Radio Review: Clearly I'm out of touch. What was it with Arnie's election-night victory speech that it merited long stretches played on two of our most popular programmes and not merely played but praised to boot?
"That was some speech," sez Áine Lawlor to Carole Coleman on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday), and Gerry Ryan (2FM, Monday to Friday) implied as much too. Yet all I heard was the new guv droning the standard platitudes in what a Reuters reporter called, in all apparent seriousness, "the sing-song accent of his native Austrian-German". (I think that weird flattery is symptomatic of what US journos call, in the sing-song accent of their newsrooms, "the honeymoon period".)
So was all the excitement about the speech a frisson based on the big guy's references to his "spectackalah partnah", who is a kinduva Kennedy? I would have thought that at 6,000 miles remove the sensation would be a little lacking, what with her not even being called "Kennedy" - though I suppose the Ciarán Cuffe kerfuffle established that the media here recognise the luster without the letters. But still, Arnie's references to wife Maria and family were drabber than Anaheim.
Sure, I'm not so clueless that I don't recognise a story: "World's Most Famous Lump of Flesh Takes Over World's Most Famous US State". I just don't understand the speech's seeming appeal beyond mere incongruity. Now voting for Arnie I can understand. That, surely, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of a spiritless situation. Arnie is the opium of the people. Or at least of the less than half of voters who delivered his "landslide".
There was no such Karlifornian analysis from Jackie Bramble of GMTV, who spoke to Gerry Ryan. Ryan reckoned the bad behaviour Schwarzenegger has been charged with was harmless, if charmless, stuff, and Bramble was inclined to agree.
After President Bill, she said, Yanks are inclined to accept foibles in their politicians, "as long as they don't break the law". Well gee, Jackie, maybe if we stopped talking about groping and fondling and used the accurate mouthful "misdemeanor sexual battery", people might be more clued in about the side of the law to which Schwarzenegger cleaves. I'll avoid the obvious Predator reference, except to cite the week's oddest trivia: wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura was one of Schwarzenegger's fellow commandos in that obviously accursed flick.
Anyway, RTÉ's commendable internationalism, in pouring resources into a state election halfway around the world, has been matched closer to home. Radio 1 is now available in a massive "footprint" around north-west Europe on long-wave 252. Yes, that's 252, the frequency Ireland picked up in the 1980s and promptly (-ish) turned over to a joint venture between RTÉ and Radio Luxembourg: Atlantic 252, which began broadcasting in 1989. That station pumped out non-stop pop music from a tiny studio and a monster mast in Co Meath, and had a period of inexplicable popularity with your niece down the country who didn't care what the music sounded like as long as it sounded like fun.
All good things must come to an end, and Atlantic was succeeded in 2001 by TeamTalk 252, an all-sports station which I believe was heard by no-one, anywhere, for any reason, except myself, of course, for your benefit. Market forces did a bit of good for a change and that venture went under with seemly haste. And now at long last RTÉ has realised that a long-wave platform might help RTÉ Radio 1 reach the one or two people who are Irish or interested in Ireland but don't necessarily live hereabouts. (It's not like there was no precedent: BBC Radio 4, on long-wave 198, is popular above and beyond cricket listeners, and there was a massive outcry in 1993 when there was talk of replacing it with a mere rolling-news service, not even a pop station.)
De young people are still being catered for, bless 'em. Starting at midnight next Friday, indie-rock pirate Phantom FM is making an occasional return to the Dublin airwaves, and, as Schwarzenegger might intone, this time it's legal. Cast away by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland from 91.6 to a new frequency at 97.3 (move over, Lyric), Phantom has secured a licence for 14 weekends. No, no, no, it's not like a down payment on a full-time licence, and God no, the Phantom lads are not being rewarded for years of piracy. They just applied, and succeeded, the way a community group or college station might. So that's all right then.
Meanwhile, over around 89.8, the frequency of this column's other favourite buccaneer, Jazz FM, there's a machine already churning out the choicest tunes, swinging and funky, sweet refuge from the world of the Terminator.