Oskar Lafontaine's resignation as Germany's finance minister is greeted with ill-concealed relief by the Irish Government and gloating by many commentators.
But what has Mr Lafontaine done to worry the Government? And what was he planning to do that representatives of the new right found so threatening?
The European Commission is forced to resign. But what were the Commissioners accused of?
And how will the changes that are bound to follow affect us? Apart, that is, from the Government's exquisite dilemma about what to do with Padraig Flynn.
The callous murder of Rosemary Nelson is rightly linked to that of her fellow lawyer Pat Finucane. But is it not also linked to the bombing of Omagh?
Both Ms Nelson's murder and the Omagh bomb were intended to provoke violent reactions which would in turn inflame smouldering resentment and threaten the Belfast Agreement.
The public sessions of the Moriarty and Flood tribunals have come to a halt for the time being, allowing commentators to take stock and issue their own interim reports.
But it seems that in some cases at least writers and broadcasters have missed or forgotten the point. The tribunals were set up to investigate payments to politicians and what amounts to a shadowy connection between business and politics.
How the payments first came to light is - like a variety of other sideshows - a titillating diversion. It may be popular and, indeed, profitable; it may also be what some of those with most to lose would like the rest of us to see as the main event.
Powerful and persistent forces are out there, working as hard and as cleverly as the law allows (there's no shortage of resources) to prevent us keeping our eyes on the ball.
Keeping our eyes on the ball, on the central importance of politics and on the interests of the Irish people as a whole is what this piece is about.
That astute judge of international affairs Charlie McCreevy, who took an airily dismissive view of the economic crisis in the Far East, had described Oskar Lafontaine as a socialist of the old school.
When Lafontaine resigned, some of McCreevy's media allies took up where Dinjo left off and danced jigs on the radio - mostly Today FM.
With raucous delight and the zest the London tabloids usually display when dealing with football oddities and freakish foreigners, they chortled on about Mad Oskar and conjured images of their own hero doing cartwheels in Merrion Street.
But what Lafontaine had been trying to do was what might have been expected of any serious social democrat.
He wanted to spread the burden of taxation, to stimulate demand and employment and, by changing the laws on citizenship, among other reforms, to make Germany a fairer and more welcoming society.
German industry feared increasing corporate taxes and the popular German press, as usual, supported the approach adopted by its proprietors and their industrial allies.
It shouldn't surprise that in this country conservative politicians and commentators find they have more in common with German industry and British tabloids than with the German people.
And when it comes to tax harmonisation or related reforms, as proposed by the German social democrats, the Coalition and its noisy cheerleaders will be found, not tumbling in the street, but with their backs to the wall.
Fear of foreigners, especially those with funny guttural accents, has always played a part in British resistance to the European Union.
And when the Commission was forced to quit on the strength of a report alleging, we were led to believe, all manner of malpractices, it was open season on the EU's most notorious high-flyers.
Hot on the heels of Red Oskar came Mad Jacques, Evil Edith, a clutch of Italians, Greeks, Spanish and Portuguese - with their extended families - and, enigmatic as ever, Puffed-Up Padraig from Castlebar, telling us it's for Taoiseach Bertie and himself to decide where he stands.
But, as Padraig swanned past would-be interviewers, like a galleon in full sail, it must have occurred to Irish television viewers that the case against the Commission was not what we'd been led to believe. A little lacking in meaty detail.
Commissioners didn't know what was happening in their services. There were a few cases of nepotism or cronyism (someone's brother-in-law got a job, someone else's dentist).
The trouble began, as a rule, once projects were farmed out to private enterprise. As John Palmer reported here, more than 80 per cent of all fraud affecting EU spending occurred under the responsibility of national governments, not the Commission.
NOW, that's more like it, as we know only too well. We've had the tribunal and paid the price. The Commission's offences are small beer by comparison, the kind of stuff that has to be worked on before it's built into headlines suggesting damning indictments and the like.
The real challenge is to increase the Commission's accountability, which means adding to the Parliament's powers and opening up the relationships of parliament and commission with the ministerial councils and heads of government.
The Commission, which functions as a secret society, also has other defects that need to be removed. It has too much to do and too few people to do it.
But Ireland has always been opposed to change which would enhance the democratic force of institutions deemed favourable in their present forms to the interests of small nations.
It's time we examined the case again, this time in the context of rising demands for accountability and what may turn out to be profound institutional change and development.
Change and development on all fronts was challenged by the murder of Rosemary Nelson. It showed how desperate some forces have grown in their efforts to prevent movement in the direction of the Belfast Agreement.
For this was not just a sectarian killing; those who planned it aimed at the most dangerous point in a vulnerable community's nervous system. If they'd succeeded, the agreement would have been paralysed.
A wounded but determined people resisted the Omagh bombers, the so-called "Real IRA"; given the leadership they are promised once more, the same people will resist the so-called Red Hand Defenders. They have the same intent.
Of course, there are commentators and activists who would prefer if we took our eyes off the ball and reduced the ideals of the Belfast Agreement to the ashes of mutual destruction.
At a different level, interested parties of another hue are anxiously attempting to persuade us that what will matter when business resumes at Dublin Castle is how someone sounds in the witness box - not how we succeed at cleaning up a national mess.