PAT Doherty refusing to condemn murder Ian Paisley railing against "the genocide" of Protestants in the Republic Conor Cruise O'Brien citing "democratic principle" as he sought to justify unionist attempts to shaft George Mitchell the ubiquitous Eoghan Harris and his fellow travellers whingeing about being excluded from the media David Trimble and William McCrea caught bickering like angry wasps television makes the North seem impossible.
Doherty's prevarication on Questions and Answers has, not surprisingly, attracted the most attention. But everybody knows the score. Republican disingenuousness about the relationship between Sinn Fein and the IRA is mirrored by media hypocrisy on the subject. If Sinn Fein is, as it claims, separate from the IRA, why can't it condemn the murder of a garda? By the same token, if Sinn Fein does condemn the IRA, how can the media insist that it use its special relationship (which many in the media seek to fracture) to tell the IRA to call a ceasefire?
We all know this circular argument. It's as knotted as the majority/minority conundrum, which, in the case of the North, is either democracy or gerrymandering, depending upon whether you take a six county or 32 county perspective. But still, it is endlessly re-enacted, like some interminable morality play in which we all know the lines, the plot, the hypocrisies the non ending.
For decency's sake, for his own sake, for his party's sake, Pat Doherty should have condemned, unreservedly the murder of Jerry McCabe and then reminded John Bowman that splitting republicanism is a marvellous way to go about securing a ceasefire. Everybody knows that's the reality. We had the same Sinn Fein and media pharisaism when Gerry Adams carried the coffin of the Shankill Road fish shop bomber, Thomas Begley.
Anyway, if Doherty's hypocrisy and Bowman's sanctimoniousness weren't enough to depress you, Paisley weighed in with some disgraceful rabble rousing on No Offence ... Ireland's Other Protestants. The other Protestants of the title referred to the 148,000 who live in the Republic. In 1911 according to Joe Lee, there were 327,000 Protestants in the 26 counties. By 1961, the figure had dropped to a low of 128,000.
Lee said that 60 per cent of the drop in population took place between 1911 and 1926, with huge numbers emigrating after partition. Paisley interpreted the figures as evidence of "the genocide of an entire community they have been largely eliminated". It's easy to laugh, to dismiss this nonsense as characteristic Paisley bluster. But there are enough clowns who believe him and that's where the joke ends.
For their own parts, the survivors of the genocidal purge appeared relatively happy. Neither "Fenian lovers" nor "Orange bigots" as the extremes would have them they were content to be Irish. Catholic dogma, such as the ne temere decree, was oppressive to Protestants in the Republic, but the increasing, if belated, separation of church and State, while it still has a way to go, is in everybody's best interests.
Of course, in Paisleyite demonology, the survivors of the Free State's final solution are a cowed and broken rump, afraid of causing offence to the Catholic dictators who surround them. But it's just not true. A hardline Papacy, clerical scandals and increased affluence have nudged a great number of middle class Catholics towards a kind of modern, Protestantised self governance, albeit at some expense to generalised compassion. Just look at contemporary Ireland.
Back on Questions and Answers, O'Brien displayed a wonderful mastery of the siege mentality by casting the Alliance Party panellist, Mary Clark Glass, as a nationalist. Thus, he claimed, he was outnumbered three to one. He wasn't, but even if he was, according to his own logic, he should just put up and shut up. After all, is that not what minorities are for, if the United Kingdom Unionist Party argument over Mitchell is to be accepted?
And so the game goes on ... and on ... and on. The previous weekend, Eoghan Harris presented his authored documentary for Channel 4's Frontline. A polemical piece nothing in itself wrong with that it ranted its way to farce. At one point, Harris performed a fatuous Sister Wendy routine in front of J.P. Keating's painting Men of the South. He can hardly have produced such comedy since he got Twink to strut her stuff for Fine Gael.
"Look at the poncey hairstyle ... and the dandification, the special silk cravat the Chicago gangster's hat." There was more ranting about "Hitler" and killers "doing the sensitive intellectual bit". At another point in the show, Harris stood at Beal na mBlath. He was wearing a black leather jacket, which, if subjected to his own style of criticism, could be described as "55 high fashion".
But that would be unfair and idiotic. That is not criticism. It is not even iconoclasm. It is vulgar abuse, cheap and dangerous. Anybody can do this sort of traducing of images they do not like. Indeed, such hyperbole is a staple of ridiculing the inherent con job of tacky game shows and low grade mass entertainment junk. But it has no place in an allegedly serious, albeit polemical, documentary about a fraught political problem. If an Irish nationalist started this codology in a British art gallery, they'd be right to throw him out.
As to the central thesis in Harris's show that John Hume has been fooled by republicans and has inadvertently given them a lifeline which we will all regret well, who knows? The idea of Hume as a gullible do gooder, blinded to political realities by the prospects of peace and/or personal greatness, is extremely patronising. It is conceivable that Hume may have got it wrong, but you'd tend to trust his judgment against that of a man who rages about poncey haircuts in a painting which lionises a politics he opposes. A polemic may eschew balance, but not common sense.
STILL, if documentary, current affairs and polemic depicted a North almost beyond resolution, drama offered glimpses of some encouraging truths. Graham Reid's The Precious Blood featured Amanda Burton as widow's Rosie Willis, a Catholic, whose Protestant husband was murdered by paramilitaries 12, years earlier, and Kevin McNally as Billy McVea, a former loyalist paramilitary, now a born again Christian preacher.
Rosie believes the IRA murdered her husband and, as a result, her teenage son, John (Michael Legge) hates Catholics. She determines to find her husband's killer. Billy runs a boxing gym (which wayward John joins) when he's not trying to pray his guilt and remorse into submission. There was a diluting inevitability about the plot's resolution of course, it was Billy who murdered Rosie's unknown to her, informing UVF husband but the characterisation and Belfastness of the drama were gripping.
It is difficult in such a labelling society as Belfast's to make characters simultaneously representative and human. If the labels Protestant/loyalist, Catholic/republican are ignored, the play risks sacrificing authenticity, for the labels are not totally untrue. If, on the other hand, the labels are unquestioned, the characters are likely to be impervious to subtleties. The colours of their loyalties glow too garishly.
But Belfast born Reid knows all this. Distilling the Troubles into personal relationships, without skewing either the labels or the characters, is a moral balancing act. Perhaps the reactions of Rosie seemed peculiarly frozen 12 years after her husband's murder she had neither disintegrated nor found an agony alleviating acceptance. But her motivations, based on false premises, allowed Reid to explore the consequences of belief.
The reformed Billy believed in belief, big time. He sweated his prayers and his sermons but ultimately, could not bridge the gap between his notion of faith and Rosie's notion of justice. To pay his debt he accepts that he must give way to the wronged party's legitimate desire for justice. His past, which robbed Rose of her future, demands that he repay on terms not just of his own atonement.
Filmed in just three weeks The Precious Blood, despite the inevitability of its denouement, was the best television about the North in some time. Perhaps the specific nature of Northern state" justice remained suspiciously unblemished after all, all the killing could hardly have taken place under a just establishment but, that aside, this was compelling enough to hold viewers even though the ending was obvious from too early on. Crucially, it sought balance. For the most part, it achieved it too.
IN lighter vein, A Stretch in the Evening went to Drogheda, where young girls and probably many not so young girls think that soccer star Gary Kelly is "a babe". Gary is a little embarrassed by being called a babe but as soccer stars go, he seemed personable real, reminiscing about his underage drinking "behind the wall" in the Marian Park housing estate.
RTE's summer magazine programmes are, traditionally, too aerated, but this mix of events, bilingualism, pop videos and interviews had a busyness which helped it to jog along. Mary Kennedy, leaving aside the "what did he eat" guff she engaged in with the bloke from Co Meath, who "took afternoon tea with Prince Charles", was an appropriately lively presenter. But reporters Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh and Gerry Curran ought to, tone down the exuberance a bit. I know it's summer and all that, but the Hi De Hi ebullience is too intrusive. Relax folks! Make a holiday out of it.
The chairman of Louth County Council Frank Godfrey, featured in a retina piercing scarlet suit, which, I understand, was intended to make him look like King William of Orange. The mayor of Balbriggan, Frank Carson, told a few jokes. No crackers, but funny enough. It was all pantomime politics, I suppose. But, after seeing the performances of the heavyweights in the week the Northern talks nominally began, it was, at least, codology in its proper place.