Incest at RTE

Perhaps the best way to define incest is by an example. The following case was described this week in many papers around the world. This article is from the Irish Independent:

JONATHAN PEARLMAN – 12 DECEMBER 2013

Twelve children have been removed from a camp in a remote bushland area in Australia after authorities exposed a horrific case of incest involving several generations of the same family.

Labelled the worst instance of incest in the nation's history, the case was exposed after locals spotted malnourished children in a valley who were not attending school. It involved 40 adults and children from four generations who lived in squalid caravans, tents and sheds about 20 miles from the nearest town.

Twelve children ranging in age from five to 16 years old were found in the camp, eleven of whom came from related parents. One child said he and his siblings were told never to tell anyone that their father was their grandfather.

The incest dated back decades and the children belonged to five different mothers, including three sisters aged 47, 46 and 33 who slept with their brother. Some of the children could not speak intelligibly, were shy and developmentally delayed, had poor hearing and sight, and were incapable of using a toothbrush, toilet paper or washing themselves. Some reportedly had physical deformities caused by having parents with identical gene patterns.

The other two mothers included a daughter of one of the sisters and were both found to be born from related parents. One of these mothers had a child who died of Zellweger syndrome, a rare genetic disease.

Genetic testing showed the incest may have been repeated over generations and involved children as young as five. There was no suggestion the families were part of a religious cult.

Authorities in Australia have not revealed the name of the family or the location of the camp, though it is understood to be south-west of Sydneynear a town of 2000 people.

The sets of families apparently derived from a couple who married in New Zealand in 1966 and moved to Australia in the 1970s. As the group grew larger, it moved around Australia to avoid detection.

Since being taken into care, children as young as eight have revealed they have been sexually abused by underage siblings and cousins.

The children were discovered last year after police raided the camp, which had no electricity or running water. Locals had alerted authorities after observing several children who were not attending school. After the raid, one police officer told colleagues she would never recover from what she observed.

Locals said the families lived on an isolated farm but the men worked in the district and family members would shop in the town.

"Apart from the noise of the chainsaws, they didn't really worry us," a neighbour told The Sydney Morning Herald. "I knew there were children living up there, but I never heard any noise of laughing or playing."

The Children's Court in the state ofNew South Wales said there was evidence of "intergenerational incest" and ordered that the children be removed from the camp. They have since been placed with foster parents.

Authorities in the state of Victoria have also removed children from a related family which was not living in the camp.

The parents have been ordered to stay away from the children and one of the mothers has been charged after attempting to remove her child from care.

The children have come forward with harrowing reports of abuse. A 13-year-old girl reported sexual contact with her uncle, aged 9, while her aunt, aged 8, watched on. Two sisters aged 7 and 9 reported sexual contact with their brothers, aged 12, 14 and 15.

Four of the mothers have disputed the genetic evidence and insisted the children were from unrelated fathers. The men named as fathers were reportedly all dead or could not be located.

The consequence of inbreeding within families or those with close genetic ties becomes manifest in genetic conditions and mutations. In an Irish context incest is encountered too frequently  through our  exposure to horrific cases of child abuse.  It is only a few weeks since the brother of Gerry Adams was jailed for having sexually abused his own daughter over a period of many years.

The practice of incest can be recognised on the level of sexual relations and its near universal taboo is primarily based upon the consequence of mutation, of dysmorphia and various congenital conditions that arise out of these unnatural unions.  One might ask then in the absence of genetic consequence, in the absence of disease, pathology, or observable mutation, might it become acceptable for sexual relations to occur between siblings or a father and a daughter? If perhaps those relations begin when both parties are adults and as such are deemed consensual, where is the harm in such relations?

To most of us, regardless of the presence or absence of observable, genetic consequence, the practice of incest remains abhorrent, at least when it is between relatives of immediate family members.  However, as the distance between relatives increases, so too does our collective tolerance for the practice. Sexual relations between cousins, are not as frowned upon, and in many cultures it is not unusual for relations, or arranged marriages to occur between men and the children of their brothers and sisters their nephews and nieces.  Sexual relations between Woody Allen and the adopted daughter of his girlfriend of 10 years Mia Farrow, are an example of a type of relations within immediate family that are somewhat acceptable once the genetic implications have been removed. Incest is clearly the point at which the fickle laws of morality are at odds with the more definitive principles of genetics and biology.

Historically, incest has been practised to preserve familial wealth and power, or the to serve the twisted psychology of the perpetrators when  visited  upon children or innocents.  Few of us need be reminded of the practice of Pharaohs who were quite often wedded to a sibling.  The Pharaoh then engaged in the age old practice of concubinage in order to circumvent genetic principles and provide the dynasty with a healthy blood line. The Pharaohs (or the priestly administrators of their empires) were attempting to protect themselves from contamination of their status as deities, as such they could not be seen to adulterate their pedigree with the seed of mere mortals.

This desire to protect the lineage from adulteration or to keep outsiders at bay, is preserved in the practice of incest within contemporary social groups.  The Irish travelling community for example have a high rate of genetic conditions that are a consequence of the reluctance of that community to engage in relations with outsiders amongst the 'settled' community.  In many cases marriages between members of the travelling community are arranged and are on occasion are  between those of near genetic relatives.  

The practice of arranged marriages in many  middle eastern cultures are preserved for similar and entirely preservational reasons. What differs only is the commodity that is being preserved; wealth, culture, religion or political power, incest remains an act of preservation, albeit a preservation from the 'contamination' of distant, a different and sometimes healthier genetic material.

The Australian case described above differs in the inclusion of horrific abuse, and in the breaking of the near universal taboo against relations between siblings, and between parents and children.  However the 'reasons' for the practice can be considered upon similar grounds.  Behind the practice lies the will or desire to keep others out; to preserve the tribe from external influence. The threat of a potential dilution of culture or resource, drives them to mate within their own social class or grouping.  Perhaps understandably Irish Travellers would rather that their children remain as travellers, and be 'proud' of their heritage and their culture.  In this sense there is an unspoken pressure towards the maintenance and encouragement of marriage and or sexual relations within the travelling community itself.  As more travellers experience and succumb to the pressure to become settled, the genetic pool of that community, becomes progressively smaller and more prone to pathology.

Paternal members of the 'community' in the Australian example were desirous to keep the public and the authorities out of their community. To keep others from contaminating their authority and autonomy with the 'normal' rules that would apply to sexual relations, and paternal authority.  

From an anthropological Racism might also be considered as a sort of incest.  White supremacists consider interbreeding between different ethnicities to be a 'contamination' from the outside. My own Chikldren given the non-white status of their mother would I imagine be considered by the average racists as 'mongrels'  or at least not as thoroughbreds. According to the racist or supremacist, whites must breed within their own and somewhat incestuous ethnic grouping.  The Nationalist who wishes to preserve his borders from contamination by foreign influence may be considered to have a somewhat incestuous view of global demographics.

When we encounter incest, particularly when it is accompanied by the abuse of children, what is absent from the usual hue and cry of condemnation is either the willingness or capacity to look deeper into the practice itself.  To understand it, and to recognise it not merely when it is accompanied by the horror of child abuse, but rather to understand it as a universal product of human psychology.  If we think about it for longer than a moment there is an element of that same incest in the apparently benign activity of  waving of a flag.

What is important is not the somewhat voyeuristic engagement of looking into an incestuous social grouping or family framework, but rather the more intellectually demanding task of asking why incest should remain part of our collective psychological make up? To see as it were, our own particular incests.  When we do this we learn something real from the horrific and disturbing encounter.  We might even come away from the encounter a little wiser and the terrible suffering of the victim may not have been entirely in vain.

It is only through a deeper analysis (rarely encountered in mainstream media) that we might come to understand incest and evolve our society to a form where such incestuous and or abusive practices are no longer possible. To get rid of evil we must first take ownership of it.  In the absence of introspection and the presence of continued media or journalistic exposure of incest and most kinds of abuse, we accomplish nothing other than the titillation and entertainment of the consumer, who has purchased these words and images. 

In this sense we the observers, we the consumers of media, remain as impotent voyeurs, indulging in the macabre from the safe but entirely tenuous vantage of the 'high moral ground'. My point being that knowledge brings with it an obligation to act, to address the suffering that has just provided us with our entertainment, as we turn the pages of the broadsheet beside our cosy hearth on a Sunday afternoon.  Of course we can do nothing to alleviate the suffering of an incestuous family group far away in the Australian outback,. Yet, this knowledge that we have brought into the privacy of our own minds can serve as entertainment, titillation, or it can cause us to think upon, and perhaps even address our own incests.

The evils we encounter in the media are but the manifest expression of universal traits.  One man might express his incest in the context of his family another in the context of her race and another by simply waving a flag.  There is not one horror that we might encounter upon the broad-sheets that might not equally remind us of the potential horrors that reside within us all.  When we fail to do this, when we fail to use the suffering of others as reason to reflect upon the suffering we ourselves inflict upon others, upon animals or upon the earth; when we consume the suffering of others as a sort of 'benign' entertainment for our Sunday afternoon read, we approach the apathy of the perpetrators we are wont to condemn with enthusiasm.

Without a willingness to engage with either incest or the abuse of children in a meaningful way, one must question the motives of media and consumers alike. We buy, sell and indulge ourselves in the gory details of abuse as though they were a marketable commodity, as though these immoralities were not universal. In the absence of either a willingness to consider our own incest we are culpable in the preservation of these practices. We are condemned by a self serving oblivion to an infinity of perverse observation and consumption.

Within Irish society, nowhere is the practice of incest more blatantly, indulgently and dangerously flaunted than at the national broadcasting agency RTE.  Within this institution we can observe the practice of an intellectual incest that has had profound consequence upon the psychology and ideals of Irish society.  Arguably the effects of this particular form of incest are more destructive and more far reaching than the brute vulgarity that is exposed in New South Wales, for not only has it effectively paralysed intellectual discourse in Ireland, but has petrified the ideologies and social 'norms' that make many forms of incest possible, and encourage them to flourish.

Like the offspring of any incestuous union it is understandably  quite difficulty for us to recognise how we ourselves should be 'wrong', should be the miscreant products of an incestuous or unnatural union. Our intellectual status as the products of incest, makes it more difficult than might otherwise be the case to recognise the wrongness of incest in this particular instance.  We look upon the parental avuncular purveyors of national opinion and national sentiment, with the dotage of children looking upon their ostensibly loving parents. We remain reluctant to consider the incestuous nature of our intellectual parentage, and overlook the reality that they are precisely same purveyors of sentiment who sang the praise of the boom and now weep the despair of the bust.  

The consequence of incest at RTE, is National blindness and paralysis of thought. It is manifest in the intellectual inertia of the Irish people, in our collective inability to see beyond contemporary flawed paradigms. Our dysmorphia is reflected in our incapacity to see for example that the economic growth and so called "prosperity", that we nationally  aspire to, is no different to the growth and prosperity that produced the economic collapse we are trying to escape.

Despite the collapse and near universal agreement that something went terribly wrong, we remain entirely fixed upon the same notions of prosperity and 'growth' that precipitated the catastrophe.   Despite the blatant incompatibility of global ecology with capitalism, we remain wedded, (not only to ideals which precipitated a collapse that could not be predicted)  but wedded to ideals that are precipitating an ecological collapse that we can not only predict, but have the benefit of observing through the processes of global warming, climate change and loss of species.

Consider for example the current notion that our present recession and ongoing economic woes will be most effectively addressed through an 'increase in consumer spending'  There are few economists who would  argue against this mutation in logical thought. Yet what are we asserting here? Only that the same behaviours that produced the economic collapse are the same behaviours that will effectively treat it. Salvation through consumption and spending, this is the idiocy we have begun to bleat in unison, like the sheep in Animal Farm bleating,"four legs good but two legs better".  Our intellectual horizon can reach no further than the notion that one might cure ones cancer by smoking more cigarettes.

From where has this intellectual or philosophical paralysis originated? I contend it has originated almost entirely from the incestuous practices of our national media, and in this sense that same media represents the most significant threat to the mental and intellectual health of our nation.

It is a tragedy of modern Ireland that there is no place, no journal or media outlet where this observation might be considered. Criticism of the media can only arise from the highly unlikely source of the media itself.  On the shelves of Irish magazine or newspaper shops there is not a single publication that is devoted to ideas, to new or alternative thinking or views. Not one magazine of ideas or publication where in those who might offer some dissent from the current socio-political model might have the opportunity to speak out or be heard. Even amongst the weekend supplements of our Nation's broad sheets is there a single example of thought that is outside of the market, of a thought that is alternative to that of the majority.  

In a bizarre twist of fate, our democracy has become more oppressive and less tolerant of freedom of thought or expression than the colonial authority that it replaced, or any of its fascist or totalitarian  counterparts through history. At present we have become willing subjects in the worship of the market, reality is merely what sells, churches are empty and shopping malls have become the new cathedrals.

In communist Russia, or during the height of the Nazi campaign to redefine European culture, there was always an underground movement, a counter to the totality of the regime. When Ireland was under British authority there was a palpable revolutionary spirit, a physical underground movement of resistance, and one of cultural preservation. Yet Ireland and the west have entirely and wholeheartedly embraced the latest invasion, the process of globalisation and the worship of market forces as our new divinity.  Today to be anti-democratic, to be anti-growth or anti-capitalist, is to brand oneself not merely as a leftist or a 'greenie', but as a lunatic. The new totalitarianism differs from those of the past in that, it lacks a critical voice and is indeed a totality. For this,if we cared to, we have ourselves and we have RTE to blame.

In the absence of an alternative voice, incest at RTE continues to invest itself with its own ideals, with the wasted and broken ideals of the prawn cocktail, the Dallas and Falcon Crest generation.  Even music and art itself has been turned to stone. Throughout Europe  there are artists, musicians, thinkers film makers who are pushing the boundaries of thought and creativity. Yet our membership of the EU has rendered us more insular and culturally isolated than ever before.  Turn on RTE, listen to the music, to the opinions, the ideas. Are they any different to that of twenty years ago?  This is the art, music and media of yesteryear, it has long since past its expiration. We are being fed upon a diet of mouldy bread. 

In 1999 Gay Byrne resigned from RTE, only to be rehired by RTE one year later. It is often proudly declared (usually by someone at RTE) that Byrne's main show The Late Late Show is the worlds longest running chat show, having been running for 52 years. Similarly one might ask how it might be that in a medium as dynamic and evolving as Television, how a show could have remained in the same petrified form (there's one for everyone in the audience) for five consecutive decades? This is reflective of something that is paralysed within the Irish psyche, an aspect of our thinking that resists change and intellectual evolution. This paralysis brought us control by the British, control by the Catholic Church and lately control by the new and largely unseen neo-liberal ideal.

Upon the night of Byrne's last show Bono presented him with a Harley Davidson motorcycle, (the unusable in honour of the uninterested). The presentation was richly symbolic and a fitting reference to the neo-liberal ideals that the show had championed and embraced as a progressive break with the then paralysis of the Catholic Church. Byrne was famous for shocking good Catholics throughout the land during the contraception debates in Ireland, when he controversially opened a condom on his show and described how it might be used. A tragedy for Irish thought was that Mrs Byrne had not opened one herself some forty years previously.

Little did he know that his own brand of then progressive ideology was to become the new oppression and the new paralysis that Ireland has yet to escape from. His gift from Bono was entirely symbolic of the new order that Ireland was starving to embrace and remains hungry to continue consuming; the American dream. It is only fitting that at close of Byrne's career that he should be seen to ride off into the sunset on his Harley Davidson, presented to him by one of the most renowned poster-boys for our new culture, the champion of charity himself. Imagine the shock and horror if Bono had presented Byrne with a set of rosary beads and encouraged him towards the more realistic and practical task of preparing to meet his maker.

In the Irish presidential election of 2011,Gay Byrne was approached by some pals from the old guard, of Fianna Fail. He was encouraged to stand as a independent candidate for the presidency of Ireland. The Fianna Failers undoubtedly knew there was no hope of Byrne (the seasoned weather cock of public opinion), signing up with Fianna Fail, then the national scape goats for Ireland's economic collapse. However in the spirit of political self interest, a successful Byrne would at least have kept the office from rival political parties. At the time Byrne was without rival and all opinion polls declared the office to be his for the taking. Our national paralysis prevents us from seeing the difference between Byrne the performer and Byrne the man, or even to distinguish between the performer and the politician. Democracy brings us the reality of cowboy actors becoming presidents, of Reganomics, and the cold war.

Interestingly at the time an article in the Times advised Byrne not to pursue the office, citing the distinction between ' Gabriel Byrne' the man and 'Gaybo' the popular presenter. The article insisted that Byrne had always maintained a strict privacy throughout is public career, and that in truth we know precious little about the man as opposed to the actor or presenter. Byrne chose not to stand, however it is very interesting to consider that the media is capable of making the distinction between man and presenter, that Byrne is not to be considered real for the duration of his career as a presenter, but rather as a man that we know relatively nothing about.

Of course there is a distinction between the man and the presenter. The presenter is an institution, a business of sorts, much like Elvis is a business that exists, even though the man himself is dead (so most of us believe).

The fuel of any institution is money and given Ireland's brutal tax regime, the ostensibly inordinate salaries of top presenters at RTE are of course subject to the highest taxes. Of course in Ireland the mega rich don't experience the real pain of a fair tax system. One way around taxes is to retire, to draw down ones pensions and be rehired upon a new salary, this is the current model at most state agencies. After 37years presenting the weekly Late Late show, and 25 years presenting his weekly radio show that is exactly what Byrne the institution decided to do. To retire and be simply rehired.

Following a short holiday in 2000 Byrne was back on air with a potential answer to chronic constipation entitled The Gay Byrne Music Show. In 2006 Byrne the institution brought also gifted us the weekly Sunday show Serenade. After which he became host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In 2009 he became host of his own show ironically called The Meaning Of Life, where avuncular Byrne would recline in a soft arm chair with those whom the masses might consider successful and encourage them to wax lyrical upon what they each deemed to be the meaning of their own lives. In 2011 he returned to the screens with a weekly slot called “For One Night Only”. RTE's website describes the show as follows:

“A six part entertainment series hosted by the irrepressible legend Gaybo, ... For one Night Only gives an intimate and emotional look at the featured artist's life  ...”

One might ask in what way is Gaybo irrepressible? Or iretireable? Is it the same manner in which the Catholic Church which he helped to effectively usurp, might have similarly been described as irrepressible? What is unquestionably irrepressible is the mentality that would cause many Irish, many of this Dallas generation to immediately point the the fact that 'iretireable' is not a 'proper' a word, despite its truth and unequivocal meaning. We can rarely think beyond the horizon of the way things are supposed to be, rather than the way they might be. This is the paralysis that repeatedly resurrects Byrne, it is the life blood of RTE, and it is the paralysis that causes our nations thinkers to flee or silently embrace their obscurity.

Whilst the distinction between the man and the institution that is Gaybo, might be difficult for the public and the media to comprehend, the distinction is made clear to the Tax man. Gaybos financial affairs are cared for by his firm Gabbro LTD which posted profits of half a million Euro in 2011. Interestingly in 2006 Byrne was appointed Chairman of the Road Safety Authority in Ireland, (a government appointment) his remuneration and expenses in this role are not easy to find. I have just spent some time looking, and a brief troll of information available on the net reveals nothing of how Gaybo or Gabbro LTD are paid for this role which Byrne has no qualification for, other than the issue of Road Safety being: “near and dear to his heart”. Byrnes friends in politics are never far away. The relationship between RTE and the Government who pay half its income, is one that ensures criticism of the ruling establishment is always 'balanced' or weighted, and is only damning once collapse of that regime is entirely inevitable.

When one considers that the vast majority of deaths on Irish roads are those of young people, (the opposite spectrum of Bryne's audience) it becomes immediately obvious that Gaybo is unlikely to either appeal to, or have much in common with the primary victim of road fatalities. A football star or musician might at least have had some relevance. It is little wonder that fatalities continue to rise and precious little difference is made by the tender, somewhat camp, avuncular phrases of a Gabbro LTD that has long since passed its intellectual or ideological expiry. 

The assertion of incest might well be a weak one if the ground-hog day of Gaybo's captainship at RTE were the only example of a single set of irrepressible octogenarian chromosomes. Newness is an anathema to RTE as external influence is the enemy of the incestuous.

Morning Ireland Ireland’s most listened to radio programme is hosted by another veteran at RTE Aine Lawlor, who has been on air for almost quarter of a century. On 14th October 2011, Lawlor announced on air, at the end of Morning Ireland:

"That's all from me for a while as I'm taking a break for medical treatment. Thanks to all of you who have listened over the past 16 years".

The announcement left the nation gripped in suspense and The Irish Times put listeners out of their collective misery when it announced that Lawlor was being treated for breast cancer. The tragedy had the consequence of propelling Lawlor's career into the stratosphere and after a short break she returned to RTE . She was somewhat compensated for her diagnosis with her own television show where she could outline in maudlin detail the extent of how her diagnosis affected her personally, and therby become the champion for cancer victims throughout the land. It would be cynical to point to the implicit vulgarity of using ones medical diagnosis as stepping stone to pave the road of ones career, however the sequence of events that flowed from Lawlors' ongoing public promotion of her private life, is to say the least morally questionable.

Regardless of the ethical basis of Lawlor's promotion from radio to television on the basis of her medical condition, the notion that RTE should indulge in the overtly incestuous practice of documentaries about its own presenters, is perhaps the ultimate expression of a vision that has become entirely inward looking and focused upon itself. That the cancer of a woman who has smoked for 20 years should be of more interest to the nation because it has occurred to one of its own, might be more interesting than the countless (and hitherto ignored) stories of suffering that occur throughout Ireland amongst the poor, amongst those who have not a smidgeon of the resource, and supports that an RTE celebrity would be surrounded by, is a window to our national ethic. Of course Lawlor herself and the demigods at RTE would invariably declare that the purpose of her 'fearless' advertisement of her illness, and RTEs practical promotion of that illness, is all done in the spirit of informing and of making women aware, and so on and so forth. However beyond the anecdote of this or that fellow sufferer, the goodness that might accrue tto he victims of cancer remains in the notional world of them being 'better informed' and more aware and so on, whilst the benefits accruing to herself and RTE differ too in that they are materially accountable in the form of advertising revenues and personal promotion. Lawlor is married to Ian Wilson, himself a producer at RTE, with such husbandry it is hard to imagine where the success arising out of this cancer will lead rise to.

Weekends at RTE would not be the same without another of Ireland's favourites Marian Finucane. Beside Gay Byrne, Marian is perhaps the most loved female presenter. She too has mastered that RTE magical art of gauging the sentiment of the the majority, and feeding back to them a reflection of all that they see themselves and wish themselves to be. For Gaybo it was his avuncular guidance and chaperone away from the bleak asexual or moral restraint tat was the Catholic Ireland of his day; for Finucane it is treading that delicate line of balancing post Catholic sentiment with a bit of 'fun', a bit of light-hearted, harmless entertainment, about how men are so much more messy than women, about how he leaves his underpants on the floor, and the kids want to play video games instead of doing their homework, and sure isnt it a lovely world after all?

For her own particular brand of redundant reflecting back to us that which we believe ourselves to be, Finiucane's company, Montrose Services LTD, posted profits of some 791,000 euro in 2012. Not bad for some 4 hours presenting per week. Mostly paid for by the tax payer these are indeed expensive fairy cakes and underpants upon the bedroom floor.

(In case you haven’t figured out how incomes at RTE work) The way RTE presenters legally avoid the same tax regime that the majority of their fan base must endure, is by setting up a company and thereby receive their entire salaries directly. After deducting all their expenses they will then pay a corporation tax which is substantially lower than that which the plebs must pay. All legal and above board, taxes are for the little people.

RTE's top presenter Ryan Tubridy was paid 723,000 in 2011 for his work at RTE, Tubridy also avails of Ireland's ptax exemptions for the rich and his salary is paid in full to his company Tuttle Productions LTD which posted profits of some 60k and paid coorporation tax of a mere 1000 Euro in 2011 (there are no missing zeros). A good exercise for Tubridy fans is to troll the internet and try to find a picture of Tubridy wherein he is not beaming like the Cheshire cat. One might ask can someone really be so happy all the time?

Yet we must not blur the distinction between the man and the company as Gaybo reminds us. Tubridy's most recent girlfriend Aoibhinn Ni Shuileabhain, has recently secured a weekly Sunday afternoon radio programme of her own at RTE. Whilst Tubridy will readily and proudly declare that his own rise to stardom is as much a consequence of former star Gerry Ryan taking Tubridy “under his wing” when he (Tubridy) began his career at 'making tea' for his mentor.

Perhaps nowhere is the distinction between the presenter and the man more obvious than in the picture of the former RTE presenter Gerry Ryan formerly in receipt of a salary in the region of one million euro per annum, and recently found dead in a Dublin apartment following a cocaine binge. At the time Ryan the presenter was the champion of a nationwide health drive (operation transformation) to make the nation loose weight and become healthy. At the time of his death Ryan was morbidly obese and an habitual cocaine user. Irish audiences do not care much for reality.

Another top presenter Miriam O'Callaghan who presents Prime Time on RTE television in addition to radio programmes is another of RTEs highest paid presenters. Glamourous Miriam is often referred to as 'insanely stylish'; Miriam is a mother of eight children, and looking so beautiful and so fabulous after so many births is apparently one of her cardinal credentials. Miriam is married to RTE's director or programming Steve Carson, and of course this is merely coincidence.

Nepotism and the dynastic form of the power structures within RTE is entirely self evident, its recent inward departure of making the presenters themselves the stuff of national presentations has perhaps approached a new low in the intellectual incest that defines the internal politics of our national broadcasting agency. The promotion of Aine Lawlor from the status of subjective analyst, to subject matter, is not unique and another notable example is in the form of Charlie Bird, RTE's chief news correspondent who retired in 2012. Birds first venture into the role of becoming both subjective analyst and subject matter, was after he was assaulted in Dublin during the riots of 2006, the follow quote from wikipaedia is informative:

“Bird was attacked during the Dublin Riots of 25 February 2006, suffering a fractured cheekbone, soft tissue damage and bruising.  On RTÉ News broadcasts later that evening, he spoke of his personal experience—and of how his assailants had recognised him and called him an "Orange Bastard". Witnesses included Sunday Independent journalist Daniel McConnell, who reported on the event the following day. Bird's appearance on the Six O'Clock News was criticised by The Sunday Times in its edition the following day, as it felt "Bird makes himself the story"

Bird must have found his transformation into subject matter to be rewarding as it was not long before he morphed into the role and became the subject matter of several RTE documentaries. The most recent of which was entitled 'Charlie Bird on the Trail of Tom Crean'. On the RTE web page devoted to the 'documentary' series the following is unashamedly declared:

“In this two-part documentary series, newsman Charlie Bird heads on the trail of legendary Antarctic explorer, Tom Crean. For over 20 years Charlie Bird has wanted to travel to the South Pole and tell the story of this remarkable Kerryman. In 2011 Charlie's wish came true and to bring Crean's story to life, Charlie spent two months crisscrossing Antarctica before travelling to the Pole itself, completing a journey Crean was denied from making on the very cusp of success.”

What is absent from the RTE page is the information that, it is we ,the TV licence payers who have paid for Charlie's two months of Polar self indulgence in pursuit of his 20 year dream. RTE is truly the place where presenters can both live for ever, and have all of their dreams come true. It is the disneyland, the wonderland of Donnybrook, with Cheshire cats and mad hatters A place where Irelands royalty the princes and princesses are referred to simply as presenters. It is most informative to watch the latter moments of Birds travels when he reaches the polar grave of his childhood hero and breaks down in a maudlin display of crocodile tears, that must have penetrated the permafrost and warmed both heart and cockles of the intrepid explorer.

One can only imagine what it might have cost RTE to make Charlies dream come true, shipping a film crew and their attendant equipment and creature comforts across the Antarctic. Filming in the ice and snow for two months duration must have put a hefty dent into RTE's budget. However when one considers that its revenue from advertising is in the region of 180 million euro per year a figure that is matched by its income from mandatory licence fees, (brining its gross yearly revenue in the region of some 360 million) Charlies dream is mere pennies. One must bear in mind that other nationally funded broadcasting agencies such as NPR in the United States and the BBC, cannot and do not sell or show advertising as they are funded by the taxpayer. In Ireland it remains an irony of ironies that the Irish tax payer is not only gullible enough to swallow the muck that RTE passes off as information or entertainment, but that we should pay for the pleasure of consuming advertisements that make up more than 20% of its transmissions.

Charlie's dream is but a drop of in the ocean and RTE might well afford (if it wished to do so) a dream for 'everyone in the audience'. The world might even become a better place and we might love one another almost as much as the incestuous powers that be at the national broadcasting agency.

Too late and too stupid for anarchy

If I could survive the process, the insults, the censure, and the divorce, I would gladly run through the centre of the city, climb atop of some dead man's  statue and shout Ireland's insanity at the top of my voice, until the police might come and put both myself and my bemused compatriots out of our misery.

If perhaps there were a group of like minded, of similarly awake (or perhaps insane, the distinction becomes less clear with time), who had made the next deduction, that reality (when considered) insists upon.  If perhaps these mad men and women were actively planning to overthrow the state (to save us from ourselves), to establish a government that is unashamedly based upon rational principles; a  rejection of the idiocy of materialism, a desire to protect the vulnerable, to promote the ideal of an acquisition of intelligence, learning, enlightenment, art, music etc., above that of of chattel, profligacy and market-worship? Forget about the distant and fading hope of freedom from the invisible prison, the misery of ill health and unhappiness.  If  I could be a part of a movement that is willing to simply 'speak out' in order that Ireland might even become aware of its imprisonment: I would sign that covenant in my own blood, as some Ulster Unionists are believed to have signed their own declaration of intent.

I am convinced that the next era in the sad history of our race (if we are to survive the catastrophes we are presently constructing) the next era will not be one of enlightenment, but rather one of an awakening that might at least contain the potential for such an enlightenment.

I would sign and join, and declare my allegiance to the  'insanity' that must end the tyranny.   My treason my devotion to the new anarchy, will purchase a piece of what the poets and the revolutionaries of the past have called  hope. Hope that is each day eroded by global warming, by materialism, by our blind  worship of the markets, and the contraction in our capacity for an independence of thought.  The contraction that has made our imprisonment possible, that leads us to be convinced of our happiness and our freedom, convinced beyond  the point of suicide and self destruction and a million medicalised pains and anxieties. We boast of our happiness and our best of all possible words, to the point where the  fantasy has become more real than the real itself.  Life has become a television programme and we are all actors grinning at the surface of our social exchange and social networks and tiring from the weight of the façade.  The only choices are self destruction, imagined illness, self-delusion or madness.

That same precious hope might yet illuminate my delusion that Ireland will awake one Sunday morning and prepare for a visit to the library,  the temple, the oratory of the arboretum, the thundering symphony of the sea.,  rather than the shopping-mall or the Cathedrals of modern capitalism.  And yet, there is no group, there is no secret society, there is no underground movement, there is no alternative thinking, no new vision, there is only the name for these things and behind those names there is the ignorance of the masses and the worship of reality in its present and terrible form. When the future looks back upon the holocaust of today, of the markets the incineration of children and extermination of species, they will say of us that we did not simply permit the evil but rather that we worshipped first and then became the evil itself.

I would gladly offer a secret society my immortal soul  in exchange for membership, for a share of that extinguished hope. To sit about in a sweet sweet-shop, a Marxist book store and by night to discuss by candle light the candle light incineration of the state. By Christ I would do it, and would feel my life invigorated by a purpose and meaning beyond that of parenthood or profession.  I would feel my soul revived, resuscitated, reclaimed . I would kiss my children and my wife and bid them farewell if I thought there was a chance that Ireland might be free to see, and perhaps serve as a catalyst towards the liberation of humanity. Freedom from the same oppression, and the same confinement to the same pathway, that leads towards what Zizek and what intuition itself refers to as the approaching 'catastrophic' endpoints.

I would take up my position outside the biscuit factory, or outside the entrance to  Dublin Zoo, and be the first to hang a padlock upon its gates, to send the idiot-gawkers home and bid them repent. Repent and consider on what side of the bars the real brutes  reside.  I would sit with right thinking biologists and zoologists and  to try to decide upon how best to treat, to euthanise the majestic and exotic creatures that are confined and brutalised into the voyeuristic playthings of this macabre menagerie.  On then we would march  to the prisons and fling open the gates in amnesty to all but those who are guilty of violence or cruelty. To the banks, to the halls of state, we would sound that roll call of ignominy and round them up the suited criminals of that generation, poisoned by Dallas and their material perversion of the dream; politicians, bankers enjoying a guilt, and freedom proportionate to their mountains of material frivolity. We would march then to the ivory towers of local government, and the planners who presided over the despoliation of this land, and then we would fill the prisons with the real criminals.

Then at last we would return to the Customs house, to Lenister House or to the House of Keys, from the steps we would make our declaration of independence, and the first line would proudly declare an end to materialism and greed, not of the few but the materialism and greed within each and all of us, and a return to the worship of God in the place of the markets.  Not the Christian God, nor the Hindu God, but the irrefutable God of the atheist and Christian alike, the God who stands before us each day in the guise of the weak, the vulnerable, the suffering.  The old who see death linger and pass the foot of their bed.. The God who peers at us through the eyes of animals  within cages, who roars at us with each wave that crashes upon the shore, the God who ripens our fruit and causes atoms to be and to behave as they do, the God who placed a pen in the hand of Joyce a pain in the heart of Nietzsche, a word in the mouth of Marx, a thought in the mind o Freud  or a son before the firing squad or hung upon the cross.

And yet, beyond the self, beyond my friend Desmond and the few who see me, I can find  no revolution there is only conformity, there is no God only the businesses of Charity, there are no rebellious sons and daughters there are only 'leftists' 'Marksists' or the "Greens".  Ireland's intellectuals have been gagged, ignored, marginalised to the point of utter insignificance. As a nation we have been blinded by our new masters, we have been blinded in a manner that men have never been blinded by in the history of our species; we have surrendered our eyes, gouged them out with our own bloody fingers and presented them to the conquerors of our world and the murderers of our God.

I went to the book store the other day and there nowhere to be found, were the words of a new revolution, not even a book by Fennell. The shelves were crowded like escalators in the London Underground;  The Pilots Lover, Footballers Wives, How to Become Rich, how to be happy, how to talk to your children, Trees of our heritage..., the afflatus of the afflicted.  The book has killed the book,  vision, revolution has been silenced beneath a cacophony of marketable idiocy.

Resistance is futile.

'Liberate me from what?' say my countrymen, those few who take the time to pause and read my sandwich-board as they hurry towards the evening train, towards home, fast-food, the hypnotic repetition that is our  news and our nutrition.  Day to day living, antidepressants, cigarettes drink, food,  loneliness, emptiness the oppressions of modernity and the growing grumblings of self destruction.

In return for our new religion and for  the Cathedral of the shopping mall, the markets ask only that we might blind ourselves to reality and to the self. They ask only that we should be unable to see the shit pipes that exit those cathedrals, and the effluent that is spilled upon the African, or the spotted owl. We must be blind to the consequence of the market, the consequence upon the self and upon the world. The Market depends more upon stupidity than it does upon money, how else can we be convinced to purchase that which we neither need nor have utility for? When we experience the unhappiness that is demanded of us by our new masters we must put a medical name upon that malaise and we must purchase the antibiotic or endure the test, the examination or the procedure  that will apply an appropriate and fashionable delusion to our pain.

Inside the Church of the real find the 'Pandora' stall at your nearest department store and have a look inside. They have done it, they have confirmed the gullibility and mute stupidity  of the nation, a profligacy and idiot vanity that is far  beyond the chopping down of trees to adorn our sitting rooms.  One bead for 'hope' another for 'prosperity' another for 'courage'. Taking candy from babies.

The Native American gave away much of North america for similarly coloured beads, 'prosperity' and 'hope', sixty euros each at all reputable retailers.

When I lived in California there were a group of idealists who would band together and vist the new Cathedrals at Christ's mass or during the sales to vomit upon the polished marble floors until they were ejected or arrested. Where are these dreamers?

Perhaps we get what we deserve? Despite the sandwich board and the ostracism, I am happy, happier than most. I write to Desmond and see through the window he has fashioned for my countrymen.  It is a small window, there is not much t see on the other side; some trees, some birds, something left of the beautiful things perhaps, and of course there is a fleeting glimpse of that old hope.  My children are intelligent and they can see the world for what its is, enjoy it, and and at the same time  recognise that it, like their parents is getting old, is dying even. They can be happy without delusion, they dream of the future, its hope, and even its salvation.