TV Review: Ireland just doesn't get D-Day commemorations. All those parades in the midday sun. The wreath-laying ceremonies. The 21-gun salutes. The Queen standing throughout, her handbag locked around one elbow in trademark fashion.
Sure, we show some token footage from Normandy and Islandbridge on the evening news. But overall the day largely passes us by - thanks in part to RTÉ and TV3, neither of which found a place in their television schedules for a programme on the Irish contribution - or lack of it - to the start of the end of the second World War 60 years ago last Sunday.
It is not just Irish war veterans who are let down by such indifference. It is all our loss that Ireland can't stop for an afternoon, and simply remember. Where were you, after all, on the 60th anniversary? Shopping? Sunbathing? Watching Big Brother? We can hardly blame our "busy" lifestyles for failing to take time to acknowledge the liberation of Europe from Nazism. Rather, there seems to be an underlying anxiety about facing up to the war - a collective guilt, perhaps, that we weren't there on June 6th, 1944. Certainly, D-Day - and the unmistakable righteousness of it - sits awkwardly with Irish neutrality. But that's all the more reason for us to remember it, and remember it in the context of our unique, non-militaristic world view.
In fairness to RTÉ, it did run a series of imported D-Day-related programmes, including some Hollywood movies on the theme and the BBC docudrama D-Day, which was broadcast at the same time in the UK. The two-hour flagship production for the Beeb was as good a way as any of retelling the events of 60 years ago, mixing camera footage from the time with dramatic reconstructions.
Various survivors were interviewed, from one of the first American soldiers to land on Omaha amid "the smell of hot blood", to one of only two defending gunmen out of a platoon of Germans to live through the day. "We were praying and killing each other at the same time," Franz Gockel recalled.
Among the other revealing stories was that of Robert Capa, the Life magazine photographer, who joined the initial landing party only to do what anyone else would have done in his situation: turn and flee in a retreating landing craft.
In an earlier mini-drama, we learnt of an extraordinary meeting between the German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and George Lane, a Hungarian-born recruit to the British army's commando wing who had been captured on a reconnaissance mission ahead of D-Day. Rommel had a habit of interrogating imprisoned Allied soldiers to judge the calibre of men he was fighting, and his conversation with Lane had been recorded word for word in German military archives up to and including the point when the Field Marshal blew a gasket at the prisoner's impertinence in mentioning Germany's treatment of the Jews.
The presentation of such events was refreshingly even. Unlike so many historical dramas, D-Day avoided as much as possible faux dialogue, relying instead on recorded conversations, or direct narration by survivors. The only note that jarred was the reconstructed BBC broadcasts which pompously announced that, throughout the day, Auntie had "been telling the world that Allied forces have crossed the channel into France". Even with something as sacred as D-Day, media outlets can't help trying to claim credit for being "first to the news".
It is hard to think about D-Day today without asking whether or not it could be done again. Several programmes in the run-up to the anniversary seemed to reply in the negative, among them Destination D-Day, in which raw recruits to the British Army were tested in similar conditions, and generally fell short of what was required.There was also Secret History: D-Day Disaster, which illustrated how difficult it would be to mount a surprise attack on the scale of the Normandy landings in our globalised world of breaking news.
Two months before the invasions, some 749 lives were lost in a disastrous training exercise off the south coast of England, and several hundred were shot dead by their own troops in simulations near Plymouth beach. Soldiers who witnessed the massacre admitted it was the closest thing to a war crime on British soil. Yet it was covered up, and perhaps necessarily so. While Britain didn't have its satellite news channels back then, its tea-rooms were home to a powerful gossip network that threatened to undermine Operation Overlord. Despite heavy censoring of communications, and warnings about loose talk costing lives, some 80 per cent of letters posted in the south of England in 1944 referred to preparations for the invasion.
A further case for D-Day not happening today was made by historian Niall Ferguson in the Channel 4 documentary American Colossus. Ferguson, who has made a name for himself defending the British empire, as it was, is now trying to do a similar job with the American one.
Hang on, you might ask, has America got an empire? Yes, is Ferguson's answer. But it's "an empire in decline". His central thesis is that the US was founded on imperialist principles but has never faced up to the fact. The first settlers robbed and bought land from the Mexicans and Native Americans, and after that it was only a short hop to Puerto Rico, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. But, says Ferguson, there is nothing to be ashamed of in such expansionism. Rather, America's problem is its failure to further expand.
The empire, he says, is "plagued by self-doubt", economically depressed, and facing a $45 trillion bill for health care for the elderly. Worse, it is running out of legionnaires, and depending more and more on foreign assistance in its overseas military adventures. An additional deficit in the "stay-at-home" empire is one of attention - "a lack of mental stamina".
In summary, the US is "quite simply decadent," he claims. "Though the Barbarians have already knocked on the gate of the New Rome once, spectacularly on 9/11, imperial decline is more likely to come from within, as it did to the Old Rome." It is an interesting argument, but one with an agenda. What wins and loses wars in Ferguson's view is whether or not the empire holds its "imperial nerve". On D-Day, it did. In Iraq, it is failing to do so.
Ferguson, however, refuses to distinguish between the merits of "imperialist" activities, or to acknowledge that dissent can strengthen the empire in the long run. In his own documentary, he points out that anti-war protesters have been with America for more than a century, highlighting Mark Twain's satirical 'War Prayer' against the US invasion of the Philippines in 1898.
"Oh Lord Our God," it reads, "help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriotic dead; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless and unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land." For Ferguson the rot started with peaceniks like Twain. Yet, surely, any empire threatened by poetry deserves to go the same way as Rome.
Speaking of world domination, Craig Doyle's inexorable rise to the top continues with his Irish début The Craig Doyle Show adding to his already impressive CV. The Dubliner is, of course, instantly recognisable, even for those who have never seen the BBC's Holiday show. He is, quite simply, the friend whom your mother likes most, the slightly cheeky but never crude boy-next-door, always well groomed and never afraid to flirt with an older woman - as long as she is a good 30 years older.
"Why can't you be more like Craig?" a generation of Irish mums has barked at one time or another, which is why most men hate him. OK, actually, we hate him because, unlike us, he gets to present Grandstand, which obviously is every boy's dream.
Anyway, the natural successor to Terry Wogan gives a solid if unspectacular performance in his latest vehicle, a seven-part travelling chat show. Fittingly, his first subject - in New York - was renowned eater of toy-boys Ivana Trump, on whom Doyle went to work straight away with his magic.
"You are a stunning looking woman! What is your secret?" The interviews have a deliberate Irish bent, although this adds little value to the questioning. Under Doyle's interrogation, we learnt that Trump had an Irish nanny. ("Wow!" I hear you gasp.) Later we are introduced to one of the Big Apple's "top designers", a lady who comes from Galway but apparently doesn't have a surname and works in a big building. "Is there a building this size in Dublin?" asks Craig. "I don't think there is too many buildings this size in Dublin," replies the mysterious Clodagh.
It's that sort of show. Not exercising the brain too heavily. Nor featuring the most stellar of guest lists (tomorrow night's big interview is with Natalie Cassidy, aka Sonia from Eastenders, in London). But as a stepping stone in Doyle's career it'll do. He might not be Parkinson but clearly he has potential. One moment in the Trump interview proved it. Speaking on morality, the woman who is rumoured to have spent millions on plastic surgery suddenly warned: "Don't discuss the politics and the face. It gets you into trouble."
"Don't discuss politics and your face?" Ivana's faith, sorry face, dropped. "No, not face. Faith. Religion," she said curtly.
Doyle had walked into a minefield but in a flash he was out again. "How can I not discuss one of the best-looking faces in Manhattan?" He flashed a Tom Cruise smile at her. She blushed. What a pro!