical imbalances which have sustained my subacutely unstable condition to date have finally tipped over into chaos, resulting in wanton fancying of any man who appears on the SixOne (I’m immune to Brian Dobson’s sombre charms at this stage). It could be that the only men I see in real life (outside the News) are sleep deprived doctors who are too short for me or men who are sick (literally, not figuratively – or maybe both).

I never understood the outpouring of female attraction for Donald Rumsfeld after 9/11. He’s just too old.

But My Darling McDowell (pass the drugs, quick) is easy to imagine as an impassioned young L&H debater, charming the socks of the ladies and chopping the tops off the opposition’s points (traitor – how you can forget the Colours?).

And more importantly he wears wire rimmed glasses. While that appears rather low down the checklist for the hunky, bodice-ripper alpha male hero, it works on him (or for me). I like my law orderly and my order lawly. I like the odd bit of name calling and political rambunctiousness. I like men who know their way around a ladder. I like men who win arguments. I like men who don’t like taxes (but he could improve on that one). I like men who don’t like Sinn Fein. I like men who like capitalism.

And there is a simmering passion under the staid politician appearance that seems ready to burst at any minute into a motor-biking rebel who will spout off some Edmund Burke while turning a particularly tight Dublin 6 bend at high speed.

I have some friends who canvassed for McDowell in the last election, and can see myself trekking the muddy byways of South Dublin in an attempt to return McDowell to the Dail (that is if the barring order is rescinded by then).

I only hope that I do not develop full blown erotomania. And that when my hormones re-equilibrate I can also see myself going back to my favourite Simon Coveney crush (if only Fine Gael were like they were in the old days) or moving into the stranger terrority of Gordon Brown (he looked very nice today with his little lunch budget box and blue tie). Even though I don’t like him as much as do as Tony Blair (This is not a clash between civilisations, it is a clash about civilisation.)

My dear readers, as I’m sure you will agree that this blogger needs a reality check more urgently than a severe asthmatic needs oxygen.

Leonard Cohen once sang “There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love”, but as bitter experience has taught me, crushes pass, 50something barristers-turned-arrogant-but-delightfully-so-justice-ministers lose their sex appeal, and after many tubs of Ben and Jerrys, I will return to a nearly normal and practically sane woman.
And who knows, I might even find a nice boy to settle down with in Dublin 6 and vote for Michael.


Updated reason to fancy McDowell (this could on for quite a while, the drugs do take a while to kick in) is covered excellently in this Slugger post on that McD speech on journalism.