The victors write history?

Check out this list - http://www.rte.ie/arts/2010/0322/irelandsgreatestfigures.html - before you read my thoughts on it, below.

DON’T be too concerned if you pass Glasnevin cemetery and hear a frightful high-pitched whine coming from below. That will be the generations of noble Irish
heroes and heroines spinning in their graves.

They, like me, can’t believe that a country with 2,000 years of recorded history whittles a list of its greatest citizens down to a top 40 and still finds room for two members of Boyzone and their manager.

Apologies, Jonathan Swift, Brian Boru and Ronnie Delaney. There just wasn’t a seat for you once Ronan Keating, Stephen Gately and Louis Walsh had been given their dues in RTE’s shortlist of Ireland’s Greatest Figures. Another of the favoured forty, the ghost of Charlie Haughey and his giant ego, needed an entire pew to itself.
RTE will argue that the ludicrous nominees on the list are ‘the people’s choice’.

One thousand people were apparently polled on who should make the shortlist. I’d love to know where this privileged 1,000 came from – certainly no-one I know is putting up their hand to admit they think Daniel O’Donnell deserves a place above Brendan Behan.

That’s democracy in action, they’ll tell you. Democracy also means you get the government you deserve – and look how that’s been working out for us.

One wag suggested the pollsters must have canvassed the bored queue outside the passport office, ripe for a bit of anarchy. There are a lot of off-the-cuff nominations in there. Chances are, if you are approached by some clipboard-wielding suit and asked to cast your mind over the centuries of Ireland’s complex history, you’ll be tempted to latch onto the last person you saw on the news last night. Or whoever’s statue you pass every day on the way into work every day.

RTE should be ashamed of itself for its lack of respect. As national broadcasters, they are literally our channel of record. They misleadingly use the title, Ireland’s Greatest, as if it is a definitive list of the finest people we have ever produced – and then compile it in a manner more suited to picking a song for the Eurovision.

In fact, the shortlist for Eurosong was created by a panel of the musically-minded before being presented to the public vote. Where were the historical, social, economic, scientific, cultural experts who could best assemble an informed collection of Ireland’s best and brightest, past and present?

All respect to the late Stephen Gately but chances are, if people had been polled for this list three years ago, he would have been bumped off it by Katy French. His inclusion has all the hallmarks of someone having seen a TV3 tribute to him the evening before.

Popular culture can’t be ignored. But why, say, does Colin Farrell take precedence over Gabriel Byrne, who is considered worthy of being Ireland’s new cultural ambassador to the world – but not good enough to get the nod ahead of Joe Dolan? We all loved Ronnie Drew, but what about the global singing superstar of his time, Count John McCormack?

Why not Maureen Potter or Spike Milligan for their comic genius? Has Louis Walsh done as much to promote distinctively Irish music as Oscar-nominated, Grammy-winning, 70-million-album-selling Enya?

It’s completely random. Charles Haughey – the self-serving shyster who served as a role model for all the self-serving shysters who would succeed him in public office – is the biggest insult of all. Sure, why would Samuel Beckett be included over CJ – poor old Sam only won a Nobel Prize for Literature and the French Croix de Guerre for his work in the Resistance against the Nazis.

The saddest failure of this list is that it devalues the real achievements of our great little country. There are not many made in the mould of Grace O’Malley, who managed to stand up to Queen Elizabeth I of England and come away with her head still intact, or Tom Crean, one of the greatest and most humble explorers of all time.

There are so many outrageous omissions. Robert Boyle, father of modern chemistry; George Boole, a founder of computer science; playwright GB Shaw; C.S. Lewis, author of the globally-beloved Narnia books; Pele’s favourite footballer, George Best; TK Whitaker, the great – and still very much alive – civil servant whose economic plan dragged Ireland into the modern era of free trade and prosperity.

Incidentally, Whitaker was voted Irishman of the 20th Century by an RTE programme a few years back. How fickle are they?

We could treat this poll with the same levity RTE have – and all spoil our votes by plumping for Dustin the Turkey (who, sadly, didn’t make it either). It’s a joke anyway. We might as well make it official.

The Terrific Travels of Charlie and George

Charlie Bird and George Lee have been having it tough these past few months - by their own account anyhow. Listening to them whine about life outside Montrose is dispiriting to this journalist who remembers being in awe of them at the ESB Media Awards a decade ago. I was nominated for a colour writing award (and seated at a table with a medical monthly and a agricultural pamphlet, I had a fair idea I shouldn't worry too much about having to make a speech, sit back and enjoy the free dinner). George and Charlie, though, were the real deal and were honoured for their investigative journalism in breaking the NIB tax evasion scandal. Charlie's speech went something along the lines of "We were warned off this story but we are not anybody's typewriters..."
Oh Charlie, what has it come to?

My op-ed in the midweek Herald went a little something like this...

The crèche in RTE is apparently a very fine facility. No doubt it will shortly be taking delivery of a batch of the hotly-tipped children’s bestseller, The Terrific Travels of Charlie and George.

Through the medium of nursery rhyme, this listen-and-learn tome will prepare the offspring of RTE staffers for life within the Montrose family.
“This little boy went to Washington; this boy went to the polls; both little boys went ‘Wah! Wah! Wah!’ – all the way home to D4.”
Don’t bother trying to pre-order Charlie and George at your local bookshop: it has a very limited run and the small print is illegible to anyone outside Donnybrook.

Here’s how the world works for the rest of us: we jack in our jobs to go adventuring, we get a P45. When George Lee decided to run for the Dail so he’d have something to tell the grandkids, he got a guarantee that a job would be still there for him in RTE twelve months later. When Charlie Bird harrumphed that he’d had enough of Washington, he was told to come home early out of the cold.

Why wouldn’t you want to return to an employer like that? The very notion that Lee and Bird are some sort of maverick risk-takers is laughable. RTE all but sewed their mittens onto a piece of string and threaded it through the armholes of their duffle coats before sending them out to play.

They didn’t have to be called in for their dinner. Homesick Charlie has returned over two years early from a four-year post. George spent nine months on the job for Fine Gael. That’s just long enough for him to have kittens over not being treated in the manner to which he had been accustomed.

There is a case to be made for sympathising with Curious George. He looked beyond his role as economics editor at the State broadcaster and thought he could see a different future. (Albeit with RTE standing nervously on the shore, ready to chuck a lifebuoy at him if the waters got choppy).

He couldn’t hack a single winter of discontent. I don’t know if he was being intentionally hilarious when he complained to Pat Kenny on Frontline that he was frustrated that most TDs were “institutionalised” by the comforts and cosiness of life in the Dail. It certainly gave me a laugh. Is there not plenty of opportunity to become institutionalised by the fine renumeration, facilities and jobs-for-life at RTE? I’d be only delighted to be incarcerated in that golden a cage.

There’s no suggestion of a timeout in the sin bin. Lee has been touted for the seat in Washington newly vacated by Bird. In any case, he’ll return to his full salary of around e150,000 which should keep him warm until he gets out of the decontamination zone.

Bird has already laid out his own welcome mat in the documentary about his ill-fated year in the US. “I’ll be back in Dublin, I’ll be walking around and I’ll go back to doing the job I was doing before I left,” he said. Brave little soldier.

Why wouldn’t they expect to be allowed to come home to Mammy Montrose with the minimal of consequences? RTE looks after family, see. That devotion to family saw Charlie Bird miss out on the major US story of last year: the sudden death of Michael Jackson. He was in Dublin at the time, all over the rather more important job of toasting George Lee as he went off to dip his toe into politics.

It still seems scarcely believable that Charlie Bird admitted in public that he couldn’t cope with the Washington job. I don’t need to tell a man who – along with Lee – broke the tax evasion scandal at NIB in the late ’90s that journalism is all about making contacts.

So why did he admit that he essentially felt past the point of being able to do that? More to the point, why did RTE think showcasing his inadequacies in a TV two-parter was a good idea?

A much sterner mother would have said to them both, ‘Climb that tree if you want but if you fall and break both your legs, don’t come running to me.”

The prodigal sons may not know when exactly they are coming back to RTE, or to exactly what role. But no doubt they are looking forward to regaling their wide-eyed colleagues with tales of how awful it is in the world outside Montrose over cups of subsidised tea.

The mad hatter's ball

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/susan-daly-they-really-are-a-bunch-of-mad--hatters-out-in-rte-2018674.html

The whole country was caught on the hop by the floods-snow-floods cycle of hellish weather. But is that any excuse for some of the gear that RTE news reporters have fetched up in for their outside broadcasts?

We know it wasn't quite suit-and-tie weather but some of these lads and lassies looked like they had fallen into a prop box for Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer on their way out the door to work.

Paul Cunningham's Pakistani pakol hat -- which, frankly, looked like a knitted condom -- was so outstandingly bizarre that it got its own Facebook fan page. He was even seen wearing it at a press briefing with Brian Cowen. Indoors.

Mary Calpin joined in the mad hatters' party with a Bond villain furry number and Paschal Sheehy upped the ante with a frayed camouflage baseball cap stealing the attention from the thaw.

You can't knock the reporters for entertainment value. They were right up there with the poor unfortunate who had his slip on an icy pavement recorded for posterity by RTE news.

It would seem that these standout sartorial moments were down to the reporters themselves. That is to say, no-one in RTE's wardrobe department seems eager to rush forward and claim credit.

But there seems to be more of a concerted effort going on in the brand-flashing department. From the number of fleeces and anoraks bearing the North Face logo, you might think RTE News was sponsored by the brand.

The Berghaus clothing logo got an outing on one of the bulletins briefly this week. In the main, however, it appears that North Face is the label any self-respecting TV journo wants to be wearing in the field. Now unless the outdoor clothing brand has donated a job lot of sample-size fleeces to the RTE newsroom, has it any business getting all this promotion on the national broadcaster?

RTE has extensive guidelines on product placement and sponsorship deals, which it lists clearly on its website. Sponsors who make a "direct or indirect contribution" to a programme, be it through funding or provision of goods or services, are supposed to get a sponsor credit at the beginning or end of the programme to make clear the relationship. I didn't notice any such "Survival clothes by North Face" at the end of the news, did you?

The thing is, if RTE aren't being given free clothes or cash by a brand that they are giving prominence to, they are missing a trick. It's ironic because TV3, a commercial station that knows all about squeezing the last cent out of everything, got a bit of a lash for all the product placement on The Apprentice.

The new Broadcasting Authority of Ireland is currently considering whether RTE, as a public service broadcaster, should be allowed to be as free and easy with certain types of sponsorship as other independent stations are. I don't know if this means they might have to tell their reporters to turn their fleecy little numbers inside out so a non-sponsor brand doesn't show.

Maybe it will herald a return to those school uniform-type RTE anoraks you used to see the regional correspondents sporting at the ploughing championships. But let's hope Paul Cunningham gets to keep his hats.