Who knows if Cathal Mac Coille started his interview with Henry Kissinger planning to ask that awkward "war criminal" question. Whether he did or not, the way this Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) conversation with the not-so-good doctor proceeded, I've little doubt that Mac Coille not only relished asking Kissinger what he thought of the opinion that he should be in the dock in the Hague, but would have been prepared to effect the extradition personally, preferably employing really uncomfortable handcuffs, writes Harry Browne.
To some extent, this Kissinger belied his reputation - not the war-criminal part of that reputation, which he brusquely refused to discuss, and which we can only fervently hope catches up with him before he is, like his old comrade Pinochet, considered too old and sick for a bright, well-ventilated dungeon. No, what didn't fit about this Kissinger is that he was a thoroughly obnoxious so-and-so, nothing like the old charmer beloved of sycophantic hacks. Perhaps if Mac Coille had been a woman . . .
Yes, it could be said (by a far crueller reviewer than yours truly) that Mac Coille and the Morning Ireland team were authors of their own misfortune. The interviewer did launch the segment with a Kissinger quotation about Afghanistan that turned out to be of confusing provenance. But, really and truly, it was not a controversial quote (not in the warped world of Dr K, anyway), and Kissinger seemed deliberately to disrupt the interview by pedantically returning to it, in the process treating Mac Coille like a sloppy postgrad. The interviewer did falter under this pressure - being nitpicked on national radio by an international legend can't be a comfortable experience - but Mac Coille rose magnificently to his final question, getting in all the relevant condemnation, even after Kissinger had already grunted his refusal to be drawn into responding to such "lies".
Isn't there something very familiar about Henry all the same? Think about it. Leave aside the war crimes. Forget about anything violent or unethical. Consider instead the inflated reputation for intellectual and political profundity; the humourlessness; the righteousness laid thinly over cynicism; the power derived from political appointment and media adoration rather than from the electorate. Are you getting it? I'll give you another remarkable similarity/hint: this week he was droning on about Ireland's position in the global economy, indulging in shameless red-baiting of political opponents, and talking rubbish about Latin America. Stand up there, Michael McDowell!
The Attorney-General's furniture-smashing entrance into the realm of the general election got enormous coverage this week, none more tedious than the 25 minutes Eamon Dunphy spent interviewing the man himself on The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday). It was a strange, deeply repetitive interview, made even more so by the programme's insistence on playing extracts from an interview on the Sunday Supplement (Today FM, Sunday) in which McDowell largely said the same things.
McDowell donned the A.G. hat for his Highly Constitutional soundbites about Sinn Féin's insufficient fealty to the institutions of the State. Apart from "revealing" what most of us already know about largely irrelevant republican theology, this anti-SF tact is arguably rather undemocratic. While pledges of allegiance must have mattered to Dev in 1937 (I recall there was a bit of a falling-out about an oath a few years previous), they're scarcely relevant to an election in 2002, nor should they be.
McDowell spent more time trying to establish that SF are commies-by-association. Why on earth would a party want to have a representative in Cuba otherwise? Here, at least, Dunphy pointed out that people are entitled to their political views, whatever they may be. McDowell agreed, but still worried how the likes of Intel (God help us) would respond to commies-by-association in government.
It was when McDowell mused and sneered about SF sending "fraternal delegates" (where did he pick up that phrase, Gramsci's letters?) to the "Marxist" FARC that he really crossed the line. In the unlikely event that the Colombian authorities need encouragement in their presumptions about the three Irishmen that they hold, they have now got just that from the top law official in this State. But, hey, if it helps Michael McDowell keep his deposit, then it's all worthwhile.
Sometimes, listeners need relief from the simplicities of electoral strategy and global politics, and we seek it in the complexities of sports talk. Now there's a long-wave station exclusively dedicated to providing that relief. Built on the ruins of the late lamented (by 12-year-old girls) Atlantic 252, comes the exciting and welcome (to 12-year-old boys) Teamtalk 252.
Like Atlantic, Teamtalk broadcasts from Ireland but knows no national boundaries - though it seems somewhat confused in its publicity material as to whether it's a "UK" or "UK and Ireland" station.
Certainly, in my few hours' listening last weekend, I heard no Irish sport discussed, and this summer's World Cup was covered entirely in terms of England's prospects.
"Discussion" is a rather elevated term for Another 90 Minutes (Teamtalk 252, Saturday), the new station's post-match soccer phone-in. Or should that be "post-unmatch nonphone-in"? The station hasn't got live commentary rights and scarcely a sinner was calling.
The programme is presented by Nick Harris, a Leeds fan and, as it happens, a boorish, chauvinistic eejit. (As an index of same, please note that I switched over to Richard Littlejohn on BBC Radio 5 Live for some more enlightened talk.For the sake of conversation, Harris brought his producer into the studio - only he described him as "my erstwhile producer", which seemed like the manure hitting the fan a little early, even for this disastrous debut. (I think the word he wanted was "esteemed".) The producer matched Harris malaprop for malaprop - he described one of the few callers as "so bad, he was nondescript".
On Sunday morning, poor old Phil Neal got in on the act, describing Jan Molby as "an expatriate of mine at Liverpool". Even the Teamtalk newsroom seemed to be altering the PA and Reuters copy to make it ungrammatical.
You can support this sort of sad, half-assed radio - so bad it's nondescript - or you can give thanks that an outfit like Roger Gregg's Crazy Dog Audio Theatre is still interested in exploring the possibilities of the medium for real fun and games.
At the end of a year that saw Crazy Dog's surreal comedy show Tread Softly, Bill Lizard and the audience-participation Big, Big Space occupying the Saturday-morning Radio 1 comedy slot for many weeks, that slot saw its listenership jump by more than 10 per cent in the weekend JNLRs, released recently. Big, Big Space is available as a boxed set now in a couple of cool comic-type shops, and - RTÉ be praised! - Crazy Dog have been asked back in the autumn to do a series of genuinely live radio-comedy programmes, in front of a studio audience in Montrose.
I know Gregg would love the programmes to feature celebrity guests, in the old-time radio style. Maybe they could have Henry Kissinger in, rattling the handcuffs of course. But we'd better check with the A.G. about what Intel would make of that . . .
hbrowne@irish-time.ie