An Irish woman’s social, political and domestic commentary
I see Bertie is still claiming to have attended UCD. He admitted that he went to a few public lectures there as opposed to actually being registered as a student.
His lack of eduction has filtered through to the ‘youth zone’ on the website of his Department. The concept of the possessive apostrophe appears to have evaded his fine mind.
ER’s fatal strategy
Memo to producers of ER: Why, oh why, did you make Carter the central character? What a disaster.
Filling the vacum left by the increasingly gorgeous George Clooney was always going to be difficult. Apart from his faint-inducing good looks he also supplied plenty of angst through his highly complex relationship with Carol. But there must be other fabulously good looking men in the world who can play out tortous internal and romantic conflicts on Sunday nights for softies like me.
John Carter (Noah Wyle) is not even qualified to apply for membership of the “ohmygodheissogorgeous” club. He’s too young, too skinny. His hair is thin. His eyes are mean. He’s rich! He loves his Granny! Ok, he got stabbed and became a drug addict, but his recovery did not endow him with a sense of authority – just doubt. His love for Abby lacks depth. He doesn’t trust her. He just doesn’t get that look in his eyes like his heart is breaking. This other demi-God can do it.
The decision to make Carter the lead character of the ER is all the more puzzling when the actually gorgeous and suitably tortured soul of Kovac is available. He’s got the great hair, jawline, sexy accent, beautiful eyes and his wife and children were killed in a war! This is Hearthrob Creation 101 content.
I need to get a job in telly.
Evil Richard Exposed
Well it happened at last, but what a disappointment. Gail finally begins to doubt her darling husband but it takes a suspiciously easily extracted confession to finally open her eyes. She challenges him, he confesses, resolution appears to be on the horizon…but then what? She goes into an utterly unconvincing state of shock which sees her attempt to argue that Evil Richards’s confession was false. Rather than anger she descends into self-pity. The script is poor, the acting awful. Making her the central character was always going to be problematical given the level of her unattractiveness. Gail looks like someone took a chisel to her chin and a hedge clippers to her hair. Sarah’s reaction is far more credible as is Audrey’s. Steve and Karen relieve matters somewhat by taking delight in the search for bodies at the flat site.
Apparently Richard (who is currently on the run) shows up and we have to endure a kidnapping scene before he is safely put behind bars. I’ll keep watching but begrudgingly so.
One longs for the days of the Racquel/Curly/Des triangle. That was acting.
Well its official. We now live in Bonga Bonga land. Today’s headlines are:
“Bertie buys bigger plane” – We will have 3 government jets soon! The existing one, a new bigger one and then a new smaller one.
“Taoiseach allowed to break the speed limit”. The garda commissioner says the Taoiseach can break the speed limit.
Aaagh!
Things Oriental
More on Zuleika, Byron etc (see post on 12 Feb).
Hugh corrects me (his forté it appears). He says that the interest in that certain class was not particularly inspired by Byron’s poem but an interest in all things “Oriental” at that time. He recommends the book by Edward Said “Western Concepts of the Orient” for those interested in such matters.
More on the war
This is a great article by Terry Jones in the Observer. Sums up it all up nicely I think.
Venezuela and the International Media
Last April I heard an extraordinary interview on Today FM’s The Last Word presented by Fintan O’Toole. It was with a woman I know vaguely called Kim who was in Venezuela making a documentary about Hugo Chavez, their charismatic President. Chavez had been elected in a landslide victory some year’s previously and had introduced a constitution which was put to the people in a referendum and supported by a strong majority. During her interviews with him, a coup took place which was reversed within 24 hours and which gave her a unique opportunity to film the events firsthand. The documentary was shown on RTE on Tuesday night and it is one of the most powerful pieces of television I’ve ever seen. See here for more info.
Chavez’ big problem was that the people who elected him were the poor. The middle classes and the CIA weren’t too happy. Venezuela is the world’s fourth largest exporter of oil. The oil is owned by the state but had been controlled by an elite who kept the profits amongst themselves. Chavez’ goal was to get the price of oil increased and distribute the revenue in a manner which would benefit the poor: the same people who had elected him. Sounds like democracy to me…but not the United States.
The documentary showed Colin Powell and the head of the CIA briefing various Senate committees assuring them that Chavez was not a democrat and that they were concerned about his rule. This was a man who was elected by 80% of the people!
Anyway, on April 11, the anti-Chavez people conducted a huge rally. A counter demonstration by pro-Chavez people took place. The two marches headed towards each other and the police were in-between. Suddenly snipers began shooting on the pro-Chavez crowd. 10 were killed. 100 injured. Some of the pro-Chavez people tried to shoot back at the snipers. The pictures were captured by one of the privately owned TV channels and broadcast around the country and, via CNN, around the world. But what did they show? They showed one narrow shot of the pro-Chavez people shooting and the commentary indicated that they were shooting on the anti-Chavez demonstrators, which was not the case at all.
That night,a coup took place. Chavez was taken prisoner when he refused to resign. A new president was sworn in and it was announced that the constitution and the Supreme Court were being disbanded.
And what was going on in the White House? Ari Fleischer briefed the media that Chavez was a brutal ruler who had had the army shoot peaceful demonstrators and the US government were relieved that he had resigned (lie! he never did) and that a democratic government that had the support of the people was in office. LIE LIE LIE.
Unfortunately (for the new government and the US and Ari) the people demonstrated (peacefully) demanding that Chavez be returned. They had the momemtum and within 24 hours everything had turned around. Chavez was back to fight another day. And there were plenty of those.
So here’s the important point. The White House and CNN briefed the world that:
– Chavez was not a democrat (Lie)
– he was not supported by the people (lie)
– he had shot at peaceful protesters (lie)
– he had resigned (lie)
– there was a democractic government in place (lie)
– the US were hopeful that the status quo (ie pre-Chavez) was restored (true).
Here’s the link for Ari’s briefing that day.
Here’s the one a few day’s later where he’s trying to back track. I must find out who “Terry” is. Terry was on to something but not quite clear on the facts.
Day of Protest
Just a short note to acknowledge my participation in the march on Saturday. What a glorious day. The sun shone all day and the humour was great. And finally, finally, there was evidence that the Irish do actually care about something! I marched with the Socialist Workers and Anarchists. They had all the best slogans:
George Bush, we know you. Your Daddy was a killer too!
George Bush, get this straight, Ireland’s not a US state!
Bush, Blair, CIA, how many kids did you kill today?
and the peace one
You can’t stop the people cos the people have power and the power of the people can’t stop.
We all had whistles as well and my ears are still ringing from their overuse.
Will this do any good? Probably not, but its important to do it anyway.
What Liberal Media?
Here’s a piece my brother sent to me. An interview with journalist Eric Alterman whose book “What Liberal Media?” shows how the press are actually quite soft on Bush and the Republicans. Looks really interesting.
In a sort-of-similar vein, I noticed how journalists fell over themselves to praise the superficiality of FF’s campaign in the last election. Ace reporter Charlie Bird has even made several public speeches about how slickly managed their PR campaign was. In other words, the journalists themselves are praising the spin doctors for spinning them so well!
Its clear that they see the investment in PR as a flattery to which they eagerly respond. These egocentric hacks, while acknowledging that a system has been constructed in order to manage them, are so overcome by the adulation that their warm giddy feelings are transparently included in the copy. There was one honourable exception to this and that was George Lee, who alone continued to question Charlie McCreevy about the dodgy figures.
The tide has turned a little in that Tony O’Reilly has not forgiven the government for letting the FAI sell the football coverage to Sky, thus screwing Chorus, his ailing cable company. During one week last summer the Independent group went on the attack and is only starting to let up now. With FG establishing new communications sytems it will be interesting to see how things develop over the course of this government. I’ll be monitoring things closely…..
Powell the Pscyhic
Powell was making his presentation to the Senate Intelligence Committee detailing the contents of the so-called Osama tape hours before it was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. How did they know what was on it? Their own people admit that they didn’t test it for voice recognition but “believed” it to be Osama – there’s a get out clause if ever I saw one. In the meantime Al-Jazeera themselves said it doesn’t prove any link with Iraq.
Do they really think we’ll swallow this excrement? And don’t they realise that by being so blatantly propagandist that when something serious actually does happen, no one will believe them?
And as for the tanks at Heathrow?? They were personally ordered there by Blair – NOT the police. What do they take us for?
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