A Failed Experiment: My Day Without News

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday October 04, 2002 19:59 by The Under Dog - underdoghacks.cjb.net

Foiled by bad TV

Sometimes I wonder.

Strange times. I decided to try an experiment today. Mission: Try to avoid any news, at least until closedown, when Euro (non) News begins. That meant turning off the TV and radio all day, which was hard enough. By six o’clock, I couldn’t take it anymore.
So I turned on the box in the corner of the room, and decided to check out what the ‘kids’ watch while the rest of us are waiting desperately for new lies to be told to us. Unfortunately, living in the sticks I have only two stations worth watching. One had the news on so I was left with no other choice but to watch a hideous programme going by the moniker of “The Fame Game”.
After five minutes of watching three idiotic celeb hunting ‘young people’ – are they supposed to be representative of me? - answer equally idiotic questions about their favourite celeb, I’d decided that this was possibly the worst decision I’d ever made. The main attraction of this show seemed to be guessing the name of the ten-year-old kid, who happened - through some unlucky twist of fate, or possibly due to morbid parenting - to share the same Christian title as “a famous personality”. They failed. Miserably. “Is it Pink?”, “Is it Alliayh?” Not unless her parents were acid freaks, you fucking inbreeds.
In fact I don’t think the three horrible chancers even knew who the star actually was, Karen Carpenter having died some years back before people cared if Judy Finnegan’s cleavage popped out or stayed safely tucked away from all except Richard. But I’m sure our heroic trio didn’t care about their public humiliation, they were, after all, on television. And that’s what counts isn’t it? Isn’t it?
In fact, I got so embarrassed for the kids that I instinctively switched channel, and there it was. Sinn Fein’s Stormont offices had been broken into and ransacked by the vicious hordes of the PSNI. Documents had been taken, and offices looted, trust betrayed, in an act of cynical political manoeuvring. In short the offices of a governing power had been raided by the state they play a part in governing. Madness. Not that I hold any truck with the Shinners and their narrow politics, but in future this could be the offices of some organisation serious about changing society. A dangerous precedent, but lets hope one day I’ll get to sift through Bertie’s papers, if all the interesting ones haven’t already been shredded.
This was followed by news of respectable, in terms of numbers, turn-outs at the Trade Union protests around the country. The bosses sat back, rubbed their filthy hands, and laughed. I thought: “Someone should do something about those bureaucratic parasites that run the Labour movement in this country, then we’ll see some action. Maybe.”
The best news of the day, well the funniest, was the public spectacle of a mob of angry, slobbering student scum, armed only with a megaphone, taking on that smarmy motherfucker Charlie McCreevy (Minister for Finance, or rather, lack of it). With their simple shouts of: “Whadda we want? Free fees!” they surrounded our Chaz like sharks around fat bleeding Finance Minister tied to the ocean floor (Ah my dreams again, sorry). Closer, closer they came, drowning out whatever pigshit that was spewing forth from his horrible little mouth. The man was visibly put out, as I have never seen him before, and I was all the happier for it.
But the best was yet to come. We then learned that he had later, or possibly earlier, been stopped from exiting the DIT building by the horde of students, and fittingly for a crook like himself, he fled in terror out the back door. I have a story about a young Chaz, related to me by a middle aged friend from Chaz’s constituency of Kildare North, but that’s for another time and place. Right John?
Workers and young people being stirred into militancy. Could it be, could the SWP be right? Is the revolution actually around the corner? Alas, my lofty dreams of waking up tomorrow and storming Charles J. Haughey’s island were soon shot down when it was brought to my attention that tobacco prices are set to rise by up to 50%. When things are this bad, what else do we have? Smokers of Ireland Unite!