David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were two of the best-known co-anchors in the early days of television news shows in the United States, writes Tom O'Dea.
Because television demands that its showmen have individualised tags, those two long-serving presenters became identified in the minds of viewers by their manner of handing back and forth to one another: "Over to you, David" and "Over to you, Chet" - to the point that the exchange became a piece of street cant, something like "Roll it there, Colette."
In 1988, when David Brinkley had retired from television, he published a book called Washington Goes to War. When I first picked it up, I expected it to be full of the thunder of politicians, the rattle of guns, the fatuities of generals of the armed forces. Because I wondered what Mr Brinkley's writing might be like, I took it to bed, one night and cracked it open.
How many television anchors can you haul out from under the studio lights and expect to write words that are readable? I had read some of them, and was, consequently, not disposed to expect much of Mr Brinkley. I had a few surprises in store.
The first thing was that David Brinkley wrote wonderfully well - in a clean, literate, captivating, dryly humorous style.
The next surprise was that the book was not a noisy guns-and-drums recital, but a minutely detailed social history of Washington DC from 1939 to 1945. It was a book full of anecdotes, full of fun, but never letting go its hold upon the unbroken thread of history than ran through, and bound together, the multifarious lives of the residents of that city during the second World War. I have subsequently read it a number of times. It has become an admired, trusted and beloved book. And I shall return to it in a moment, when I have explained why it is on my mind again, these days.
A couple of years ago, the residents of Dublin suburbs were still putting out their usual garbage for the bin men: leaving it, in supermarket bags, at the butt of the front wall, like an IRA "suspicious package". Latitats had been arriving from the local authorities for years, couched in bully-boy language, warning residents of what would befall them if they did not divvy up, pronto, and fulfil their financial obligations to the refuse collection department.
The residents ignored the warnings. The language of the latitats grew ever louder, and colourful television commercials told them what bad citizens they were. They ignored those, too. Then, about that time, some citizens of Cork - who had been dumping rubbish at the great oaken doors of City Hall - took the matter to the Supreme Court, which found that local authorities were obliged to collect rubbish, whether or not citizens forked out. Straight away, the tone of the television commercials changed, to such an extent that they began to sound like the circulation vice-president of Readers' Digest pleading with defaulting subscribers to pick up the baton once more. The next thing was that the local authorities asked (asked, mind you) if they might leave wheelie-bins at gates, and if residents would kindly put their rubbish into them. Vive les citizens! as Robespierre might have cried.
Now, the question of water charges and refuse collection charges is back in the news again. The Government - already taxing citizens until they scream - shrugs its shoulders at the double taxation and throws responsibility for the matter back into the faces of the local authorities, while the relevant Minister has taken up the threatening noises where the TV warnings cried off.
This chaotic situation in which the supreme governing authority of the country leaves citizens to sink or swim - or lie, unattended, on trolleys in hospital corridors, or fail to house themselves in a builders' and landlords' grasping market - brings me back to David Brinkley in wartime Washington, a city in which, for generations, citizens did not even have the vote.
When the city began to burst at the seams, Roosevelt threw up shoddy housing all over the District, even along the Mall. Brinkley reports that the Saturday Evening Post, valiantly trying to preserve the America of William McKinley, concluded that the effect of the "invasion of the capital by hordes of New Dealers had been to destroy, for the first time in the history of Washington, the incomparably delightful relationship between official and social life. The two are now separate".
Recalling this deteriorating neighbourhood, Mr Brinkley recounts one of his many delightful anecdotes.
"Down the Fourteenth Street hill from Ford's was the District Building, headquarters of the city's nearly invisible and nearly powerless local government, run by three commissioners appointed by the president. It dealt with the city's local problems mainly by ignoring them. A woman living in Georgetown telephoned the Sanitary Department and said, 'I've had some brick planters for flowers built in my back yard. There were 35 bricks left over and I want to get rid of them, but every time I put them in the trash your collectors lift them out of the can and leave them on the sidewalk.'
"She was told, 'Madam, our trucks are not allowed to haul away building materials. If they did, when anybody remodelled a house they'd find a huge pile of lumber and pipe junk and they're not equipped to handle it.'
" 'Then how do I get ride of these bricks?'
" 'Madam, do you work somewhere in town?'
" 'Yes, in the Agriculture Department.'
" 'How do you go to work?'
" 'On the bus.'
" 'All right. Here's what to do. Each morning, wrap one brick in a newspaper and take it with you and when you get off the bus, leave it on the seat.' '"
Smells like Charlie McCreevy's Ireland.