"My father, he was Orange and me mother, she was green" -TraditionalI couldn't let St. Paddy's Day go by without a nod to some of the Isle's recent history. Northern Ireland's violent past was, like many police actions (wars), all at once the news of the world even as images from Belfast were being supressed.
On a side note, I find it an unfortunate literary coincidence that the term "assonance" -- the alliterative rhyming of words based on their sharing the same vowel and/or consonant sounds -- makes Belfast and Beirut ideal poetic companions.
The first Police album I ever purchased -- yes, a vinyl album -- was 1981's "Ghost in the Machine". Despite the first single released in the United Kingdom, Invisible Sun, reaching number 2 on the charts, the BBC banned the video because of its subject matter -- the depiction of the conflict in Northern Ireland -- demonstrating another sad instance of the media acting as government's propaganda arm to choke the release of information.
Here's the video.
