'You don't have the moral right to speak for the people. It's you, Pat Kenny, who gets €600,000 a year for doing 11 hours' work and you have the indignity to speak about people on the social welfare."

Alan O'Brien's spittle-fuelled rant at Pat Kenny on Monday was an interesting snapshot into the collective psyche of the people at the moment.

Not for what this nut said, you understand, he's just another belligerent nut with a chip on both shoulders and a conviction for Incitement to Racial Hatred to boot.

No, it was the way his remarks were received by people who should know better that was quite worrying.

A nasty, spiteful, mean spirit has begun to haunt our mood, and people like Kenny, Tubridy, Ryan and Finucane have become very handy targets.

And inevitably, the stick we are using to beat on RTE's top presenters is the licence fee.

"We pay their wages, so we can say what we want about them," is the general mob mantra.

The smug, simpering self-righteousness of people who use this argument gives the impression that the entire nation sits down at the end of every month and signs Kenny's cheque.

It's a nice notion, that as public service broadcasters, RTE's top presenters are actually public servants who should be subject to the whims and fancies of their bosses, i.e. us.

It's also completely wrong.

The revenue raised by the licence fee does not pay any of the salaries of the top earners in Montrose. Instead, it goes on things like the RTE Concert Orchestra, local radio franchises and other cost-heavy ventures which simply would not be able to exist without the vast subsidies the public is bullied into paying every year.

I've written about the disgrace of an enforced tax in the form of the licence fee before -- and, interestingly, received a stern rebuke from one RTE producer, with the implied threat the occasional gigs I get as a contributor to various shows would be threatened by opposition to the licence fee, which sums up the mindset of many of the lifers working in Donnybrook -- so the rights and wrongs of it are a story for another day.

Kenny et al earn vast amounts of money for their employers from advertisers eager to have spots on such high-profile programmes.

Now, as advertising is down and whole companies are more pre-occupied with staying solvent than throwing money at advertising ventures, should the massive salaries be renegotiated?

Of course they should.

After all, that's the nature of the free market and just as the 'stars' of Donnybrook benefited hugely from the boom years, they'll just have to take their lumps like the rest of us, albeit safe in the consolation that dropping 300 grand in one year, as Kenny has been forced to do, still means that you're earning €600,000. Which is nice.

But does that mean they should not be allowed to comment on the issues of the day?

Of course not. It's a thoroughly stupid and vile argument.

Kenny does not, as that idiot O'Brien ranted, "pontificate" to people on social welfare or, indeed, on anything else.

In fact, Kenny's views on many subjects remain infuriatingly close to his chest.

Compare that approach with, say, someone like Vincent Browne, who never stops pontificating about the evils of capitalism and the urgent need for enforced wealth redistribution -- all delivered from a studio in a television station that is renowned for the minuscule rates of pay they award to all their staff, although presumably, the bould Vincenzo is on a higher salary than a runner, which surely flies in the face of his much heralded socialism?

Browne is an arch shit-stirrer; someone whose programme is more pantomime than politics and yet you never see him or his salary criticised in the same way as those poor -- well, not so poor -- saps in RTE.

That's not just because he is paid by the private sector -- it's because he plays to the gallery, the sector of Irish society that is currently consumed by impotent rage and looking for someone, anyone, to whom they can direct their fury.

And it's why cheap shots are now the order of the day. Jack O'Connor's crack about Kenny and his 'trophy house' was a perfect example of how the Irish have reverted to landing low blows.

Should he live in a shed? An outside toilet? He paid for his gaff. Not us.

In fact, with all the accusations of hypocrisy being thrown with the gay abandon of rice at a wedding, it's hard to escape the paranoid notion that union leaders such as O'Connor and the rest of his well paid peers are simply playing a clever game of bait-and-switch.

By subtly and not so subtly egging their members on against some sections of the population, and trying to engender a them-and-us social climate, they have managed to distract the mob from their own vast salaries and generous expenses claims.

I would have more respect for O'Connor's views and those of his colleagues if he was taking home the average industrial wage earned by the people who pay their union dues -- and his salary -- rather than the €120,000 plus he trousers every year.

Say what you like about Joe Higgins -- and Lord knows I have -- you have to admire the fact that he was prepared to donate most of his Dáil salary back into his Party and merely extract the average wage.

It was misguided, it was quite tokenistic and it flies in the face of the free market. Basically, you can say he was wrong to do it. But you can't call him a hypocrite when he talks about everyone being on the same money -- although his decision to write for The Mail, hardly a hot-bed of socialist fever, is another matter.

In the meantime, between Jack O'Connor and Alan O'Brien, Kenny must be feeling a most unexpected nostalgia for the safety of the Late Late studio.

Irish Independent