In his speech at the Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting last week - a speech that was described as "very entertaining", which we don't doubt, Mr Charlie McCreevy said he would not be dictated to by the media.
If standing up for his policies meant being branded as "arrogant", then he was "happy to be the most arrogant Minister in the House".
It's just like Charlie, when branded arrogant by the media, not to be content with that, but to straightaway arrogate to himself the title of the Most Arrogant Minister in the House, an award which the media committee responsible has not yet decided on.
In relation to the fall from grace of Mr Hugh O'Flaherty, Mr McCreevy also said that he came from a part of the State (Kildare North) where, when someone fell, you didn't "stamp on them".
It is good to see some local pride displayed by prominent people in high places. Every visitor to Kildare, the Second Chance county, is familiar with the street signs "No Stamping Here" and "Down, but Not Out".
Not everybody is clear on the different actions taken by the various county areas when someone falls, so it is useful to see the North Kildare line marked out. At least we now know what North Kildare doesn't do. It's a sort of "hands off" policy, which possibly has its origins in ancient GAA tradition.
Over in South Mayo, West Kerry and parts of Dublin's inner city, on the other hand, the policy is pro-active, and principally involves kicking a man when he is down, on the grounds that it's easier.
A healthy pragmatism reigns in these areas, where Kildare is seen as a byword for prissy concern.
Monaghan, Carlow, Wexford and Cork are proud to be known as the "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" counties, Waterford and Kilkenny are "stampers" to a man, Longford and Leitrim believe only in the survival of the fittest, while Limerick and Galway are often sad to see a man go down, but will still gladly help him on his way.
It is a national diversity of which we can be proud.
Right. Now that a former Supreme Court judge without any financial background is set to become vice-president of the European Investment Bank, there is surely no reason why an ordinary media hack cannot get into the legal racket.
To start with, therefore, I am going to demand a re-opening of the case featured last week involving a man who was given a year in jail for assisting his companions in drinking a keg of beer worth £110 stolen from a bar in Co Derry.
The defence lawyer pointed out that his client was not the prime mover in the theft of the beer, "but by helping to drink it he had to admit handling the stolen property."
I see good grounds for an appeal here.
If the accused helped dispose of the beer in the normal manner, he certainly did not "handle" it: the liquid would have passed from keg to glass to mouth without any question of it being handled on the way.
If that isn't good enough to quash the sentence, my learned counsel will further query the assertion that the keg of beer was "worth" £110.
Beer experts, medical specialists, psychologists and philosophers will usefully debate in court the true value of a keg of beer, and its different value to different people.
If necessary, temperance leaders may be called on to assert the worthlessness of all alcoholic beverages.
With a bit of luck the judge will tire of all this fairly quickly and the unfortunate accused might be free in a day or two and able to enjoy a celebratory drink, not forgetting who got him out of the calaboose.
The court debate might also finally enlighten us as to why a keg of beer contains exactly 88 pints. If the judge is not too busy, I might ask him afterwards about another legal conundrum bothering me.
It seems that if you remove a worthless piece of junk from a skip without permission, you are technically guilty of theft, whereas if you add a similar item to a skip - a far more irritating crime in most skip-renters' minds, and usually carried out under cover of darkness, you remain innocent in the eyes of the law. But why?
