The Orange Order is dying a slow death. David Scott, its director of education, is determined to revive the struggling institution before it is nothing more than a forgotten relic of a bygone age.
How to get the young people interested in a group that promotes sectarianism, when all the rage is to educate against discrimination? How to get new members into a group that is watching Catholics make tremendous strides while they are left behind, the dinosaurs on the verge of extinction?
Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Diamond Dan, tricked out in orange collarette but lacking the bowler hat and brollie that would make any gent a laughing stock if he were to be seen walking down the street. That ought to do it.
Mr. Scott would like to make bigotry fun for the wee ones, so that when they grow up they'll join the Orange Order and parade through Catholic neighborhoods. Let the children follow Diamond Dan as he beats his huge drum, to remind the Papists that they lost at the Battle of the Boyne four hundred years ago.
Will the Orange Order's next generation look to their new cartoon superhero and see that religious persecution is still relevant in the Twenty-first Century? Or will they shrug their shoulders and move on, bored with the dinosaur exhibit at the sectarian museum.
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