‘Dublin blues … times two’

    

Eskimo Supreme on YouTube.

What is going on at Freemasons’ Hall in Dublin?!

Two headaches stemming from media shoots inside the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in one week? The first, I don’t believe, is a problem, but this second one currently making headlines surely has to result in someone in the business office losing his job.

Last Friday, the political commentator Tucker Carlson (“Tucker Qatarlson” to some of us) published his nearly hour-long interview with famed mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor. Found liable for sexual assault in civil court there last year, McGregor announced his bid for Ireland’s presidency last month. This interview was shot inside Freemasons’ Hall. In the background a pipe organ, decorated with the Square and Compasses, is seen.

Irish Times

Tucker Carlson and Conor McGregor
inside the Grand Lodge Room.

Contrary to many squeals on the web, this in no way equals any Irish Masonic endorsement of either McGregor or Carlson. It is common for Masonic premises to be leased to production companies for filming. You might be surprised at how many Masonic buildings, whether opulent or humble, are the locations in film and television projects. It’s a fairly easy way for the proprietors of the buildings to generate revenue to keep the lights on.

But you have to know what you’re doing.

Grand Lodge says it wasn’t apprised of McGregor’s involvement until an hour before the cameras were turned on. They ought to have canceled the contract before that. A lease agreement of the premises should include the exact purposes for the use of the property. When it finally became known that McGregor was to be involved, the building trustees or business manager or whoever is in charge should have evicted the production. Now they’re in the lose-lose situation where they have bad press and internal disharmony over having Carlson, McGregor, and politics inside the building, and the couple thousand euros income to be given to charity.

The second, and far more offensive, shoot is simply incomprehensible.

Something named Eskimo Supreme, the rap persona of one Alexander Sheehan, of Dublin, filmed a music video in Freemasons’ Hall. Yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph reported:

Featuring Irish rapper Eskimo Supreme (Alex Sheeran) with his new single “Spit in it!”, the video opens inside the Freemasons’ Hall in Molesworth Street.

Actors dressed as dissident republicans in balaclavas and combat gear are imprisoned behind wire in the stunning Victorian room.

They yell: “Let us out you British b ****** s. Let us out you British c***. We are political prisoners and we demand political status.”

A woman playing the Queen sits on a throne at the top of the room. The prisoners are then released one by one to spit on her. After spitting, they are shot dead by her bearskin soldier guards.

An explainer below the video states that the British Government has “unlocked a freak scientific discovery whereby the saliva of Irish dissident republicans morphs a Royal family member into a dragon when their saliva encounters (royalty) enough times.”

It adds: “Theorists believe that the British Government wanted to create this royal dragon to use as a weapon of war.”

At the end of the video, the Queen is transformed into a dragon and is seen flying over London.

Eskimo Supreme is signed to Greenback Records, which was co-founded by Conor McGregor.

While I’ve never subscribed to the ugly stereotypes painted on the Irish, I don’t think instantly of prim propriety either. What comes to mind immediately are Wilde, Joyce, The Ginger Man, Black 47, and the I.R.A. As a Freemason, I would hope the business side of Freemasons’ Hall could operate with more care, and with management of the leasees.

It’s a real shame. The brethren there are less than two months from celebrating the tricentenary of their Grand Lodge. I wish the pall over the fraternity from these mistakes will dissipate well before then.

My thanks to MW Cameron Bailey on Emeth for the alert to the rap flap.

     

‘Masonic essay contest’

    

MW Cameron M. Bailey

I’ll be engaged in other editorial deadlines through the end of the month so, unless something either very good or very bad arises, I’ll conclude July with today’s news of a writing contest.

On his Substack page, MW Cameron Bailey, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Washington, calls for papers on Masonic topics, and there is prize money to be won!

Check out the criteria and other specifics here. (No, I won’t enter the contest.)

     

‘Bailey’s boycott’

    

Cameron M. Bailey

The Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the State of Washington published a personal statement Sunday saying he believes it is necessary for grand lodges to withdraw fraternal recognition now from those few remaining jurisdictions that still have not established relations with their Prince Hall Affiliated neighbors.

Writing on Substack, Cameron Bailey, in an essay titled “Prince Hall Recognition: It Is Well Past Time,” says:

By recognizing as legitimate those jurisdictions that refuse to recognize their Prince Hall counterparts, the Grand Lodge of Washington, through its silence, gives its consent to an ongoing moral wrong. It stands silent as a discrimination that should have been done away with in 1897 continues in a small handful of states.

This was wrong in 1897, it is wrong today, and if we don’t do something about it, it will be wrong next year as well.

It is well past time that the Jurisdictions that do recognize their Prince Hall counterparts take positive action standing up for that which is good and right and moral.

This is no sudden outburst from the Grand Master. His opinion has been known for a long time. His reference to 1897 is a recollection of how his Grand Lodge made the extraordinary move to close the racial divide by recognizing PHA Freemasonry. At that time, the other grand lodges in the United States beat Washington into submission by withholding their recognition of that jurisdiction.

Washington tried it again in 1990, and that time the diplomacy worked, sparking the revolution that has spread across the country to all but six jurisdictions in the South.

My thoughts on this may be primitive, so please be patient. First, I don’t know that instigating less recognition is the best way to create more recognition. Maybe it would be. I do not know. Second, recognition between two parties must be mutual. I can’t say for a fact that the PHA grand lodges affected today even want the friendship of these now rogue southern grand jurisdictions. Maybe one or more or all would choose to establish mutual relations. I don’t know. (I’m one of the few who admits publicly that I don’t know things. My motto, “I drink and I don’t know things,” was co-opted and turned upside down by that dumb TV show.) Thirdly, it’s possible that progress is being made already in one or more of these southern states—say it with me: I don’t know—and an audacious provocation like this might be counterproductive.

Should make for lively conversation at the Conference of Grand Masters next February!