RADIO REVIEW: Not a lot of people know this: adults who work in Dublin city centre constitute a very small minority indeed of the State's population. Or maybe people know it and just conveniently forgot it in this week's rush to controversy. Why else would the comfort and convenience of this elite minority have become the focus of so much media sympathy in the run-up to Tuesday evening's soccer celebration? Even Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) dug her campaigning zeal out of Montrose cold storage.
Personally, I'm all for Reclaiming the Streets as much as the next anarchist. In most circumstances, I'd fight against a public platform for lip-synching corporate pop. In general, I think Joe Duffy's struggle with his own worst instincts tends to be more successful in a radio studio than on stage in front of 100,000 people and millions more TV viewers. In my heart, I rebel at the sight of the FAI suits getting their evening in the sun.
However, among the many things that were dodgy about Tuesday evening, I don't count the fact that the event's location suited the lesser species of mammies, kids and teenagers better than it did the media's beloved "working adults". Yes, in 1988, I was lucky enough to chase around Parnell Square under the wheels of an open-topped bus to sing-along with Ray Houghton; and in 1990, I joined the massed ranks who, unable to see or hear much in College Green, wriggled off to the pub to cheer on Cameroon against England. And great days they were, begob, but not the only sort.
As for memories of 1994, it's a shame no one managed to interrupt the earnest presenter and the still more earnest journo who, on Tuesday's Five Seven Live (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday), earnestly discussed that year's (non-)event under the apparent misconception that it involved a potentially dangerous bus-into-town situation, rather than a lark in the park. Evidently they must have been mere babbies at the time, bless 'em, and anyway accuracy is never a priority in these contrived arguments.
Say what you like about Eamon Dunphy - and I know you generally do - but on The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday), amid the by-now-ridiculous profusion of listeners' comments about how wonderful Dunphy is, you could at least hear a few questions about the cause for celebration, rather than just about the location. The same goes, only more so, for Off the Ball (NewsTalk 106, Monday to Friday), where Ger Gilroy and the lads repeatedly wondered aloud about, oh, say, whether the fact that every game was transformed in our favour when Damien Duff moved to the wing suggested he should have started there; or whether perhaps the Irish team management should have ensured that our players knew they were facing only 10 Spanish players during extra time. (One can only imagine the combination of fatigue, tension, noise and chaos that meant classy defenders such as Steve Finnan and Gary Breen failed to notice the disappearance of an opposing striker; but this, as Finnan told Off the Ball, is exactly what happened.)
Too technical for you? If football is only significant to you as a quadrennial opportunity to hear a lot of loose talk about the essence of the national character (ours and theirs), then you've been well looked after. At one point, The Last Word managed to assemble a panel on which Fintan O'Toole was - wait for it - the pre-eminent soccer expert (Anthony Cronin and Colm Tóibín were the reason O'Toole qualified for that faint praise.) Apart from altogether fascinating stuff about the relationship between the individual and the collective in post-Tiger Ireland, O'Toole's main revelation, graciously shared with Dunphy, was that Roy Was Right.
O'Toole said he had only come to realise this of late, having previously assumed Roy Was Barmy for thinking Ireland could win the World Cup.
Dunphy, unfortunately, was not the man to make the obvious riposte, which would have gone along these lines: "Hold on, Fintan. Yes, it's obvious now that Ireland were potential winners, but all Keane's outburst achieved was to make that outcome less likely by depriving the side of his services. His complaints about the preparations and management can hardly be justified after four games in which Ireland were the fitter, better-functioning unit on every occasion. For Jayzus' sake."
Personally, I buy the line of another great football captain: Franz Was Right. Beckenbauer says, according to repeated discussions on BBC Radio 5 Live, that the physical and psychological pressures on the best players at the top European clubs has diminished this World Cup, with what should be the classiest footballers and teams turning dysfunctional and failing to perform. Outside Ireland, away from the parochial terms of Mick v Roy, sensible observers will eventually file the Keane affair under this heading.
No, I doubt that interpretation will persuade Dunphy, who, even away from the football (if such a place exists), has been sounding frayed this weather. On Tuesday evening, for example, he said something grossly unfair about one of his programme's great assets, Robert Fisk. A listener's message called attention to that day's Jerusalem suicide bomb, asked if the programme was going to cover it and complained that if Israel had inflicted that sort of carnage on Palestinians, the show would be all over it.
Dunphy said the listener was making a fair point, that "we" were aware of the problem of bias in the show's coverage of the Middle East, personified by Fisk, and that steps would be taken to address it, including an extended interview with Israeli ambassador Mark Sofer the following evening. In implicitly accepting that Fisk was less than fit to report on the mass-murder of Israelis, this was both disgraceful and stupid, since he has done some of the most outraged and impassioned reporting from such scenes of devastation. And in explicitly stating that the way to "balance" a journalist is with an ambassador, this was a travesty of the ethics and values of our profession, such as they are.
Along with the battering inflicted upon Cherie Blair this week for her comments about suicide bombers, this was perhaps a sign of media retrenchment on the Middle East, an impatience with informed explanations about the causes that lie behind dreadful events (been there, done that). At any rate, on Wednesday, the charming and articulate Sofer did the job he is paid to do as a mouthpiece of his government, and Dunphy's questioning was far from incisive - though he did try to say one or two nice things about Fisk before the interview started.
Eamo has also sounded increasingly uncomfortable this week with Navan Man's vicious spoofs on the poor NewsTalk 106 newsreaders. On Monday, he laughed; on Tuesday, he said: "You've got to stop doing those sketches"; and on Wednesday, he used the most telling of all Irish put-downs, silence. Yes, the sketches were cruel and unusual punishment for relatively inexperienced journalists (and for a company that has flatteringly imitated, and courted, Dunphy), but their mimicry of the fractured syntax and stumbling pronunciation that frequently mars "20/20 News" was hilariously "spot-on".
If NewsTalk doesn't like it, it should work on its editing. When - to cite just one example - a word such as "Perugia" is mispronounced once by a newsreader ("Purr-ugh-ee-a"), it's a kind of funny expression of her innocence; when it's mispronounced three hours running, as I heard on Wednesday, it's a sign of the inadequacy of the organisation.
hbrowne@irish-times.ie