Condoleesa Rice and Royal Dublin Golf Club

Condoleesa Rice, formerly Secretary of State (Foreign Minister) in the Bush
regime, played golf at Royal Dublin Golf Club on Bull Island this week.
Currently, she is Professor of Political Science at Stanford.

Her golf round and visit was made as a private citizen. That confers a
certain hilarity on the reported comment of a spokesman for the golf club
reported in the Irish Independent “They were very pleased that she chose to
play there”. The deep irony of that nauseating hypocritical comment is that
this is a male only club. It is inaccurate to call them men because real
men don’t discriminate against women. They have a version of golf called
women’s golf. The holes are bigger (no joking). The clubs have bigger
bosses and heads. The balls are smaller – only real men have big balls.
Remember the old British small balls – replaced by US bigger balls in the
1960s as I remember.
.
I was interviewed for membership in Dollymount and they certainly failed
the interview. Two “boys” talked to me – not impressive people to the
extent that they had failed my side of the interview in about 5 minutes. I
only stayed for the duration in deference and respect towards the guys who
proposed and nominated me. Walking away, it was clear that Groucho Marx
certainly was the main man about that club. They wanted to know my attitude
to women only golf clubs and started to tell me about women’s golf rather
than men’s golf. That there were women only golf clubs in the US. I told
them that Portmarnock and Royal Dublin were an anachronism and that men
would die out without women. I had no interest in the politics of golf
clubs. They have a magnificent site on public land on Bull Island. One guy
is I believe a fish market trader – I played on a rugby team with Steve
Bell a Leeds fish market man and second row giant who spoke Yorkshire
dialect. He would put the boy in Dollymount to shame. Mr Dollymount was
dressed up in a blazer and tie and looked like a secondary school boy from
a private school with his old face washed. Whatever about the fish dealer,
I was surprised by the other man who nodded like an automaton – he is
registered in Dublin as a college educated professional. Clearly, the
liberal arts are a foreign concept in that temple of male assertiveness and
righteousness. I was quite angry parting from them –in fact bloody angry! I
should have had more sense than to be there at all. – I refer you to my
reliance on the women in my life on this site.

These guys would probably deny woman the vote. Bring back the golfragettes
to chain themselves to the car park railings at Dollymount.

Professor Rice should not have played golf at such a club. She should have
shown solidarity and good judgement by going elsewhere.

Mr Justice Fennelly of the Supreme Court issued a minority judgement in the
Portmarnock licence case. I agree with him. I think that Justice Adrian
Hardiman was simply in error on that occasion.