RADIO REVIEW/Harry Browne: 'It was Charles De Gaulle on the Champs Elysées in 1944. It was the first man to walk on the moon come home for a tickertape parade." Actually, it was Brian Kerr's press conference in the Shelbourne on Tuesday, and it was Ken Early, the soccer correspondent for Off the Ball (NewsTalk 106, Monday to Friday), his tongue flirting sardonically with his cheek, who used these words to describe the celebratory atmosphere.
Early's stretch over-the-top for historical analogies was the nearest I heard anyone sensibly come to some critical distance on an undoubtedly popular appointment. (For months, among my own soccer-talk peers, we have failed miserably to muster any decent argument about The Right Man for the Job: "Kerr." "Kerr." "Kerr." "Yeah, Kerr.") On The Right Hook (NewsTalk 106, Monday to Friday) presenter George Hook spoke of Kerr's 100-day "honeymoon period" as Ireland manager; but this was less like a honeymoon and more like the full Islamic paradise, with the media happily fulfilling the role of the 70 virgins and Kerr sounding more than suitably priapic.
Even on Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Thursday), the host was bubbling about Kerr being a "genuinely lovely guy". The warmth survived Kerr's phone line to Browne being cut off, never to return, just as Vinnie was launching into the Keane question. That abrupt ending was unfortunate, because I suspect Browne would have probed further than other interviewers and would at least have asked: "Have you spoken to Roy? What is your relationship with him?" Happily, and contrary to Bryan Robson's expectations, a close relationship with Roy Keane was not considered a prerequisite for the job. However, the pundits who reckon the Genesis Report and Kerr's appointment have retrospectively redeemed Keane's Saipan tirade are still in the ascendant - despite the fact that both Genesis and Kerr say the World Cup squad was very well prepared.
Such is Keane's moral standing, indeed, that the likes of Con Murphy on Five Seven Live (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) rushed to give him a get-out clause: "If he doesn't play for Ireland again, it will have nothing to do with Brian Kerr, but with Alex Ferguson." Back on NewsTalk, Ken Early had less excuse for this sort of talk: a few weeks back the station got relatively lengthy comments from Keane when he was in Dublin for a function. Listening carefully to that interview, full of "wait and see after the new manager comes in", it was certainly reasonable to assume that Keane's decision depended in large part on his opinion of the appointment.
Yet Off the Ball, and Early in particular, indulged in Con-like reflex Keano apologetics. On Monday evening, Early was outraged at press reports that Keane had done a quiet deal with Robson, saying he'd return if the latter were made boss.
"That doesn't make any sense," Early told us, because Keane said last summer his whole concern was with "professionalism and preparation" - not necessarily Robson's strong points. In short, here was a journalist telling us that a story about private dealings could not be true, because it didn't coincide with a person's public statements. I hope Early warned his colleagues to ignore any attempts to suggest that, let's say, the US is interested in invading Iraq in order to get its oil; Colin Powell says "the international community is trying to disarm Saddam Hussein", and that should be good enough for us. (Early needn't tell RTÉ - its reporters already sound like they're working on that premise.)
In recent Irish history, there has perhaps been no public/private dichotomy to match that of "Sinn Féin/IRA". Ed Moloney's A Secret History of the IRA makes clear that the layers of discourse, strategy and manoeuvre make "dichotomy" a massive understatement, in fact. When the book came up on Off the Shelf (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), there was reason to hope that Andy O'Mahony's guests, Tim Pat Coogan and John A. Murphy, would be in a good position to explore the interstices.
Not only did they fail to do that, they didn't even produce a decent row. Coogan, identified as a player in the peace process by Moloney, seems too enamoured of Gerry Adams to engage with the book's allegations that Adams deceived his colleagues and followers (allegations which Adams has denied). And Murphy sounded too worried that his decades of anti-republican rhetoric might be deemed to have been ill-informed in light of Adams's evident efforts for peace.
Thus Murphy claimed vindication in Moloney's thesis that the Hume-Adams dialogue was a sort of show-biz; but I can't recall the old Sunday Independent denunciations of those talks accusing them of concealing a real, behind-the-scenes "peace strategy".
Coogan was worse, any journalistic curiosity buried beneath his loyal shrugs: he dismissed allegations about the betrayal of the arms-smuggling Eksund with an utterly incongruous "the Irish physical-force tradition would have gone on anyway"; the Loughgall ambush got another non-sequitur - "that was practically an independent IRA unit, quite separate from the Belfast leadership" - begging the questions raised in the book. Ireland deserves better - hey, maybe they'd get Brian Kerr in to talk about it?