AS Gil Scott Heron used to sing, "The revolution will not be televised." The snggering reaction to NASA's recent news from Mars - a reaction that ignored the piercing implications for our common view of the "meaning of life" - demonstrated that revolutions can't hope for much radio time either.
Amidst Ball the half apologies about this being the "silly season", the media have seen the Martian chronicle's as fodder for cartoon humour and Star Trek references. In its press wrap up, last week, Morning Edition (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) cited, and perpetuated in music, the reigning cliche: "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."
Well, sorry Spock, but - if the boffins have got it right - life on Mars all those years ago was very much as we know it. For more than 80 per cent of Earth's history, single cell ("bacteria like") critters were the exclusive tenants, and they still easily outnumber the rest of us. What Mars should be reminding us is that there is, and was, nothing inevitable anywhere about the "progress" to more complex beings, let alone ones with intelligence (a bizarre, very recent innovation).
Instead of wondering why Martians apparently didn't "evolve", and gaping in awe and anticipation at Independence Day nonsense, we might look at our extraterrestial brethren and thank the lucky stars that produced an Earthly sequence of change and extinction giving rise to people like us. It was a long shot.
Morning Edition, of course, is not to blame for a culture's gross scientific illiteracy. Indeed, when the Mars story first broke it had the sense to bring us the excellent science journalist Mary Mulvihill, when Morning Ireland only managed a rather unenlightening representative from Dunsink Observatory.
Like last year's Between the Lines, also a Richard Crowley vehicle, Morning Edition has been a summer beacon of intelligence and lucidity. However, as a current affairs junkie I would rank it slightly below 1995's effort, largely because of some soporific light features. Could these harmless slice o' life pieces be the model for the first hour of Pat Kenny's new programme? If so, Gerry Ryan can look forward to a rise in his ratings.
Mind you, Morning Edition did manage to fire up a few listeners with the latest in its fine short story series. Bridget O'Connor's I'm Running Late, a real ring of truth probe into adolescent self absorption (beautifully read by Fionnuala Murphy), had the little to be doing brigade on the phones complaining about filth. It contained sporadic bad language, all right, but one suspects the story was just a bit close to the bone.
As a matter of policy, Morning Edition has brought the Book at Bedtime concept to folks having a summer holiday lie on. This week it gives us Brian Keenan reading Tearing Down to Tierra Del Fuego, his journal of a Chilean holiday with his wife Audrey and John McCarthy.
Yesterday's first extract answered "why Chile?" (Pinochet, Allende, Neruda, etc) and chronicled a humorous Bernardo O'Higgins pilgrimage. Keenan's sometimes overwrought style means travel writing poses real hazards; however he is a good social observer and keeps getting laughs from the horrors of his captivity.
In Lebanon, apparently, he and McCarthy (Keenan mostly, by the sound of it) made elaborate plans for yak farming in Patagonia - which, he said, would have to be declared an independent Irish republic in return for the economic miracle they would bring. "Keenan," McCarthy interrupted, shut the fuck up and eat your rice." Filth.
In a week when Oasis dominated the airwaves, but with nary a serious word about the styles and themes of their music, it was a pleasure to hear the Bothy Band being discussed in depth on That Was Now, This Is Then (Anna Livia, Saturday). This programme, a weekly exploration of a classic album, makes a perfect antidote to the dissociated "memories" of the horrid classic hits format (now, sadly, adopted by the dominant Dublin pirate station, ABC).
Coincidentally, Bowman's Saturday (RTE Radio 1) was about Donegal fiddling (God be praised), and the wide ranging Anna Livia discussion told how the peerless Bothy Band brought that and other traditions into a new form and to new audiences. Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh of Altan was particularly eloquent about their impact on other musicians, and about how today's groups avoid the economic exploitation that left the Bothy Band some way short of an Oasis living standard - for all that, according to publicist Amy Garvey, they brought rock n' roll style to trad. (Garvey, by the way, made the point about the media's vacant treatment of most music, which I have echoed above.)
Just one quibble with this excellent programme, to be repeated on Thursday at 11 p.m. on this Dublin community station: what with all the good chat, there was too little time for the tunes.
