Upfront with Katie Hannan and getting sympathy

We human beings are a rum lot. We react to the plight of others, sometimes with indifference, sometimes with compassion. The odd thing is, if the person comes to us and asks for our compassion, we’re less likely to give it.

I found myself in such a position a couple of nights back, during Upfront with Katie Hannon on RTÉ ONE.

The topic under consideration was the Mother and Baby scandal, where Irish institutions, usually religious orders, separated the baby from the (single) mother and put the baby out for adoption. This had all sorts of implications for the children’s future, and the studio audience, as well no doubt as those at home, felt for a middle-aged woman in the studio audience called Colette Shiels when she told of the damage she and her mother had suffered under this scheme.

If you are of a nervous disposition, or someone who finds it hard to cope with things when they stop being black and white, then maybe now would be a good time to stop reading.

I don’t know but I would guess that having to give up a baby shortly after birth must be brutally difficult. Even animals bellow their loss when a calf is taken from them; how much more so a human being?

But – and this is the non-black-and-white bit – while wrong is wrong regardless of circumstances, those were different days. Then, the general Irish public would have seen the removal of the baby from a sinful woman as doing the infant a favour. I don’t know, of course, but I have a suspicion that many mothers, while saddened by the loss of their child, might have also felt a degree of relief, that the absence of the child might lessen the chances of the mother and baby being finger-pointed for life.

The other thing that complicates things is that those who almost directly ask for our compassion tend to lessen their chances of getting it. We had an instance of that on Upfront. Colette Shiels had already told how she had been taken from her mother as an infant and the pain it had inflicted on her for so many years. “I’m speaking up for my mum because I’m proud to say I’m her daughter and how dare the government do this to us”.

 Fair enough. Katie Hannan then went on to talk to a man in the audience, and what had been his experience of the same thing. He spoke for about a minute, then stopped and glanced anxiously off-camera. Katie Hannan said “Colette, are you all right?” I assumed that someone had taken ill, such was the sense of confusion; but in fact it was the first woman again, who now was deep in a loud crying bout – well, it sounded like crying although the camera didn’t actually show tears. The afflicted woman then got more air time and  between sniffs, said how proud she was of her mother and how disgraceful it was that the government had treated her as it did.

Clearly this was a woman in need of sympathy, comfort, support; but the fact that she was intent on getting it, regardless of anyone else in the room, I found off-putting.

It’s a lesson for us all, I suppose. If you’re going to share your pain with strangers, keep it short and above all, don’t seem as though you’re sorry for yourself, even if you are.

Footnote: after about twenty minutes on the mother-and-baby theme, there was a massive grinding of gears and Katie then began to get the panel and audience to talk about irresponsible dog-owners. What purblind idiot in RTÉ decided that’d be a good item to follow the mother-and-baby tale?