Ireland's New Taoiseach Says a Very Bad Word

Over the Eire-waves: Ireland's newly appointed Taoiseach (failte, Brian Cowan), in an "off the record" aside to Tanaiste Mary Coughlin this week, was embarrassingly picked up by the microphones in the Dail saying a very bad word, the likes of which would have condemned the average Irish child to a time out. While there is some dispute as to the exact usage and syntactic parsing, a government spokesman explained: "This was a casual exchange between working colleagues which was inadvertently and partially picked up by the Dáil microphones. In this context, the Taoiseach regrets any offence caused by the word complained of.” This is amusingly reminiscent of U.S. President Bush being caught on an open microphone in July 2006.

Not surprisingly, some satirists have been having a little fun with the new Taoiseach. A hat tip to the Green Ink blog for the accompanying political cartoon, captioned "Brian Cowan is a F***er."