Feeling the fear and not doing it
TELEVISION
RTE News: Nine O'Clock (RTE1)
How We Blew The Boom (RTE1)
For the men who have destroyed Ireland with their gambling, there is time to reflect and to go on long holidays and to play golf.
For whoever painted that cartoon of the Taoiseach which was shown on the RTE News, there is a manhunt.
Maybe the biggest manhunt since... well, since the last manhunt.
Offices are raided, computers are ripped apart, disc-jockeys are strip-searched and interrogated.
And OK, that may be a very slight exaggeration, but we have found ourselves living in a cartoon world, and we respond accordingly.
In truth, there is nothing exceptional about RTE News backing down and issuing an apology in the context of a complaint from the Taoiseach's office. All broadcasters, at all times, are liable to back down if they get such a phone call before, during, or after a programme.
Yes, it would be a fine thing if there was a deep-rooted culture of listening politely to the complaints of very important people, and thanking them for their concern, and proceeding regardless. But a different culture prevails, one of fear.
Let us shift the scene away from the Cowen nude pix debacle, to describe how that culture works in other situations.
I have seen it many times --and not just on RTE -- most notably when I've been a panellist on those Sunday morning radio shows which discuss the papers.
It works like this: an article is published in a Sunday paper which is damaging to a well-known person. Clearly this is something which the panel might want to discuss.
But the well-known person will also have PR advisers and consultants and the like, and they too will have seen this damaging piece in the paper.
So they spring into action.
A phone call is made. The producer of the show is told that the story in the paper is rubbish, and that any references made on the radio programme to the libellous allegations made in the paper will themselves be deemed libellous.
A lengthy debate may ensue, between the progamme-maker and the PR consultant, or it may be pitifully brief -- I recall one such sad scene on the old Radio Ireland, when the call came about five minutes before the show was due to start.
In that situation, the producer feels he has no option but to tell the panel that they won't be discussing the offending item, because life is too short. Because the rich and powerful people on whose behalf the PR consultant is acting, are rich and powerful enough to put you out of business for 1,000 years, on the off-chance that they are telling the truth.
And in court, they can pump up the fake outrage by pointing out that they made this phone call, explaining that the story was false, but were rebuffed by these delinquent broadcasters -- another 200 grand there, to the distraught victim.
This is how the spin-merchants earn their corn. For the price of a phone call, they can put the frighteners on people who are in no position to stand up to them. This is how the world works.
IN FACT, the stench of fear is so powerful, a recent Sunday morning radio show declared itself unable to name the members of the Golden Circle who had already been named on a front page -- nor could they name people who are not members of the Golden Circle.
But we all know fear, when we hear the voice of George Lee.
How We Blew The Boom had George in the driving seat of his big black Merc, suggesting an alternative title, How You Blew The Boom.
But it marks another important stage in our process of grieving for what terrible eejits we have been.
A decent man in Kerry spoke for many, as he described how he got a million for a bit of land, and how he hasn't much of the million left. Though he invested it wisely (or so it seemed at the time) and took what seemed to be the best advice (or so it seemed at the time) still he feels this awful guilt.
He never had any money before, and when he got it, he couldn't hold on to it.
And we must look beyond economics to understand what happened here, how everyone listened to the mantras of the money-men, assuming they had thought these things through.
Except they hadn't thought things through, they were just saying what they heard some other guy saying and so on towards infinity.
We need to do our own thinking now.
And George showed us the way with his big black Merc, because a lesser man might think that this was an inappropriate vehicle, but not George. Pretending that he drives a cheap car would be a Lie, and there is no more time for Lies.
YES we must do our own thinking or others will do it for us, like that line they spun about Cowen's visit to Obama being just the third visit by a foreign leader, and thus deeply significant.
But then Obama has only been President since the middle of January. And this was only the middle of March, on the day historically set aside for Paddy.
So being the third in about seven weeks wasn't deeply significant, it wasn't significant at all.
Now that wasn't hard.
- Declan Lynch
