Welcome to ‘The Paddysucker Proxy’

[barryqwalsh]

The movie that runs on a loop in Official Ireland might be called The Story of O. Or perhaps The Paddysucker Proxy, after the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy. Tim Robbins plays a guy who works in the mail room of a big corporation. He keeps trying to get the men in suits to look at his great new design idea. When they finally agree to see it, it is a piece of paper with nothing on it except a large O. (It is actually the prototype for the hula-hoop.)

The Paddysucker Proxy would have a similar scene. The men in suits are panicking about the latest threatened scandal. What shall we do – hold another inquiry? And a big lunk of a naively enthusiastic junior clerk seizes his chance and comes up to them with his prototype answer for all Irish scandals: a sheet of paper with a big O on it. The geometry of the Irish scandal is the perfect circle. We could save ourselves a lot of fuss and a golden avalanche of legal fees. Every time the system is forced to look like it cares about the bad smell in the room, the State just issues a report with a new title on the front, a back cover and nothing in between except a page with a circle on it. We can tell already that’s what any proper report on the Siteserv affair would amount to.


Fintan O Toole Welcome to The Paddysucker Proxy

 

[Sonny Clark]

The movie that runs on a loop in Official Ireland might be called The Story of O. Or perhaps The Paddysucker Proxy, after the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy. Tim Robbins plays a guy who works in the mail room of a big corporation. He keeps trying to get the men in suits to look at his great new design idea. When they finally agree to see it, it is a piece of paper with nothing on it except a large O. (It is actually the prototype for the hula-hoop.)

The Paddysucker Proxy would have a similar scene. The men in suits are panicking about the latest threatened scandal. What shall we do – hold another inquiry? And a big lunk of a naively enthusiastic junior clerk seizes his chance and comes up to them with his prototype answer for all Irish scandals: a sheet of paper with a big O on it. The geometry of the Irish scandal is the perfect circle. We could save ourselves a lot of fuss and a golden avalanche of legal fees. Every time the system is forced to look like it cares about the bad smell in the room, the State just issues a report with a new title on the front, a back cover and nothing in between except a page with a circle on it. We can tell already that’s what any proper report on the Siteserv affair would amount to.


Fintan O Toole Welcome to The Paddysucker Proxy

You forgot to include the punch line ... or did I miss it?