Following Tuesday's post about Ryan Tubridy's thunderingly ignorant approach to theatre criticism (in summary: don't bother seeing the play, assume that writing about a subject is the same as endorsing it, imply that a dramatic exploration of a disturbing relationship is irresponsible because it will just encourage people to engage in such relationships in real life, I heard from the director of the Dublin production of Blackbird, Michael Barker-Caven. He told me that David Harrower, the playwright, was seriously shaken up after Tubridy's vigilante-style swoop, and that he had never experienced anything like it in the round of press interviews he had done for the play's runs in other cities, and he's wary about the prospect of doing any more live radio interviews about the play in the future. Which caution is understandable, I guess, but hopefully unnecessary - Harrower would probably have to find himself in the hotseat on Vatican Radio's Concerned Mothers Against Theatre talkshow before he'd come up against a presenter as narrow-minded and blinkered as Tubridy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Tubridy The Theatre Pundit, Updated
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Messenger, Bullet Wounds, Tubridy: Nothing New Here
Having listened yesterday to Ryan Tubridy pouring ill-informed fury upon David Harrower, the strangely-appropriately-named author of Blackbird, which opened at Dublin's Project last night in a production by the Landmark company, it's great to see a vastly more considered (not to mention professional) engagement with this controversial play already online at Irish Theatre Magazine's website. As the reviewer, Peter Crawley notes that Tubridy's screeching outrage at the very idea of a play which deals with a sexual encounter between a preteen girl and a forty-year-old man "is hardly an aberration":
In fact, it seemed a true measure of the level of cultural debate surrounding paedophilia, even – or perhaps especially – in a country so psychologically scarred by child sexual abuse.
True; most of the Tubridy interview sounded like an outtake from the Brasseye special on paedophilia six years ago. The same levels of stupidity, narrow-mindedness and hysteria were in evidence as Tubridy seemed practically to confuse Harrower with the male protagonist of his play. To write about such a thing as paedophilia, he implied, you must be somehow interested in it, which is sick. And anyway, how could you write about such a thing; how much do audiences really need to learn about this subject? Was Harrower just looking around for something scandalous to write about, Tubridy asked, in a tone which made clear that he, for one, had already made up his mind; did he have children himself? No, said Harrower, and the smug, disapproving little grunt which followed from Tubridy said it all, really. Naturally, he hadn't bothered to go to a preview of the very play he was not-very-subtly dismissing out of hand.
Crawley is right; this response speaks volumes about the level of cultural debate around the subject. But it also speaks volumes about the level and quality of debate and discussion around practically any arts-related subject on daytime Radio 1 programmes. With the new policy of distributing daytime arts interviews between Tubridy and Kenny, the notion of genuine engagement with a book, or a piece of theatre, has been utterly abandoned. It's gotten to the point where anything that sounds like a comment about the work itself, rather than about the personal life, interests and hobbies or (in this case) Virulent Paedophilia Obsession of the work's creator, sticks out embarrassingly, so that even the most fleeting attempt to talk in artistic terms about art sounds pretentious. Witness Harrower, yesterday, using the idea of his characters carrying narratives of their pasts around in their heads; in the face of Tubridy's flaming How Could You Do This assault, Harrower's response sounded like it belonged to a different era, a different realm. Which it did. It belonged to the realm of intelligent radio, where to discuss the arts, presenters didn't feel the need to mock or deride their subjects - or make clear their gleeful ignorance of their subject, another RTE speciality - before, or in lieu of, getting into a discussion of it. Wouldn't it be awful, after all, if their listeners thought they were actually interested in this arts rubbish? Good god, people would turn off their radios in droves.
Funny, then, that exactly this has been happening anyway, isn't it?
Friday, January 19, 2007
Twenty in NY Lawsuit Scandal
Tch, turns out Twenty Major is just another of those fakes who blogs about Ireland while actually living in New York. Tax scam? Legal loophole? Failed screenwriting career? Hopefully none of the above, for not only is Twenty homeless and living outside a Manhattan antiques store, but he's currently being sued to the tune of $1 million in damages by the owner of the store, Karl Kemp, who says the sight of the bearded man and his filthy belongings is adversely affecting trade.
It seems Twenty has written almost the entirety of his blog from his grotty perch on Madison Avenue; he has been blogging for just over two years, which is also the length of time for which Kemp, according to his lawyer, has been plagued by Twenty's presence. Kemp says that the blogger, who is known on the street as "the Preacher" and often accompanied by up to ten followers, also homeless, can often be found "sleeping on the sidewalk,” “consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating and spitting,” and “verbally harassing or intimidating the plaintiff’s patrons and prospective customers.” 
But the real problem facing Kemp and other antique store owners, and the real reason for the staggering lawsuit, was revealed yesterday. It seems that Twenty has not only been "intimidating" would-be browsers of Kemp's goods, but he has also been running a sidewalk business in more modern, efficient, and interesting versions of such goods, which has, over the past year in particular, begun to siphon away Kemp's customer base. "We can't compete with the sidewalk traders," said another antiques dealer, who asked not to be named, yesterday. "They're plugged into everything that goes on in a way that we, surrounded by our mouldering antiques, never really can be. They get everything we do done more quickly and more economically. And while most of our most loyal customers do keep coming back to us, the sidewalk traders are stealing away the next generation. There is no next generation for the antiques dealers. Those homeless bastards - and it's not just Twenty, they're all over the place - have got us licked. I mean, look at them. They don't have any overheads, don't have any staff to pay, don't have any bosses to obey or pander to. Who wouldn't want to be homeless, the jammy bastards?"
The unnamed dealer did add, however, that not every sidewalk trader ran as successful a business as Twenty. Referring to the group of homeless people who often surround him outside the Madison Avenue Store, he said that the sidewalk industry had its share of inferior hangers-on and imitators. "That lot are just a merry band of wannabes," he said, prompting the ire of some of Twenty's followers, who at the time had been rooting through his "filthy belongings" and attempting to make them their own. "We say hilarious things about goats," bellowed one man, who seemed to be wearing a fake beard.
With the lawsuit, Karl Kemp hopes to compel the city to finally remove Twenty and his associates from the area outside his store. Homeless advocacy groups last night criticised his action, however, calling it "blinkered". "Regardless of where they pitch their camp, the homeless will still be out there, and their number is only getting larger," said a spokesperson for one group. "Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. They haven't gone away, you know."
Read more on Twenty's new found celebrity (much better than a crummy mention in the Irish Times): Gawker, New York Times
Monday, January 15, 2007
Sunday's Media Stuff: The Good. The Bad. The Sindo.
The Good: Ambrose Clancy's riposte to the lazy sterotyping employed by Pico Iyer's New York Times review of Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons:TYPICAL IRISH
To the Editor:
In his review of Colm Toibin's "Mothers and Sons" (Dec. 31), Pico Iyer separates Toibin from the "typical Irish writer, if you associate such with musical rhapsodies, loquaciousness or blarney."
Typical? Who has he been reading? Jonathan Swift? Frank O'Connor? Elizabeth Bowen? Benedict Kiely? William Trevor? John McGahern? Not to mention Samuel Beckett, so I won't.
There's a long list of writers, many included in the Toibin-edited "Penguin Book of Irish Fiction," who are spare in their music, blade-sharp and ruthlessly to the point.
Good man, Ambrose! Though you might have told them that the fadas in Tóibín's surname aren't mere rhapsodic quirks either...
The Bad: Albert Reynolds, in the middle of a riveting account of his working relationship with the late David Ervine on Marian Finucane's programme, uses the phrase "the nigger in the woodpile". The silent horror of everyone else in the studio comes over the airwaves like a blast of cold air. The tension was palpable for minutes afterwards; RTE's radio dramatists could learn a lot about atmosphere from the clip, which should still be online here. Reynolds will likely get a roasting over it, and deserves to, for speaking like a silly old fool.
The Sindo: Loads of coverage on Ireland's coke catastrophe, most of it by hacks only too happy to come across like they know just a little too much how this whole cocaine thing works - and all of it, hilariously, filed under the "Analysis" rather than the "Lifestyle" section of the paper, when, almost every case, the "analysis" in question barely extends beyond the tip of the writer's nose, clean or otherwise. As you'd expect, Bazza is in his element on this subject; so breathtakingly close to the action is his exposé of "(literally) high society" that it dispenses almost completely with the notion of providing sources for quotes. Sources? "[o]ne or two Irish rock stars, restaurateurs, Bohemians, rock managers, famous wives, solicitors [and] models" are hoovering it up and you want sources? Tch, petty. The man's a genius; he knew it wasn't enough just to describe the coke scene in Dublin. No, he worked long and hard on his style to make sure that it replicated in dizzying detail the precise sensations of a coke high; the rambling, unsupported assertions, the delusions, the shattered focus, the peaks of hysterical aggression, the verbal slips and slurs (" The magazine rang a front cover issue on coke last mag called 'High Society"). Repeating himself, mixing his metaphors, composing memos to Kate Moss, drawing on Naomi Campbell, Oasis and P.J. Gibbons as cultural referents, launching into, and then abandoning, a treatise on fashion and its drug history...Bazza brilliantly imbues his words with all the tics and traits of an addict. At the end of his piece, when we read this passage..."Unbeknownst to themselves, cokeheads talk a lot of shite; but in very quick sentences and in a hyper manner as if dispensing some all-important wisdom that needs to be heard before time runs out."
...we feel, somehow, as though we've already been there, as though we've already witnessed the exact scenario he describes. His writing is that good. It practically gurns. Anyone can write about cokeheads. It takes Bazza to to become one - in a purely metaphorical sense, of course. Give the man a Pulitzer. And make sure the prizemoney's in nice, crisp banknotes.
That's if his colleague Liam Collins doesn't win, for his first-person account of the horrors of coke - all of which seem related, for some reason, to lovely girls and the weddings they either attend or intend to have. Liam's piece includes the story of a couple who last year died a Romeo and Juliet-style death in a Dublin hotel - after a wedding, naturally. It's incredible. No, really. Not a source or citation or a name or a date in sight. But look, the man says it happened. Isn't that enough for you? Bloody cocaine classes, always wanting more.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
A Little Piece of Heaven
Here follows heavy advertorial for the sheer, lucid, glorious BRILLIANCE of tuppenceworth.ie's takedown of the laziness, bigotry and vacuousness of the Sunday Independent. This has needed doing for a long, long time, and that it has been done so thoroughly and so clear-headedly just makes it all the sweeter. Drool.
Link via Bloggorah, who smell revolution.
update: Tuppenceworth's Paper Round is comprehensive, taking in the Examiner, Herald, the Tribune and a Friday edition of the Times, and deserves a fuller perusal. It's just the beginning of the road for this project, and already looks very promising. Nor is it confined to the realm of satire, as I previously thought; tuppenceworth is deadly serious about this, as his research and the application of his criteria (witness: where lies the difference between PR and advertorial? journalism and opinion?) show. Not that satire can't be deadly serious, but, focusing on one area, satire generally runs out of steam. This is different.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Another Distraction
Where have you been all my life, Critical Mick? And "when your anger is focused" (whatever the hell that means), could you possibly be "the most talented writer at work in Ireland today"? Bafflingly, you seem to think this title might already be claimed, what with chancers like Hugo Hamilton, DBC Pierre, Eugene McCabe and John Connolly daring to scribble on the old sod. (Oh, and some women too. But not many.)
What I'm trying to say is: read CM. He does things with reviews I never thought possble. Vernon God Little becomes an episode of South Park. Claire Kilroy's first novel inspires a sort of father/daughter/daughter's friend/UCD Arts Block love affair. The Master becomes a send-up of every panel discussion I've ever listened to, or been on, or had anxiety dreams about. And as for what he does with Utterly Monkey....just read it.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Master of Tact Returns to the Airwaves
Goodbye, Con Murphy. It was fun while it lasted. You didn’t make racist,homophobic, sexist or just plain stupid remarks, we didn’t have to listen to your unprofessional blundering around issues of age or sex or technology nor anything else (note to Tubridy: when you want to know somebody’s age, just ask them. Stop this whole faux-polite “um, um, may I know what general age group you are in, if you don’t mind…um, haahaa, just, well you know what I mean,” etc) and you had clearly actually read the books (for once, something that was not a what-ho British book about boys’ hobbies! Joy!) and watched the films and whatnot up for discussion. (Though you could have talked a bit more about Dallas during that John Doyle interview; that would have made me really happy.) Now Turgidy is back; curse those advances in tonsilitis medicine. He’s interviewing Kevin Myers at the moment, and has already made him sound like a charming, subtle, intelligent speaker by comparison.("predilection for women", aargh, "I was an ardent young man", aaaaarrrrgh, "the female thing", stop it, oh my god Turgidy just spat out the word "threesome", now he’s talking about a woman “doing what she does on her own”, which is his euphemism for masturbation; I want to die). At least Jane Ruffino is coming on soon, and she is going to kick his tweed-jocked arse.
I mentioned Dallas, didn’t I? So that’s justification enough for this…
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Barry Egan, Journalist of the Year
1. From today's Sindo, a primer in thoughtful, balanced, consistent prose:
IT'S official. Marian Keyes couldn't leave the house if they did away with hair dyes. "I would kill myself," she insists. (Mercifully, Marian was unsuccessful in a real suicide attempt in 1994.)
2. Conversation Chez Empire State View upon the reading-out-loud of the above paragraph earlier today:
ESV: "...in a real suicide attempt in 1994."
A: "Jesus Christ!"
(cue two minutes of hysterical laughter and one terrified kitten)
ESV: I'm going to put that on my blog.
A: Do.
(ESV types and mutters)
ESV: But I need a picture to go along with it, and all I get when I type in "Barry Egan" is Adam Sandler's character from Punch Drunk Love. I need a greasy, ginger "celebrity"...
A: Use Mick Hutchence.
ESV: Who?
A: Mick Hutchence.
ESV: Whose "real suicide attempt in 1994"* was successful?
A: Oh yeah.
ESV: Hucknall.
A: That's the one.
Max the Kitten: Where did you hide that roast chicken, youse bastards?
*yeah, yeah, 1997, whatever.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Internet-savvy Sue
So that’s who was doggedly rooting around these pages from the offices of the London Times for most of last week, going through the archive and leaving little queries about my true identity - almost touching in their never-tried-this-blogging-thing-before bluntness - in the comments section. I could see you, Sue: you'd be surprised at what thorough little bastards these statcounters can be. ISP trackers and all! Anyway, thanks for the half-mention. I'll treasure it. It is to me what vol-au-vents are to Bono.
I'm the "observer", by the way. At last, my proudest moment!
Friday, August 18, 2006
Frank Bascombe, Older and Hardly Wiser...
The new Richard Ford novel, in proof form, just arrived on my desk (wait, I don't have a desk. I mean, my kitchen table.) I haven't read it yet, obviously (at 485 pages, it will probably keep me going for a while) but I'm looking forward to seeing whether Ford has managed to convincingly get back into the voice of the narrator he first created 20 years ago, with The Sportswriter and returned to for Independence Day. Like each of those novels, it's set on a holiday, this time Thanksgiving, in the year 2000. So it's America before 2001, and before Bush (the Florida votes farce is still ongoing), and that in itself will make for an interesting read.
Something else I'm looking forward to reading today is the rehearsal script of Stuart Carolan's new play, The Empress of India, which opens in Galway and moves to the Dublin Theatre Festival. Carolan's first play, Defender of the Faith, was perhaps the strongest new work (in terms of "straight" plays) to open on an Irish stage in 2004, and perhaps even since then. When I was in the Abbey over the summer I noticed that the script was still for sale in the lobby there for something like €8. That's a recommendation, in case I'm being too subtle...The cast for the Galway/Dublin production looks terrific, including Sean McGinley in his first stage outing in five years, Aaron Monaghan, Catherine Walsh and Tadhg Murphy. It doesn't open until Sept 12, but I'd be interested to hear the views of anybody who gets to see it.
What else...slipped into my bad habit of listening online to RTE Radio 1 again while working (too depressing listening to NPR these days, most of the time...Israel or nothing) but today wasn't too bad; caught the excellent Rattlebag special on trad, and am now listening to the RnaG live stream ( I was going to write there, "I'm not a smug gaelgóir, I just listen for the music" but if I was a gaelgóir of any sort, rather than a head-hanging-shambles of an Irish speaker, it would be the smug sort, so forget about that). My neighbours probably hate me. But then, I hate them too, with their constantly appearing newborns and enormous dogs. That sounds very uncharitable. I like dogs and babies. But in a building which, even if it were a house, would arguably not be big enough to hold one of each, the apparent presence of several of them tends to grate on the nerves. Which reminds me. We're getting a kitten (now that it's in my blog, A, it has to happen. Ok?). Names suggested so far: Spling, Doodlemunch (long story) and Wee Thomas (short story...ok, downright theft). The eventual name, however, will depend on the unique personality and litterbox-related delinquency of the kitten itself.Dandelion, maybe?
Oh yeah. And the view is completely gone now. I don't want to talk about it...
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Doyle and Enright give The Irish Times what for
It's a pity that Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times didn't elaborate on the barbed comments directed at that newspaper, and at Irish literary critics - that is, directly at her, among others - by Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright during their public interview as part of last week's Dublin Writers' Festival. Perhaps it was just mentioned in passing, but this is all her report had to say on the matter:
Both he and Enright shake their heads over what they see as the ongoing stupidity of The Irish Times, all that is wrong with society is invariably reflected in its cosy pages. They also agree that there are currently 40 good Irish writers and no good literary critics, "the film critics are even worse."
Firstly, 40 good living Irish writers is too generous an estimate. It really is. It sounds like a figure pulled out of the air, possibly as a joke. I can think of maybe 15 good Irish writers. Maybe, just maybe, 20. In fact, I'm going to try and write a list, and see how many I can come up with. I'll update later. Secondly, on the cosiness of the Irish Times: Fair play to Battersby for mentioning the comments, I suppose, even if she doesn't do much more than tack it onto the end of her article. I have to wonder whether Doyle and Enright gave a fuller idea of what they meant by cosiness when they used that word (if they used that word - it's not in quotes). Were they talking about the newspaper as a whole, about the arts coverage, about the books pages, about the opinion pages, about the Saturday magazine, to which Enright herself is a reasonably regular contributor? (It looked like she might have been taking over Roisin Ingle's column for a while there.) It's difficult to respond to their criticism without knowing.
Thirdly, and related to this last point: the dearth of good Irish literary critics. I have mixed feelings on this. Ireland does not exactly boast a vibrant and strengthening critical climate where literature and the arts are concerned, but I don't for a minute agree that there are no good Irish literary critics. Again, it would be good to know what they mean by critics - if they're talking just about critics of fiction, or if they mean critics of every form of writing, from poetry to history and biography. It's unclear, too, whether they refer to academic critics, novelists who review novels, journalists who review anything they're handed, or a mixture of all three. Even if it is a mixture, I can think offhand of examples from all three fields who I count as fine critics. Again, I'll try to update with a fuller list, but here are some critics, or reviewers if you want, who publish in Irish newspapers and journals, and whose writing I respect: Nicholas Grene (academic). Colm Toibin (novelist). John Banville (novelist and former literary editor of the IT). Declan Kiberd (academic). Dennis O'Driscoll, Peter Sirr and Vona Groarke (poets). Susan McKay (political journalist and book reviewer). William Wall (novelist, who wrote brilliantly on Irish poetry in the magazine the Shop a few months ago). There must be others, and I know I'm sticking too closely to the reviewers of the Irish Times, but really where else do you look for a serious and dedicated book review section? There's also the Irish Book Review, which has some good reviewers, but it seemed, in its early issues at least, overly cliquey and unlikely to display any real diversity or unpredictability in its views on Irish books. Also, the reviews in those early issues were just plain poor; often badly written, and either petty or parochial.
On film critics: Donald Clarke is very good. Apart from him - and I doubt Enright and Doyle were even thinking of the internet as a valid source of reviews or criticism - I look mainly to blogs for reviews of film and for other criticism. But it's true, there's nobody in Irish film criticism of the calibre of, say, Anthony Lane. That said, what real outlets would there be for someone writing longer, more considered reviews like his? (I haven't read Film Ireland for a while. Maybe it has reviews like that? I don't know.)
I notice they didn't touch on theatre criticism, nor would I expect them to in this context. That's a whole other day's work.
I'd say that Doyle and Enright made for a formidable team once they got going together on this. They're both outspoken, eloquent, sharply intelligent and utterly intolerant of bullshit. If they were given an hour to talk about newspapers and literary criticism in Ireland, I'd be on the next plane home to hear them. I'd also hope for a slightly fuller account of the debate in the paper the next day (or six days later, whatever you can manage), but that's just me. And, like I say, the comments were possibly just part of a really rapid-fire discussion, and were not dwelt upon long enough to merit a fuller mention.
Some other features of the interview (Enright interviewed Doyle), from Battersby's article today:
• Doyle didn't suffer fools from the audience gladly. He doesn't suffer windbags gladly either. Or maybe he just didn't suffer audience members, full stop. A woman wanted him to know she didn't enjoy The Commitments; he seems not to have bothered even to reply. A man wanted to know about his views on "religion and churches". "I'm an atheist," Doyle responded bluntly. That was the end of that.
• Doyle admitted that the actor Ger Ryan's interpretation of his character, Paula Spencer, in the stage version of his novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors had made for a "different, stronger" version of the character and that, as he wrote the sequel to the novel (which will be published in September), he was aware of the challenge this posed to his own characterisation of her. At least, I think that's what he's saying. Maybe he's talking about the stage version, which he helped to adapt. Again, it's a little unclear. But if this is the challenge he's talking about, it's a very interesting one, and I guess one that other authors have faced too, as they write sequels, or the next book in a series.
• He talked about the number of "wrecked, baldy old guys" who come up to him in the street and tell him that he used to teach them. Others, or maybe the same guys, are "recovering heroin addicts...the ghosts of young kids he used to teach," writes Battersby.
• Enright came across, writes Battersby, "as a harassed housewife on temporary day release from her children," and complains that she has no time to read. But she's shrewd and alert as an interviewer, and knew "how to turn an interview into an apparently casual conversation. She [was] also asking Doyle the right questions." Another reason why she should write for the Irish Times, then. Sign her up!
• Doyle would love to live in New York. You can stay with us, Roddy. Just for a couple of days, mind.
• The recent changes to Ireland's population, which have seen large numbers of immigrants come to the country over the last five to seven years, have created an unexpected bonus for Doyle, who's a pretty recognisable figure in Ireland, as writers go: "I can walk down the street without every tenth person asking me if I'm Roddy Doyle." He also mentions in passing that he's learning Polish. Is he? Was this said ironically (he also said he's the only person on his bus route now who speaks English) or in dead seriousness?
• As was already known (it was discussed at some length in Angela Bourke's biography, and in Doyle's book Rory and Ita), Doyle's second cousin was Maeve Brennan, the famous Irish New Yorker writer, who wrote the magazine's Talk of the Town column during the 1950s and 60s under the pseudonym of the ”Long-Winded Lady”. Doyle spoke a little about her on Friday; he was 14 when she came to stay in his family home for a few months. That would have been around 1972, when things had begun to fall apart for Brennan. She rarely ate, stayed in her room with the curtains closed, and wrote furiously. Doyle, on Friday, remembered her as "incredibly elegant and eccentric", bewildered by an Ireland she no longer knew. He didn't speak to her about writing, because he wasn't interested in it at the time.
• Enright talked about something interesting: the emergence of an underclass in Dublin, or in Ireland (not clear which), and how this is something different to the working-class. Again, more on this would have been fascinating, but perhaps space didn't allow it...or something... anybody who was there, please comment!
• Doyle on the linguistic gift of the working class (in Dublin, I think): "A well-aimed working-class insult can do in two sentences what it would take a barrister three days to do."
• After they made their '40 good writers' remark, the audience got involved, shouting out the names of other Irish writers to see what Doyle and Enright had to say about them. Battersby remarks that "the expected [were] praised". It'd be good to know who the praised and the unpraised were, but only one is named in the piece: Jennifer Johnston, whose work Doyle said he loved. It's the duty of the writer, he said, "to produce good work."
Yeah, and it's the duty of the literary journalist too.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
RTÉ and the Arts Council: Going through the motions
This just in from the Arts Council; the meeting between its director, Mary Cloake, and the Director General of RTÉ, Cathal Goan, took place yesterday. I accept that it's perhaps too much to expect concrete results from just one meeting, but I don't see anything in this press release about a follow-up meeting, and I see little sign, in this outline of the discussion, of concrete promises being given by RTÉ about its future coverage of the arts. Reading between the lines, it looks like little more than a call-and-answer session of the appropriate noises. The noises the Arts Council knows it has to make in this situation, and the noises that RTÉ knows it has to make not to invite more negative publicity. There was plenty of affirmation, and reiteration, and talk of high priorities, but there's nothing new, and nothing binding, in the statements Goan was cornered into trotting out in yesterday's meeting. Saying that the appointment of an arts correspondent is a high priority in no way obliges RTÉ to do anything about making such an appointment. This is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Given that it does not depend on the Arts Council for its funding, RTÉ was hardly even obliged to attend the meeting when it was called by the Arts Council, and it certainly was not obliged to provide Cloake with answers, and with anything other than vague assurances. And it shows.
The Arts Council raised the serious concerns of the arts community about changes in the RTÉ Radio 1 schedule and the potential downgrading of arts coverage on RTÉ. The Arts Council urged RTÉ to maintain arts broadcasting in the mainstream of coverage rather than solely at marginal times.
RTÉ reiterated its absolute and ongoing commitment to the arts across all its broadcasting services and affirmed that the arts will remain a key priority. RTÉ said the Radio 1 autumn schedule was being finalised. RTÉ is confident that its service to the arts in that schedule will address the concerns expressed by the Arts Council.
RTÉ also said the appointment of an arts correspondent was a high priority.
The meeting discussed the complementary responsibilities of both organisations in supporting the arts, a wide range of joint initiatives, actual and potential, and the central value of the arts in a changing Ireland.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Rattlebag
The Rattlebag petition is well on its way towards the 1000 signatures mark - it looks like around 100 people a day are adding their voices to the protest. Do so now, if you haven't already! And pass the message on!
Nobody's saying Rattlebag is perfect as an arts programme, but RTE needs, and deserves, to be shown just how many people are frustrated and disappointed by its rescheduling decisions. A lot of those who have signed this petition are also using it to express their dismay over the axing of the Mystery Train (which, this evening, featured a brilliant and zany monologue by Kelly about when Bob Dylan comes to stay...).
Sunday, June 18, 2006
You'll Never Clear Your Desk Alone
It's not just in Ireland that matters to do with the arts are vulnerable to being sidelined by the media. One of the biggest media stories here this week concerned Erik Wemple, the newly-appointed editor of the Village Voice, who, on Thursday, "changed his mind" about taking the job and went back to Washington, where he was previously editor of the City Paper.
What could possibly have forced him to make this drastic decision, given that he'd just accomplished an enviable jump up the career ladder? Some vague noises about ”management differences” were made in the aftermath of the announcement. But turns out that our old friend, De Arts, may really have been the reason for Wemple's sudden exit, as Gawker explains:
From what we hear, Wemple held a two-hour meeting with the staff that went reasonably well until staffers asked if the paper would be asked to use other New Times writers. Wemple said that bringing in outside writers wasn’t in his plans, but the staff informed him the practice has already been imposed, as the Voice has been more or less forced to use film and music reruns from other New Times papers. That’s where things started to sour, because Wemple looked absolutely shocked that this had been going on. He also said he wanted to focus on more arts reporting and criticism, unaware that the arts sections had been significantly reduced.
Long story short, the New Times has hacked things up to the point where the Voice is no longer the paper Wemple thought he was signing up for. Management wanted Wemple, who’d been assured of autonomy — but then he got smacked with an alternate reality upon arriving in New York.
You can’t blame him for walking right back out the door.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
LIke Rain on Your Wedding Day, This May Not be Ironic...
A thinks this letter to today's IT was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. I'm not so sure. Any casting votes?
Madam, - The passing of Mr Haughey was one of those occasions when one just has to buy The Irish Times: a field day for your esteemed journalists to show their considerable talents. One recalls all the many occasions when that photogenic face graced your pages, all the acres of newsprint that have been expended on account of its owner.
Might I venture to suggest that some small acknowledgement of his value to the media is called for? Would it not be appropriate for your paper to take the lead in making some little donation to his estate, as a gesture of appreciation? - Yours, etc,
JOE ASTON, Sherkin Island, Co Cork.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
I Hear The Train a Comin...
Johnny Cash’s American Recordings V is on its way: July 4 is the release date.
John Kelly is playing "Like the 309", the last song Cash recorded before his death, on The Mystery Train right now. And others from the album (Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" and the last song on the album, "I'm Free From the Chain Gang now").It already sounds magnificent. And this sort of radio, RTE, is why you should not have cut the best thing on your airwaves. Sorry to go on about this, but you've been stupid enough to deserve to hear it ad nauseam.
Update: You can listen to the programme in question here. The Cash stuff comes about halfway through, after all the Polish and German songs, which marked Tuesday's World Cup match.
Next up for Cancellation: Music, Theatre, Literature, Painting, etc, etc...
Turns out Colm Tóibín won't be the only Irish writer to be outHaugheyed on his big day: Bloomsday Cancelled to Make Way for Crocodile Tears.
And you can rail against the RTE arts cancellations here , where a petition has been set up. Although, technically, this is a petition for Rattlebag only, people are also using it as a platform to air their disappointment about the cancellation of John Kelly's Mystery Train programme. Nothing wrong with that.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Scrap Flatterday
Two choice quotes from the speakers Vincent Browne had on the line for his Charlie special tonight:
"He could walk with kings and talk to...eh, to the lower classes." (some FF local politician eager to tell, again and again, how Haughey took him to his house for a drink once.)
"People didn't realise, he needed those Charvet shirts to meet with people just like him in Europe." (Noelle Campbell Sharpe. Who else?)
Add to that Browne's insistence on asking his panellists (male, of course) how many times they slept with Haughey. It was a bugging scandal, Vinnie. Bugging.
I agree with Jane on this one. Who is this guy they're all fawning and LYING about? And Bertie, what you said in the Dáil today about "de credits and de debits" was not just incoherent and full of mixed metaphors, it was untrue. God, when Irish politicians, the vast majority of whom would normally defect to a rival party rather than be linked to the arts, have to resort to repeatedly referring to someone as a patron of the arts first and foremost as a way of speaking positively about them, you know hypocrisy's in the house. Ah well. That sort of bull is as apt a summation of Haughey's legacy as any, I suppose.
update: I've fixed the link to Jane's blog; it's the entry for June 13th that I'm referring to. She's always good on worthless politicos, appalling Irish radio and the like.
