Life

Jake O'Kane: Finally we know Covid isn't the China virus but the Taig plague

Edwin lives in a simpler time when if the police mistook you for a Catholic and pulled you over, they immediately apologised for the inconvenience upon discovering they attended the same Orange lodge as you

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

In the above image I’m dressed as an Orangeman, there's a shamrock on the Covid virus and a ruler on my forehead to measure how close together my eyes are. Picture by @bytemarx1
In the above image I’m dressed as an Orangeman, there's a shamrock on the Covid virus and a ruler on my forehead to measure how close together my eyes are. Picture by @bytemarx1 In the above image I’m dressed as an Orangeman, there's a shamrock on the Covid virus and a ruler on my forehead to measure how close together my eyes are. Picture by @bytemarx1

THE image above was created by an artist friend who goes by the pseudonym @bytemarx1 and is his visual commentary on the Edwin Poots fiasco.

In the image, I’m the guy dressed as an Orangeman – that, in itself, should be enough to make some heads pop. If you look closer, you’ll see a shamrock on the Covid virus along with a ruler on my forehead to measure how close together my eyes are. If you know, you know; if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.

Some argued Edwin’s comments demonstrate a sectarian mindset; I believe this is wrong, as it presumes the existence of a functioning mind. I suspect if Edwin were to have an original thought, it would die of loneliness. No; very little happens within his cavernous cranium, and what activity there is just about keeps him upright and breathing.

The linking of unsanitary behaviour and Catholics has a long lineage. When Catholics had the impertinence to demand equality in housing in the 1960s, some argued new houses would be wasted on them as they’d store coal in their baths. I wonder what Edwin would think of the O’Kane household where we have not one, but three bathrooms, and not a lump of coal or pig stored in any of them.

Whenever Edwin appears on television, I’ve been struck by a distinct vacancy in his gaze; the phrase, ‘lights on but nobody home’ jumps to mind. He looks like the sort of boy who was devastated when, at 29, he found out the truth about Santa.

Considering Sinn Féin’s recent history of refusing to apologise, it was ludicrous they chided Edwin for following their example. Like them, he views apologising as a sign of weakness and decided instead to clarify his comments – not a wise move.

He began by explaining that when stating Covid infections were rising in the "other community", he wasn’t linking that to Catholics. As we all know, ‘the other community’ in Northern Ireland often means the Inuit. He went on to blame the press for twisting what he’d said by accurately reporting what he’d said.

In desperation, he followed that by stopping short of claiming some of his best friends were Catholics, instead asserting he "cherished his Catholic neighbours and friends". 

If you’re like me and find public humiliation excruciating, you were probably praying someone would stage an intervention and save Edwin from himself. This didn’t occur and, grasping at straws, he finally suggested his comment couldn’t be viewed as sectarian as the leadership of Sinn Féin don’t attend church.

The validity of this claim at least cannot be questioned. It’s common knowledge in Mid Ulster that the Sinn Féin leadership attend devil-worship ceremonies where they dance naked around bonfires while drinking the blood of Protestant virgins.

At least we have an insight as to why Edwin would see nothing wrong in writing to the attorney general to complain after his son was convicted of driving without due care and attention. Edwin lives in a simpler time when if the police mistook you for a Catholic and pulled you over, they immediately apologised for the inconvenience upon discovering they attended the same Orange lodge as you.

You can understand then why he’d feel irked at the injustice of his son being held to account for driving without due care and attention on what, after all, is Her Majesty’s highway, while possibly on his way to do an honest day’s work in his father’s constituency office. A job the young man gained after a rigorous selection process which saw him win out over a lengthy list of other highly qualified candidates.

With Edwin assailed from all sides, at least one person was satisfied with his ‘clarifications’: his party leader, Arlene Foster. Leaping to defend the indefensible, she argued there was nothing to see, advising us all to move on, draw a line under the incident, and stop presuming she’d the power to do anything.

Help also inadvertently arrived via party colleague, Sammy Wilson, who shifted the spotlight of idiocy from Edwin by playing down the severity of Covid and denouncing the measures brought in to suppress it.

Finally, we now know that Covid isn’t the ‘China virus’ as argued by Trump, but instead a ‘Taig plague’. In Edwin’s world, the Covid R number stands for ‘republican’, and everyone knows they reproduce at a rate of 6:1.