Smear campaigns are an old and deadly social poison, a bleak, soulless, ethics-free 'strategy' championed by the wannabe sub-Steve Bannons of the era. Photograph: Conor O'Mearain/ PA Wire
It’s time to bury Seamus Brennan’s famous analogy for the high-stakes political face-off. It took Jim Gavin’s hapless foray into the arena to nail the idea that senior hurling – or football in Gavin’s case – is any preparation for the modern political trenches.
The only surprise is that some bought into the idea in the first place.
It’s over three quarters of a century since senior hurler Jack Lynch became the poster child for the GAA celebrity-to-candidate route, a time when “a complete lack of a political pedigree was compensated for by having won six All-Ireland hurling and football medals,” as professor of politics at Dublin City University, Donnacha Ó Beacháin, put it.
But the short version of the story rarely includes the boring detail where Lynch, a practising barrister, had the humility to de
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