IRONIC that Sean Lemass, a man so angered by clerical hostility to Irish nationalism should have been profiled by a litany of contributions characteristic of the Lives of the Saints. The profile's title The Pragmatic Patriot indicated that Lemass was a politician to the core. But the treatment was straight hagiographic litany: Sean Lemass, taoiseach among taoisigh; Sean Lemass, neither socialist nor capitalist; Sean Lemass, a cumann in every parish; Sean Lemass, deliverer of modern Ireland; Sean Lemass, pray for us.
Lemass may indeed have been a taoiseach among taoisigh, but he certainly didn't get a documentary among documentaries with this profile. Oh, there was an engaging use of archive footage, an impressive list of contributors and a worthy subject - but it all added up to too much PR. Perhaps it was intended as a jaunty, tribute programme on the 25th anniversary of Lemass's death. But, really, it needed a strong dose of the pragmatism it was eulogising to lift it above the level of a promotional video.
There is a disturbing lack of proportion in the history Ireland is happy to tell itself nowadays. Principally, it has got to do with a power elite - in politics, business and the media - aggrandising its role in shaping our present.
The story, as it is being recounted in the 1990s, has cast the pre 1960s as a dark age of austere, de Valeran idealism and the period since then as a brave new world, peopled by young Europeans, with business degrees, who don't even need to learn history anymore.
The wider context becomes diminished with this sort of back slapping and ego tripping. It's all so contradictory too. The new bourgeoisie, sipping French wine and revelling in their Europeanness, need a story which extols Irish activism and demeans the influence of the wider world. Ireland was going to change profoundly anyway after 1960. So, Sean Lemass was taoiseach at the time and Gay Byrne's Late Late Show began. These were key people in key positions to catch the wave - but the wave was coming anyway.
Much was made of Lemass's prowess as a poker bluffer. Here was a man, who, with a pair of threes, could raise the stakes to frighten off a very wealthy opponent holding a full house. Fair enough, but when you can afford to lose more than your opponent, the cards are stacked in your favour to begin with. Undeniably, there's a pragmatism in recognising that. But, as an illustration of heroic qualities, the poker anecdotes were some way short of a royal flush.
Brian Farrell spoke about the early Lemass as appearing to come from "the unthinking Fenian tradition, some of which is reflected in the Provos today". The ease with which "unthinking" was slipped, in was worrying. The thinking of the Fenian tradition may, or may not, accord with your own. But to characterise it as atavistic or half baked seems dangerously smug. Implicit again is a belief in an assumed contemporary sophistication and that, in itself, seems deeply unthinking.
Still, such was the speed with which contributors had to sum up Lemass, that it was impossible for them to supply context to their own remarks. Old footage was the best part of The Pragmatic Patriot. Eoin O'Duffy and his Blueshirts surely seemed comical, even in their heyday. The Ormonde Hotel, with O'Duffy ranting from a first floor window to a crowd of beefy farmers in uniform, rather lacked the spectacle (and the menace) of the Fuhrer at Nuremburg.
John McCormack singing at the Eucharistic Congress, film of Dublin's slums, The Beatles and JFK in Ireland all invoked the moods of their times. Somehow though, the story told with these images as backdrop seemed too snug. Sean Lemass deserves to be remembered and with the ongoing debunking of Dev's Ireland (much of it justified) his status continues to rise. But a more businesslike, hard headed appraisal is required. Lemass - the Pragmatic Profile remains to be made.
ON Tuesday Prime Time screen a Danish documentary on European agriculture. It would have gladdened the heart of any Blueshirt. Rich farmers, it alleged, are getting richer and richer. Benefiting most from subsidies the wealthiest 20 per cent receive 80 per cent of the loot (leaving the rest to reverse these figures) big farmers are not only on the pig's back but on the hacks of taxpayers, consumers and small farmers.
Oliver Walston, a Cambridge cereal farmer, who is making a mint from subsidies, agreed that the system is crazy. Listening to him talk about the £100 billion a year doled out to farmers by taxpayers and consumers, it was difficult not to think that major cereal farmers are scarcely less criminal than serial killers. Then again, who would hand back the cheques?
But there is extravagant idiocy in European farming. In Spain, grapes, which nobody wants, are grown. Sometimes alcohol is extracted from them and exported to Brazil, where it's used as fuel for cars. Better still is the subsidy for planting wheat on the arid Spanish plateau, where it cannot grow. In Greece, tobacco farming receives a subsidy of £3 million a day, but the crop is of such poor quality that nobody wants to smoke it.
The programme visited New Zealand (a country which prefers rugby to soccer, so how can it be taken seriously?) where farm subsidies were abolished 12 years ago. The move seems to have worked for the Kiwis and per haps Europe could learn from this, although there are huge differences between a little country and a hugely diversified continent.
Whatever the reality of EU subsidies - and they do appear to have become a monster which politicians will not tackle - it is clear that big, farmers are sucking too many people dry. Big industries usually do the same to small industries so we should not be surprised at farmers. But change will not, be easy. Oliver, Walston, the essence of discretion when it came to telling the truth about the great rip off, indicated how primal farmers can be about owning land.
"The drive to own land and the sex drive are about the same, he said, wobbling his hand to indicate the delicacy of the balance. Is this true? Are there comfortable Fine Gael farmers all over Ireland who would look at lush, rolling hills like you might expect them to look at, say, Pamela Anderson? Do they say things like "Will ya look at the grass on that?"
If these people are motivated by such instincts, it's little wonder that politicians shift shy of them. But, on a serious level, this was a disturbing documentary which hammered home the point that, in European agriculture, it's not only cattle that have been engaged in cannibalism. Big farmers are eating small farmers and, something needs to be done about a subsidy system which is haywire.
OVER in Burma (now known as Myanmar) it is the Year of the Tourist. Myanmar's dictator Ne Win (no comical Blueshirt, this guy) could do without tourists like John Pilger, whose report documented massacre, torture, slavery, child labour and an assortment of Western baddies keen to exploit the country's oil, gas and tourism industries.
There is a scornful tone in Pilger documentaries which repetition risks transforming into self righteousness. His contempt is justified, of course, but leaving viewers feeling impotent distances them from him. What is the average, concerned couch potato in Ireland or Britain to do about the horrors he exposes? And, no mistake, he reported on horrors in Network First: Inside Burma Land of Fear which we should all know about.
Ne Win, an army general, seized power in 1962. In the early years, he was a playboy. Now he promotes puritanism - at least in public. Amateur video tape of some of his thugs shooting - re shooting, actually - demonstrators in hospital was as savage as anything I've ever seen screened on television. The thugs went on to force cemetery workers to bury some people alive and insisted that other still living people be cremated.
In 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of assassinated Burmese independence leader, Aung San won 82 per cent of the vote in national elections. But Ne Win was having none of that democracy nonsense. She was placed under house arrest and won the Nobel, peace prize, while Ne Win, held onto power. Pilger interviewed Suu Kyi. She said all the right things and still dreams of reclaiming the democracy she won in the elections.
Perhaps she will. But the powers stacked against her are formidable. More than anything else, the absence of TV cameras has allowed Ne Win to hold onto power and Pilger's programme will be wounding. Whatever though, about seriously influencing Burma's future the debunking of the Asian "tiger economies" (built, basically, on work regimes which are little better than slave labour) was a good evening's work. Excellent documentary... but what to do?
THE rescreening, for its 10th anniversary, of the Self Aid concert was sad. Do you remember the lunacy of "job pledges"? How was this supposed to work? Because they were watching a pop concert, employers were going to create jobs? Has anybody got a Self Aid created job today? Did anybody ever have one? Was this not just as mad as the Blueshirts?
And those 1980s fashions? Suit coats with the sleeves, Miami Vice style, pulled up to the elbows; American football shirts and white shoes . . . please! The 1980s so sneered at the styles of the 1970s (albeit, rightly so) that it was good to give the smug decade a taste of its own medicine. But it was the gruff from the stage which was really sad. Help yourselves," the hand leaders said and the teenagers cheered.
One group carried as a banner, on which was written, "We Can Work It Out". The "We" presumably meant the yoof and the pop stars. In one way, it was winningly naive; in another, it was outrageous nonsense. The trouble too was that it was demeaningly derivative. The Live Aid concert of the previous year certainly helped Ethiopian famine victims. But an Irish version to create employment. . Maybe it was all well intentioned, but it was idiotic too. Even the hands produced few highlights. Somehow, you felt, everybody knew in their hearts that it was too daft.