Empty vessels

 I was a “Marian groupie” for years. Just loved her easy sympathetic style, her capacity to pay attenti...on to what was being said, even her “I have to say”s and “listen”s. I couldn't understand why she was moved from the morning weekday slot, for if a change needed to be made, there seemed a more obvious change (guess who?). She has settled well into the weekend schedule, but there is a problem.
The Sunday Show presented by Tom McGurk, and before him Andy O'Mahony (was there someone in between?), was awful for many reasons, not least the propensity of McGurk to laugh uproariously at his own jokes – or rather what he considered jokes. But there was a structural problem as well: the review of the Sunday papers.
That segment gave an opportunity for an assembly of blatherers to talk absolute nonsense on a variety of subjects about which none of the participants knew anything. It was terribly irritating but it lasted only 20 minutes. Now with The Marian Finucane Show, this awful arrangement has been extended to a full hour. A collection of chatterboxes assembled to talk on diverse subjects about which they know nothing. Actually it should not have been not quite as bad as that on Sunday, 12 March, for some of those on the panel should have known what they were taking about. Surprisingly, they didn't.
Just one example. They went on and on about the latest crime crisis and I think it was the former High Court judge, Feargus Flood (who should have known) or was it the know-all economist, Colm McCarthy, who said that drug cases should be heard by the Special Criminal Court. Marian seemed to agree enthusiastically. No one on the panel uttered a dissenting view aside from one of the most notorious windbags on radio panels, Bill Tormey, who said everyone had a right to be tried by a jury of their peers.
There is just one little point to be made here. People accused of drug crime, certainly those suspected to be involved in gangland drug crime are always tried in the Special Criminal Court, no jury. This has been going on for at least 10 years and several civil liberties groups have been protesting about it. But not one of the blatherers on the panel was aware of this.
The problem is that having journalists and a collection of other chatterboxes to talk about the wide range of subjects covered by the newspapers invites them to talk nonsense and, without fail, they always do.
Just one further reflection on that know-all economist Colm McCarthy. In urging the privatisation of Aer Lingus, he said the reason the unions were against this was because they could escape the disciplines of the market. Along the way he made several sneering comments about “lefties” who, he claimed, were willfully and perhaps irremediably ignorant.
This smart-ass is supposed to be clued into the business world, isn't he? If so then how come he didn't notice that Aer Lingus has been confronted by those “disciplines” for several years and, as a consequence, it has cut its work force by several thousand, transformed work practices and reincarnated the airline?
Nobody on the programme asked: why should Aer Lingus not remain in State control? If it is to be highly profitable, why shouldn't the public purse benefit, instead of private entrepreneurs?
On Saturday afternoon, I was in our kitchen with the radio on and the commentary on a rugby match was being broadcast. I know nothing about rugby and want to keep it that way. But I was exhilarated by the voice and enthusiasm of the commentator, Michael Corcoran. He has a melodious Cork accent and he gets delightfully excited, which for a moment got me delightfully excited. During the match I went into our sitting room where the Señor de Casa was watching the match on television with two of his mates, all doing running commentaries of their own. I again intruded at half time and observed a very plain looking man (no, not the Señor de Casa, although on a bad day...) wearing quite the most hideous jacket, tie and shirt I have so far ever seen (and given the sartorial preferences of the Señor de Casa this is saying quite something). Execrable. Frighten-the-children bad (happily they were upstairs paying Barbies or downloading inappropriate material from the internet). The others on the panel were hardly handsome either. But the guy in the brown jacket, the garish tie and the brown shirt? Something else.
I will get to this other issue again on another occasion, but does anybody in RTÉ ever advise presenters that they should cut down their verbiage by a factor of two or three our four or ten?
Cathal Mac Ciolle, when he started on Morning Ireland was a joy. Direct, to-the-point. Now so much less of that and worse, verbiage. On Morning Ireland on Monday (13 March), Cathal Mac Ciolle told us how he had been at a concert in the National Concert Hall recently to hear Beethoven's violin concerto, at which some noted conductor had to abandon the concert because of something to do with his shoulder but now his shoulder was OK and we should all rejoice over that. This was apropos of nothing. What was the point of this information other than to advertise what a cultured person Cathal Mac Ciolle is?
Later on the same programme, this time apropos of an interview about Slobodan Milosevic, he said something to the effect, “Remember this has relevance for us because of our troops in Kosovo and our Gardaí in Bosnia.” Again, what is the point other than to advertise how informed he is, and how caring? And the finger-wagging “remember”? Give us a break.