They were at it again last week. The Dublin media was dictating the agendas, sporting and political, savaging the characters of men, good and true, whose only fault was to hail from beyond the pale. We shall come to the travails of Paul Galvin soon, but first, the case of one Enda Kenny.

Throughout the week, the refrain from his supporters was constant. Attacks on his character have long emanated from the Dublin media. Elements of the said media are unhappy that a bogman is leading Fine Gael. This dastardly plot by the Metropolitans was given further credence by the number of city slickers togged out against Enda. Some Kenny supporters were reported as portraying the battle for the party as one between the posh urban "boarding school" crowd and the rural "vocational school" people.

In salubrious enclaves of Dublin 4, it was whispered, media types and posh Blueshirts plotted against Kenny, whose only crime was to recognise that eating one's dinner in the middle of the day did not render the diner a Neanderthal man. Once more, the true Gael was being undermined by urbanites portraying themselves as the epitome of sophistication.

The Dublin media has a lot to answer for. Through the ages, whenever a chieftain of one of the tribes from beyond the pale is cut down in his prime, fingers immediately hone in on the Dublin media.

Where once blatant injustices were perpetrated by representatives of the crown, now it is the Dublin media who do the dirty work. It matters not a whit that most of the despised scribes are themselves products of the country. Too long a dweller in Dublin has made a stone of their hearts.

Look at their nefarious handiwork even in recent days. Willie O'Dea, who was deposed last February over a little legal matter, recently gave vent to his anger at The Irish Times, the preferred organ of Dublin 4.

"If you're not a sort of liberal, sort of slightly left Dublin 4 type, intellectual… pseudo intellectual, speaking with the right type of accent, then you're some sort of troglodyte up from the country whose views don't deserve to be given any serious consideration," he told a local Limerick newspaper.

That explains why he had to resign. It had nothing to do with swearing a false affidavit.

Poor Ivor Callaly suffered a similar fate. Once the media realised that he had surrendered his soul to the wilds of West Cork, he was politically a dead man walking. They used the expenses he claimed for the 500-mile round trip to Dublin as an excuse to target him. Another victim, another injustice.

In the realm of business, Sean Quinn's travails over the last few months have also largely been ascribed to the Dublin media. Once more, they attempted to impose their pseudo-sophisticated values on the true Gael.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, grown-ups know that all of this tripe is just handy fodder when a little diversion is required. If a well-regarded tribune of a tribe is laid low, there must be somebody else to blame. Blind loyalty demands no less. The tribal wagons are circled, the true enemy identified. And who better to blame than the messenger, particularly if the messenger can be dehumanised by portraying him or her as the product of another world, up there in the metropolis where decency and tradition have been polluted beyond recognition.

It's a cop-out, and you might reasonably expect that the man and woman in the street would know better, even if they are reeling from the blow delivered to a fallen representative of their tribe. Any analysis beyond the superficial should awaken adults to the fact that blind loyalty can lead down the silliest of cul de sacs. All of which brings us to Paul Galvin, the exception which proves the rule. Mr Galvin really is being hounded from the game of Gaelic football by the Dublin media. This is a truism known to all Kerry folk. Last week, he was involved in a minor altercation in a match in which he mistakenly placed his finger in the mouth of Cork player Eoin Cadogan.

It is plainly obvious that Galvin intended to suck his own thumb, but in a vacant moment absently placed his index finger into Cadogan's mouth instead. Having realised what he had done, he reacted instinctively by pulling down on his finger. It was all one big misunderstanding.

Of course once the Dublin media got their hands on the story, the truth was shot on sight. On The Sunday Game, well-known Dublin 4 sophisticates Colm O'Rourke and Anthony Tohill castigated Galvin for his mistake. They want to impose the effeminate standards for which they were both renowned when togging out with Meath and Derry respectively.

The GAA hierarchy, in thrall to the metropolitan media, felt obliged to react. Galvin was suspended for eight weeks, another victory over the plain people of Ireland, another martyr to join the ranks of Christ, Collins and Roy Keane. The crown has once again had its dirty work done by its offspring agents, the accursed media.

They shouldn't be allowed to get away with crimes like these. The Dublin media should be taken from their homes in West Britain and deported to the mainland from where they draw their values. Then maybe our rivers will finally run free.

mclifford@tribune.ie