EVERY SATURDAY MORNING we take a look at all the best comments left on the site by our readers over the past seven days.
This week there was a lot of talk about the tragedy in Charleville, gay groups marching with a banner in the New York St Patrick’s Day parade for the first time, and the death of US comedian Joan Rivers.
So here are the standout comments from the week that was.
The 5 most popular comments this week
1. Understandably, the tragedy in Charleville on Thursday provoked a lot of comment and reaction. Ben Redline had the most popular comment this week with 4,558 thumbs up:
‘Children’ and ‘Stabbing’ these words should not be in the same sentence. What’s wrong with this world?
2. Sexist or just a bit of a laugh? Today FM’s bra ad for their Dermot and Dave show split opinion – but with 2,182 green thumbs, a lot of readers clearly agreed with Ted Carroll‘s assessment:
Some people are willing to go a long way out of their normal day to get offended by the stupidest things.
3. On the Charleville case again, Ross O’Callaghan was one of a number of readers who asked for the comments to be closed. He got 2,043 thumbs up:
Any chance the comments section can be closed ? Think a forum as the story is unfolding is opening the door to trolls..RIP to the young souls and my thoughts to the family and involved
4. Rosemary Clarke got 1,782 thumbs up for this moving comment about her own experience, following the news that two Irishmen drowned in Crete.
Such sad news. :-( My own brother died in a drowning accident in Crete 10 years ago. To hear of this news just breaks my heart. I know exactly what the poor families are going through. :-( Its hard enough to lose someone you love but when its in a foreign country, it makes it a million times worse. My thoughts and prayers are with their families. R.I.P.
5. Rounding out the top 5 this week was this comment from Niall Connolly which got 1,770 thumbs up in response to another commenter who questioned whether the public was outraged about the death of US journalist Steven Sotloff because he was white and spoke English.
No monkey we are outraged that a human being is being beheaded by inhuman animals.
The top 5 articles which received the most comments this week
1. What is it like to be an atheist in Ireland? (485 comments)
2. US journalist Steven Sotloff ‘beheaded by Islamic State’ in newly released video (385 comments)
3. Gay group to march in New York St Patrick’s Day parade for the first time (281 comments)
4. Two American fighter jets flew over Dublin today – and it was very VERY LOUD (272 comments)
5. Point of no return? EU leaders send strong warnings to Russia over Ukraine (219 comments)
The big issue
The beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff by Islamic State militants provoked a massive response from readers. Ed Brady commented on the religious nature of the killing:
Doing anything like this in the name of religion is truly disgusting. In my opinion, to assert that this kind of butchery is based on religious values is as ridiculous as me killing my neighbour because I believe in aliens. I’m an atheist but you see my point….
Ted Hagan wrote about what Sotloff must have gone through:
Outraged that he was an innocent civilian prisoner who must have been filled with dread for weeks with the knowledge that he faced beheading and that he had to watch a colleague died an awful death/ And outraged, I hope, because we are human His poor mother I hope some day they get the killers
Puns and jokes of the week
Leo Varadkar took the plunge on Tuesday and completed his Ice Bucket Challenge. He was the first Minister to do so but readers had other ideas about who they wanted to see. NegativeBird suggested Phil Hogan but got this response from Kerry Blake:
In fairness Hogan nominated every Irish citizen for the water challenge…..
Some of our favourite comments
During the week, a print ad for Today FM’s new lunchtime show caused offence with many people calling it out using the hashtag #everydaysexism.
Ron North, however, believes the furore highlights a different problem.
This is an excellent example of the echo chamber effect of twitter.
People with similar beliefs cluster together and dissenters are excluded from the group by being un-followed.
With nobody to call them out on their bull$h1t and partly through fear of exclusion from the group, the group members then repeat and amplify each others beliefs to point where what they end up believing is both extreme and ludicrous.
Teenager Ben Robinson was playing an U-15s school rugby game when he suffered a concussion. Before he recovered, he was sent back on to resume playing. He was knocked out again and died from what is called Second Impact Syndrome. His parents spoke to Seán O’Rourke during the week about how they have been campaigning to get sports clubs to behave more appropriately when players get knocked out. Ahippo made some good points.
The physics of rugby has changed so much in the recent past but the laws and attitudes have not kept up. People’s bodies are bigger, heavier, more dense and they move faster so when they collide the forces are much greater. Plus there is this whole school of physical dominance brought into the game by England which says steamroller your opponent rather than run around him. And unfortunately it means more concussive collisions. IRFU has to do more to make sure all coaches and all clubs and schools take concussion seriously. It is not manly to be dead.
This was a nice one. On an article about how to find lost property at Electric Picnic, Everlast McCarthy posed the question:
How does one see about getting back their dignity?
However Carol Fingleton had this story about actually getting her bag back at the festival, to widespread cheers:
An extremely kind soul returned my lost bag on Saturday afternoon after I lost it Friday night, the guards on site went to great rounds to contact me so my bag and I could reunite. As I was walking out of the office the line of people (who had also lost something) cheered! Faith in humanity affirmed.
When is the right time to tell a child about your sexuality? That was the question posed by Christine Allen last weekend after a babysitting session with her niece. Grace Keogh told of her inquisitive son.
My son is 6 and has recently started asking and obviously thinking about different kinds of relationships and families. I just explained that everyone and every family is different, I think the fact that I’m a single parent myself really helped him to just accept as fact that there is no “normal” when it comes to families, that some have only a mammy/daddy and some have two mammys / daddys etc. I just told him that love is love and it doesn’t matter whether it’s between a boy and girl or a boy and boy, after talking about all this he was quiet for a minute and I could practically see the cogs turning in his mind and then he just said “oh, ok, I get it now” and that was that! Kids are amazing, I only wish more adults could be as accepting!!
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say