Present Tense »

• Green drama cut short by RTÉ

  June 13, 2007 @ 9:38 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Why did RTÉ’s Nine News cut away from the drama of the Mansion House, where John Gormley was about to speak, just so we could hear some re-heated analysis from Charlie Bird and David McCullough? Was there a post-result media blackout too or did it just feel it was what the nation needed at that moment of real history?

  Could it have stuck around with coverage for a bit longer, or did it decide that what the viewers actually wanted was for The Village to start on time.

• Stray Thoughts

  June 12, 2007 @ 12:27 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Watching RTE’s promo for Miriam O’Callaghan’s chat show, I wonder why they don’t plug Prime Time by having men talk about her as a “thinking man’s crumpet” or as someone who has “lots of kids”. They’d be able to plug Mark Little as “the thinking woman’s Man from Del Monte”. Although, as inane RTE promos go, nothing will ever again match the Ryan Tubridy as Agent Smith masterwork – unless it’s Gerry Ryan as John Rambo.

  You want to see a real promo: check out this outrageously over-the-top one for an American channel’s weatherman. Gary England. Hero.

  On last night’s Nine News, David Davin Power was speaking live to the studio on how the coalition talks were going – but had his back to the action suddenly unfolding behind him…

  Belatedly, following last week’s Big Brother racism row, it’s an opportune moment to point out this bit of Daily Show genius. Send one white guy and one black guy out on the streets to ask about attitudes to the “n-word”. But only one of them can actually say it. Best line: “Do you understand how rap works, councillor?”

• Noel O’Gara reaches double figures (eventually)

  May 25, 2007 @ 7:09 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Noel O’Gara in Dublin South-East, picks up 27 first-preference votes but in Longford Westmeath he grabs a stunning 84 votes, (despite early tallies having him at three). Those voters were obviously impressed by the service at his tile showroom.

• Election count goes on … and on …

  @ 1:54 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  No matter how much some of us love the count, there must be a sizeable number out there who find the whole thing utterly tedious. Who can’t bear hearing 43 tally counts in the morning, and another 43 at lunchtime, and then confirmation of what we already when we get the first rounds of vote counts.

  There must be people who woke up this morning, heard the exit poll and immediately decided that the “tightest election in decades” (passim, all media) is actually an anti-climax. And now they’ll have to spend the rest of the day, and weekend, looking for an alternative to the wall-to-wall coverage of the thing.

  The tallymen might get a kick out of the process, but I never found that indulging them in their fetish shold have been one of the factors in dumping the e-voting idea. With a decent computer-based count, we’d probably be well into the results by now (only 6 seats announced so far). But getting a decent computer was the problem in the first place, and why anyone without the geeky obsession with election counts is going to find their patience tested to the limit over the next 24 hours.

• The Enda Kenny drinking game

  May 22, 2007 @ 9:20 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Every time he says the following, take a drink:

  - “But I will say this …”: one finger of beer
  - “The voters have a choice of more of the same smugness and arrogance…” Two fingers of beer
  - “Which I personally offer through my contract”: a whiskey
  - “I am putting my neck on the line”: triple brandy

• Enda’s people

  May 18, 2007 @ 9:01 am | by Shane Hegarty

  In last night’s debate, Enda Kenny menioned many of the unfortunate people he has met on his travels around the country. He would fix Bertie a stare and say “Tell that to the woman in Laois who…”

  Here are some of the people he didn’t get a chance to mention:

  1) The man in Carlow who can’t watch Marx Brothers films anymore without thinking of Willie O’Dea
  2) The student in Longford who did German in her Leaving Cert because she was told it would be the business language of the future – except Chinese turned out to be that language
  3) The woman in Cobh who only has three ribs for an unspecified reason
  4) The man in Letterkenny who can’t get a dental appointment because someone gave him the wrong number for the dentist
  5) The man on the M50 who really, really needs to pee, but can’t because there are no service stations
  6) The hypochondriac in Sligo who’s on a waiting lists for cardiac, asthma, amputation, renal, neurological and STD services
  

• The “great” debate. Oh my God, he killed Kenny!

  May 17, 2007 @ 11:28 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Some quick thoughts:

  It wasn’t so “great”.

  But Bertie Ahern won it – not only because he conveyed the tangible benefit of experience, but also that he was willing to do things like make Enda Kenny look like a man who would pull the plug on a dying cancer patient. Bertie looked a bit pale starting off, despite the ton of make-up, and he sat awkwardly, with his body pointing one direction but his head another. But he visibly relaxed as it went on.

  Kenny started strong, but weakened. He struggled with practicalities, relying too much on listing off the problems of people he has met. That can work up to a point, but repeating a problem is not the same as explaining how he’ll solve it. He also says “But I will make this point…” so often that were he a sitcom character it would be his catchphrase.

  He does have this way about him where he looks like he has memorised what he has to say and doesn’t like to deviate from the script. Again, maybe that’s an experience thing, but he does have 32 years in the Dáil under his belt – a fact which made him look somewhat of an under achiever.

  I’ll be interested to read what Mark Hennessy thought.
  And the politics.ie forum has been hopping. Who needs Frank Luntz when you can track that?
  And Damien Mulley gets medieval on Enda’s ass in his summary

• The “other” leaders’ debate

  May 16, 2007 @ 10:48 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Some quick observations about the leaders’ debate tonight.

  1. The Weakest Link thing at the beginning, with the leaders being spot-lit at a podium – and muzak played as they were each being introduced – was pretty silly

  2. What was all the stuff scribbled on Trevor Sargent’s left palm?

  3. Gerry Adams, and Sinn Féin, like to tell us that “people have rights”.

  4. It was a debate not between the four leaders, but one involving the three other leaders ganging up on McDowell

  5. Does Michael McDowell’s Dáil privilege extend to the RTÉ studio?

  Link: The Debate

  Mark Hennessy reviews the debate at his blog here

  Good discussions on the politics.ie forum.

• Bertie’s old pals act

  @ 9:42 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  The FF political broadcast was up on YouTube a few minutes before it made it on to the box. You can see it here.

  The peace process has been about the only positive news Bertie’s had this campaign, so the party will be delighted to jump all over it. Who would have thought we’d see the day when a shot of Ian Paisley looking to shake Bertie’s hand would be the big selling point to vote for “the Republican party”?

  Anyway, neither Clinton, Blair nor Mitchell actually wear a rosette or plead for the vote, so it’ll be interesting to hear from their camps exactly what they thought it would be used for. Otherwise, it’s just a little corporate-vid bigging-up Bertie and allowing him to bask in his place as friend to the stars and someone who should really should be given the Nobel peace prize as soon as possible. There “would be no peace process without Bertie Ahern”, apparently. That kind of thing drives Albert Reynolds nuts…
  

• FF party political broadcast

  May 15, 2007 @ 10:14 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Some thoughts on the FF party political broadcast:

  1. No Bertie.

  2. If you stopped someone on the street and asked them what are the big changes in the last 10 years, how many of them would reply: “the National Treatment Purchase Fund”?

  3. Thanks to the nice lady who told us that thanks to FF we have “our electricity, our telephones and our televisions”. Because without FF we’d be living in 1834.

  4. It used that tired, swaying camera style, as if we’ll get bored if we have to spend two seconds without seeing something move.

  5. How many of those featured were actors or party members or both?

  6. 10 years of change and nobody mentions immigration.

• The mane event

  May 8, 2007 @ 10:25 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  There’s some nice work being done over at Green Ink. Go for the pictures of Bertie as a vampire; stay for the delicious images of Green Party people wearing the mullet of their Mayo candidate Peter Enright.

• Enda Kenny on American Idol

  @ 11:03 am | by Shane Hegarty

  From the people who brought you Bertie Ahern on Dragons’ Den, comes Enda Kenny on American Idol. Brilliant. (via Mulley.net)

• The first online election. Sort of.

  May 5, 2007 @ 11:49 am | by Shane Hegarty

  This is the first general election in which the internet will be a battleground. Which means it’s time for candidates and party leaders to get busy on the keyboard. Or, at least, to shanghai someone from the party’s youth wing into doing it for them. And yet, looking at the results you wonder whether it’s something of a phoney war.
  (more…)

• How telly works…

  May 3, 2007 @ 11:10 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  News bulletins are always keen to ram home the idea that they have a reporter “on the spot”, which is why we now have the conceit of reporters speaking live to the studio “from on the spot” – even if you often get the feeling that they could just as easily have come into the studio instead of staying out in the cold just for the aesthetic value.

  RTÉ took this to a new level on Thursday night’s Nine O’Clock News when David Davin-Power stood on one side of Government Buildings, while George Lee stood on the other, and they both reported to Anne Doyle. At the same time. Maybe one cameraman could have been let home for his dinner.

  By the way, why does it seem brighter on Merrion Square than it is on Kildare Street?

  Watch:
  David Davin-Power, live from Government Buildings
  And George Lee, er, also live from Government Buildings. At the same time.

• A blog wot they wrote themselves

  May 2, 2007 @ 3:24 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Rock The Vote’s site hands over a section to the party leaders’ “blogs”. I refuse to cast doubt on the fact that each leader wrote these notes themselves, in between reading The Swearing Lady and posting anonymous comments on Blogorrah.

  It’s worth checking out as a wonderful example of how when politicians and yoof are forced into an unhappy press-op, it’s more jarring than George Bush Jr playing the bongos.

  Michael McDowell’s “blog” couldn’t be more patronising if he patted each of us individually on the head and said “good boy” while giving us a biscuit. Says Michael: “It’s a privilege to meet people, young and old in every sector, from business people to students, from farmers to workers; both Irish and from overseas.”

  Enda Kenny actually uses the phrase “we work our butts off”.

  Trevor Sargent has a picture of himself and candidate Roderic O’Gorman playing pool.

  Frankly, if all this doesn’t get the kids into the voting stations on May 24, then we should raise the voting age to 32. What more do they want?

• Ballot Box again

  April 26, 2007 @ 9:21 am | by Shane Hegarty

  RTÉ has set up an archive site, featuring highlights from elections past. It’s a busy spot, given that the 1980s alone saw an election every six weeks.

  A highlight: in 1982, even the most sophisticated pair of glasses took up the size of a whole room

• Ballot box

  April 25, 2007 @ 10:08 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Excellent work is being done by two sites that are keeping an eye on the election as being fought through YouTube. If you haven’t already done so, it’s worth checking out Vote Tube and Irish Election TV.

  Bonus: A random punter at a train station deconstructs the ‘superimposed’ Bertie poster

• Swing votes?

  April 10, 2007 @ 7:05 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Discussion on Tuesday’s Tubridy Show about political bias in the print media. Starts about seven minutes in.

  Link: Tubridy Show archive