{"id":18428,"date":"2025-08-23T13:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T13:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/18428\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T13:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T13:44:09","slug":"liam-fay-showbiz-delusions-of-grandeur-are-turning-this-election-into-a-national-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/18428\/","title":{"rendered":"Liam Fay: Showbiz delusions of grandeur are turning this election into a national joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nCelebrity claptrap isn\u2019t the only toxin corroding public esteem for the campaign. Conventional mainstream politics has hardly been covering itself in glory either\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Race for the \u00c1ras: Conor McGregor and Michael Flatley\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/8c78c0db-7ce8-47b5-a9d9-a5daf743dbe9.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Race for the \u00c1ras: Conor McGregor and Michael Flatley<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Politics is an ugly business for show-people. Celebrities are a famously thin-skinned bunch, usually characterised by an insatiable appetite for the approval of audiences and the adoration of strangers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">More often than not, therefore, celebs who enter the political fray tend to do so in the belief that their headlong plunge into public affairs will be extensively lauded and applauded. Stars are celestial beings, after all, and mere mortals should always genuflect when gods deign to walk among us, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celebrity claptrap isn\u2019t the only toxin corroding public esteem for the campaign. Conventional mainstream politics has hardly been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[1921,4003,18,117,19,17,556,4778,2519],"class_list":{"0":"post-18428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-catherine-connolly","9":"tag-conor-mcgregor","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mairead-mcguinness","15":"tag-michael-flatley","16":"tag-review-magazine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}