The last election volleys occurred on the evening on May 16th, 2002, and the loudspeakers finally fell silent, writes Kevin Myers. The election to end all elections was over. Grizzled old veteran hacks lifted their noses above the keyboards, but cautiously, just in case some trigger-happy politician had not heard about the armistice, or was prepared to ignore it, in order to sneak in a final speech.
Never again, these surviving journalists murmured. Never again, and as they recalled their many colleagues who had fallen in electoral action, they knew that no one in civvy street would ever understand what they had been through. And we'll never tell them, they resolved as they cast they weary, bloodshot eyes over a desolate battlefield of old posters, oppositional ineptitude and empty, witless rhetoric.
Their minds went back to their fallen comrades, whose corpses littered the campaign trail. In the early days, they had all been so young, so green. For some, it was their first time in action, and they were totally unprepared for the poison gas of egotism that drives politics. Many of the early victims of this noxious vapour had perished terribly, their bodies crumpled alongside the hustings, hideous rictuses across their faces reminding observers how they had choked and died in agony.
Egyptian mummification
What passing bells for hacks who die as cattle? Only the monstrous tedium of the Dáil, Only the stuttering TDs' vapid prattle Serves as their enduring funeral pall. The death journalists feared most of all was known as Ennui-ensis Pharaoensis, after the Egyptian mummification technique, which involved sucking out the royal cadaver's brains through straws stuck up its nostrils. Journalists were to find that listening to Jackie Healy-Rae or Joe Higgins at close range produced much the same effect. Editors had had to improvise hurriedly, urging their staff to breathe through urine-soaked handkerchiefs when talking face to face with candidates. Not merely did it confer some limited protection: it was also considerably more fragrant.
But handkerchiefs conferred no protection whatever against the heavy artillery of the morning briefings. Many of those who did not perish immediately in this daily assault on the intellect soon went mad. Some wandered out into the desolation of no-man's land, mumbling gibberish. If caught by politicians, they were blindfolded and tied to a stake before being summarily preached to death by a talking-squad of county councillors who were in training for future Dáil elections.
Bloodied survivors
Newsrooms at night-time became terrible places, the few broken, bloodied journalistic survivors of meaningless assaults on meaningless electoral features trickling back one by one. "What happened to Sean?"
"Didn't make it. Copped a packet at a rally just outside Thurles. A Michael Lowry wink right between the eyes at one hundred yards. Didn't stand a chance, poor beggar. With his dying breath, he asked me to give his laptop to his eldest son. A good man gone." The hack sobbed. "And for what? WHAT, I ASK YOU?"
"Steady, Simon," said a colleague, taking a pipe out his mouth, and taking his friend by the shoulder. "Buck up now. He had a job to do, and he did it, and the best thing for us chaps now is to carry on where he left off. That's what he would have wanted."
He looked squarely out of the window. "Well, strike me pink," he breathed, pointing with his pipe. "Here come a couple of our fellows now. And by Jove, they look as if they're in trouble."
Two journalists could be seen weaving towards the front door, both badly shot up, one with only half his undercarriage down. They had been comprehensively bored, talked at, patronised and riddled with political flak. Nightfighters had strafed them stem to stern during party political broadcasts. Their mental engines were misfiring, and they appeared to have trouble staying on the straight and level.
The newsroom survivors exchanged grim looks and silently crossed their fingers as the first returning hack came lumbering in. He landed heavily in the newsroom, bounced twice and slewed into sports, where - sports journalists having had nothing better to do in recent weeks - he was promptly eaten.
The second hack did a circuit of the building, and then came in again.
"He's too low," cried a hack. "He'll never make it!"
As if the incoming hack had actually heard these words, he lurched upwards and gained height.
"Well done old fellow! Steady as she goes. You can make it. Go on, go on!"
The hack now began to come down smoothly. But just at the last minute, something in him gave, his wing tilted, and it hit the newsroom door-frame. He instantly cart-wheeled across the floor, and burst into flames.
Price of democracy
A stricken silence fell over the gallant few.
"The poor devils never stood a bally chance," choked one of them.
"The price we pay for democracy," whispered the Editor, as the pyre crackled furiously, casting odd shadows on the newsroom walls.
"Too high. The price is too high," sobbed an ageing hack who in peacetime had been a diarist. "This must be the election to end all elections. It's time for the Army to step in, to intern all political life-forms on Rockall, where they can be used as target practice for the Air Corps. From now, elections should only be what Chinese men get on their wedding nights."
For probably the first and only time in his utterly despicable life, the wretch was making sense.