Gerry Adams’ White House ‘controversy’: “Quite apart from being bumptious, paranoid and absurdly self-pitying…”

In the Irish News Newton Emerson highlights the unintended consequences of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’ intemperate outburst following his recent misunderstanding with security at the White House.  From the Irish News

GERRY Adams could have been pragmatic and diplomatic about being locked out of President Obama’s St Patrick’s Day reception and simply laughed it off.

It is all too believable that the White House has the same hapless jobsworths in its security hut as everywhere else – and that has since been the US Secret Service’s official explanation.

But instead, Adams has alleged splits inside the US government, a Washington conspiracy against his party and an attempt by America’s first black president to send the TD for Louth to “the back of the bus”.

Quite apart from being bumptious, paranoid and absurdly self-pitying, this has caused people to ask if Adams and the White House really have fallen out – a scenario in which the White House will never appear to be the loser. [added emphasis]

Indeed they have asked.  [We’re not taking any more licks for Gerry! – Ed].  And it was nice to see in the RTÉ report that the Sinn Féin deputy president, Mary Lou McDonald, was able to make her way from her front seat on the bus to stand beside Gerry Adams as he complained to the media about his seating arrangements…

Adding to the general sense of a lack of self-awareness on the part of the Sinn Féin president, as ‘evidence’ of this apparent anti-Sinn Féin bias by “some within the US administration” [an “unwelcome development”? – Ed], Gerry Adams, in a later statement, complained about the “constant additional security processes and delays” faced by Sinn Féin representatives visiting the US.

He chose, as a specific example, the delays experienced by Sinn Féin TD, Martin Ferris, on his trip to Boston.

“The constant additional security processes and delays which Sinn Féin representatives are regularly subject to has long been a cause of concern. We have raised it privately in the past.

“Yesterday my colleague Martin Ferris was delayed getting on his flight to Boston and when he eventually arrived on a later flight he was held for several hours.

Whodathunkit!  US Immigration, and possibly Homeland Security, the FBI et al, paid particular attention to the travel arrangements of a convicted arms-smuggler – and more recently associate of armed robbers and Garda killers – when he decided to visit the same US city in which the Provisional IRA procured the 7 tonnes of weaponry – that he was caught red-handed attempting to smuggle – from notorious Boston gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger.

[Perhaps one of those potential US “investors and key political players” should have a quiet word with Martin McGuinness while he’s sitting comfortably… – Ed]  Ah, that’s different.  [Why? – Ed]  He’s Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland).  [Partitionist! – Ed]  Indeed.

Pete Baker