In an exciting start to the new media year, it was announced just the other day that the President, Mrs McAleese, was scarcely injured at all in a skiing accident in the French Alps. Less than two weeks after the event, this news story prompted our less than thrilling headline: "President feeling `great' after ski accident".
As journalists we do what we can for news. The President's accident involved nothing more than bumping into someone while walking on a ski slope, and the subsequent brief application of a neck brace. It is hardly her fault that the media blow such items out of proportion.
Sure where would we be without her.
However, ahead of this crucial late-breaking story, the story in media circles was that a cover-up job had been attempted on the President's non-accident. As the word spread, there were unsubstantiated reports of our First Lady attempting a new snowboarding record at the dead of night, going off-piste on treacherous black runs, joining a maverick downhill racing team, ski-umping from her chalet roof, entering Grand Slalom events under an assumed name, and staying out late at unscheduled and officially unapproved apres-ski events.
However, a spokeswoman for the President later denied that there had ever been any intention to keep the accident a secret. As reported last Tuesday, the spokeswoman said: "It would have been different if she had been hospitalised, but the fact that she bumped into someone on the ski slope is not the sort of thing you send out a press release about."
This is disingenuous. I myself bumped into Roger Moore in Klosters on New Year's Eve, and naturally could hardly wait to fax the story to the international media. A pal of mine brushed shoulders with one of the minor British royals at Verbier three days earlier and quite rightly had the news splashed across three pages in Hello.
It is a relief then to see a genuinely exciting headline, namely "CBAI to meet North next week in Templepatrick". If the Contract Bridge Association of Ireland is finally to take part in the Peace Process, all is not lost.
Meanwhile, the Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, has been criticising the Common Agriculture Policy and the attitude of the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, to its reform: "The CAP is gradually turning the agricultural community of Europe into an equivalent of inhabitants of a native American reservation in the Midwest."
Not many people are aware that we have a native American reservation in the Leitrim-Roscommon conurbation, but never mind. I presume that Mr Bruton means that European farmers, and particularly Irish farmers, are being increasingly forced - against their wishes - into dependence on hand-outs, in the same way that native Americans have been made dependent, their self-reliance destroyed, their culture undermined and their proud history trivialised.
I visited the reservation near Dromod the other day and first spoke to Gerry "Geronimo" Murphy. Gerry used to be a big dairy farmer in north Roscommon but now spends his time creating Christmas-cracker jokes for an entertainments multinational. Soul-destroying work, you might think, but Gerry still manages to get the odd ethnic touch in: "Fella goes to his doctor, says he's confused, feels like a wigwam and a teepee. Doc says, you're too tense."
This wasn't very funny, but Ger did not get the name "Geronimo" for nothing, so I laughed long and hard, and Ger then tried out 17 other cracker jokes before I could make my excuses. It's what he does, apparently.
It's a sad comedown for him, I observed to his minder, Brian "Sitting Bull" Gilhooley, as we sat down (predictably) to share a peace pipe, or actually a 20-pack of Camel. "Not really", said Brian, "he gets a fiver per cracker, and emails 30 of them a day. Beats trying to fill milk yield quota requirements."
Brian used to be a beef farmer on the Leitrim lowlands and now spends his time making wampum. So what did he think of John Bruton's remarks? Did he speak with forked tongue?
"I don't know anything about bifurcatory problems," said Brian, a little drily I thought, "but it all seems a little patronising to me. Maybe Bruton doesn't know that we've taken a lead from our opposite numbers on certain reservations in the US and established an interesting cash-flow operation here on site. Let's go take a look."
So I spent a couple of fun hours in the Wounded Knee Casino and didn't lose all that much, apart from a little independence.