The trickle of disapproval in the Main Stream Media for Social Media has been gathering pace, apace, and has now surged to a tsunami of purgation. In a word or two:
-Ban ‘em !
Ban, is right. Indeed, if the boot were on the other foot it might well be, erm, B.A.N.:
-Barbiturates.
-Amphetamines.
-Narcotics.
Indeed, during the last week The Perkin’s inner addled Main Stream Media (aka Anti-Social Media) addict has had recourse to almost all three of the above banned substances. From lending an ear and an eye to the following three media outlets RTE Radio, BBC TV (World Service) and RTE Radio (so good, one namechecks it twice).
First up was the dear, departing David Davin-Power of RTE. It was once noted by a Mao-man of the Year of the Mouse that Power comes out of the barrel of a gun; in the case of David Davin-Power it clearly came out of a double-barrel surname.
His departure from RTE was duly marked by a characteristic low-key manner so redolent of RTE when it comes to in-house-keeping matters. In this instance it took the nasty form of a dirty, thirty minute interrogation of Castlereagh proportions by ace Griller in Chief of RTE, Sean O Rourke on the latter’s showpiece, showoff showtrial Show.
The valedictory victim was not spared.
As anybody who has ever been married to, say, a Lady Castlereagh of Connubia will testify, it was the Unasked Question (see below) which proved the most unsettling one of all for the the dear, departing DDP, as he is initally known in Donybrook, Dublin 4.
DDP was RTE’s Main Man aka Hi-viz Guy in Belfast furing the Dirty, Thirty Year War and it fell to his lot to conduct the first postSection 31 grilleroo of guess who ? Gerry Adams. According to DPP the SF leader proved to be very, erm, ‘cagey’.
Cagey? Here be hairy-backed (and fronted) knuckle-scraper who snarls when corralled.
Knowing this to be on the cards and fearing the worst it was revealed on the prog in q. that a fearful RTE – get this ! – sent up two bodyguards in the form of (gulp) Joe Mulholland and (gasp) Sean O Rourke to bomb-blighted Belfast to lend moral support to DDP on the eve of his impending, big deal O.R.D.E.A.L.
Presumably in the form of one emissary holding his right hand, the crucial one with the microphone, and the other emissary holding his left hand, the left-over one.
-It was during my spell in Belfast, intoned DPP, that I developed a life-long horror and revulsion for political violence.
Re-spect.
And it was here now that the most dreaded of all interrogation techniques entered the fray, i.e., The Unasked Question.
(The second shoe which failed to fall on the floor upstairs, as Lady Castlereagh of Connubia might prefer to put it).
For towards the end of this most harrowing of (extremely) cross-examinations it transpired that in 2015 David Davin-Power had co-presented a RTE travel documentary entitled ‘Gallipoli- Ireland’s Forgotten Heroes’. This prog zeroed in on the Great Donkey Derby 14-18 from an Irish perspective.
It will be recalled that Gallipoli was where the Irish tourists laid down a Laytown kinda marker by organising a peculiarly Irish slant on DDP (Donkey Derby Promotions ) – across the sandy track of a delightful Turkish beach. With that characteristic wit which never deserts Paddy Abroad they promptly titled it:
-The Gallipoli Gallop.
The dear, departing David Davin-Power’s involvement with the prog was motivated in part by the fact that one of of his grandfathers, Frank Power (one barrelled surname) from Kimmage in Dublin, enlisted in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and was in attendance at the Scrimmage, oops, Gallop at Gallipoli.
Sadly, during the course of this al fresco seaside race meet which lasted for all (gulp) ten months in 15/16 up to (gasp) 130,000 picnicers failed to last the pace: due, seemingly, to what is known in culinary circles as, erm, Gallipoli Belly. Foreign sun travel, it must be understood, was still in its infancy.
Did the gabby griller, Sean O Rourke, raise the question of contaminated khebabs ? Did he opt to skewer the departing David Davin-Power even as he took the door marked Exit ? He did, in his (gulp) whole grain bread.
This is where The Perkin reached for the B-word:
-Barbituates for sleep.
Second up, was the BBC World Service where star reporter Kathy Kay turned in a spectacular walking the walk performance even as she talked the talk up and down the empty sidewalks of Washington DC, addressing the camera which she seemed to stalk even as it, she stalked.
Ostensibly it was a promo for Aunty ( a foremost player on Anti-Social Media) but it soon became obvious that Kathy Kay (one of the stellar non-fellers in an increasingly feminized Freeway of Information) was actually practising for a date with the wet cement of the celebrity sidewalk outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in H-wood.
For celebrity she is, truly. KK, indeed, is as much a celeb as another same-initaled star ever was, MM. Not that they are to be confused or even, erm, conflated one with the other. For whereas Marilyn Monroe (for it is she !) was hailed by the eminently banable Japanese Main Stream Media aka Anti-Social Media with a (reprehensible description!) as (gulp):
-Honourable Buttocks Swinging Actress.
For Kathy Kay is nothing if not all straight lines. She thinks in straight lines, she talks in straight lines, she walks in straight lines. like a paralellogram in Prada. Lengthy of limb, in her promo on the emptied sidewalks of Washington, DC she seems to be auditioning for a role as the Seven League Bootgirl.
While there is a certain differnece between the two ladies, KK and MM, in terms of curvature yet there is another point of similarity: they converge, as it were, in the D zone.
-D for Diamonds.
The French are glad to die for love
They delight in fighting duels
But I prefer a man who lives
And gives expensive jewels
A kiss on the hand
May be quite continental
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend
Wheras MM sang unforgettably about the D’s, KK’s eyes are like a pair of inlaid Diamonds beneath her brows (furrowed, permanently) : cold, hard and unblinking. Although she does indeed think in straight line, KK never, ever, winks in straight lines. For the humour of the trouser-clad Ms’s who nowadays hog the microphones of the Main Stream Media is, erm, uniformly of the snide, wide-girl variety which just does not lend itself to a wink-linked delivery but rather to the po-faced, slow-paced unblinking virago sideshow.
The next element is one where they are similar and yet disimilar: the Presidentcy. Wheras MM is known to have canoodled with a President, and was rumoured to have wished him well on at least one occasion when he was undressed in his birthday suit, KK went one, yes, giantess step further and actually ran, or indeed strode, with the legendary straightlegged, trousered stride of hers, for the Presidency.
In which – wazzurname ? – oh, yes, Hilary Clinton acted as her stalking filly/ cat’s paw/ surrogate candidate.
The KK was odds on to score a decisive walk-over vis a vis The Donald but alas things were not to be a be.
(Not unlike Armagh, indeed, who were hotly tipped to go up to Down last Sunday, but instead went down to Down. And even though the banner headline beforehand read ‘Oisin’s 11 !’ the result was no daylight robbery or indeed Las Vegas heist itself. It was the Orchard county who were left to mourn their defeat to the Mournemen, to eat the crab apples of a drab defeat; not so easy an undertaking, after all).
KK has not yet gotten over her unexpected (by Anti-Social Media) loss and has been even more on the warpath ever since.
Smartly dressed as ever, as befits one still smarting from her unanticipated outsmarting by a mere reality tv upstart, Kathy Kay’s Kit (KKK) always looks, not unlike Melania T’s, a Million Dollars. Even when she is hot under the collar, which is more or less, indeed, more and more, all the time.
Hence, the prominence of the Aunty Promo curently being aired through the empty sidewalks of Washington, DC, before they are properly aired with Kathy Kay of the BBC doing her by now legendary Stilletto Stalk, even as she eye-balls the camera with those dual diamond-eyes of hers:
-When you have asked the hard questions that other stations are afraid to ask.
Chic-click.
-When you have fearlessly challenged the Status Quo, without fear or favour.
Chic-click.
-When you have looked Intolearance in the eye and make the case for Tolearance.
Chic-click.
-Then you are entitled to be known world-wide as the most trusted and even-handed news gathering station on the planet.
This is where The Perkin reached for the A-word:
-Amphetemines.
In order to stay awake, in the hope, indeed, expectation that KK would do her sniffy, stiff-legged, dry-lipped imiation of a marvelously sly humoured, moist-lipped Mrs. Joe diMaggio :
Time rolls on
And youth is gone
And you can’t straighten up when you bend
But stiff back
Or stiff knees
You stand straight at Tiffany’s
Tiffany’s
Cartier
Black Starr
Frost Gorham
Jimmy Savile
Talk to me Rolf Harris
Tell me all about it.
Third up, was that ripe pair of pear-shaped sisters, respelendent as ever in their Blue Blouses, and trailing, as equally ever, clouds of their grand-uncle’s glory, at least to the mind’s eye, for they ‘appeared’ on RTE Radio 1.
Mary Banotti and Norah Owens (for it is they !) once again had to be crowbarred into the studio of the Mimsy O’Call-again Show (for it is it !) to, erm, crow about their admiration for their dove-white peace-loving grand uncle, Michael Collins (for it is he !). The same grand uncle entirely whose name is never (but never) taken in vain by the Morally Surperior Main Stream Media south of the Black Sow’s Dyke.
The first name to enter The Perkin’s jolted head was one which rhymed with Joe diMaggio (see above):
-Caravaggio.
At last, he thought, the Collins –Caravaggio coneection was about to be unveiled in the suitably artistic surrounds of the Mimsy O’ Show by one with an equally suitable Italianate surname:
-Mary, Bean Otti.
Ooops, that oughter read, naturalemente, as:
-Mary Banotti.
Now the Misses Mary and Norah first made their maiden voyage into this Free Southern Stateen as the Misses O’Mahony. And certain unkind critics of Mary B, MEP, have suggested that the only reason she retained her former husband’s Italian surname was to boost her chances at the polls, the B being a deal higher up than the O on a voting card.
But, happily, The Perkin is not one of them. Just as he turned a deaf ear to those who claim to have heard Proinsias de Rossa boast that the only reason he, Frank Ross, held on to the Gaelic take on his birth-name was on account of the lower case ‘de’ being ditto higher up than the capialized R.
But, back to the Collins-Caravaggio connection.
All to do with the ‘Taking of Christ’ as distinct from the taking of the Lord’s name in vain, be the hokey. This painting by Caravaggio now hangs stately in the hall of the National Gallery of Ireland in Merrion Square, Dublin 2 having hung in obscurity in the refectory of the Jesuit house on Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2 for nigh on sixty years or so.
Air-brushed out of history was this oil-painting for half a century or more.
Its backstory is a gory one, alas. And takes one back to (gasp) Gorey, County Wexford in the peaceful summer of 1920. For it was on the bright and dark day of an ambivalent June 15 that Captain Percival Lea-Wilson, a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabularly, was stabbed, or rather riddled in the back by a cowardly contingent of holy terrorists from the IRA.
The Jesuits rallied around the widow of the gunned down District Inspector and offered her much comfort and succour. In gratitude, Marie Lea-Wilson, a paediatrician in the Rotunda Hospital, Parnell Square, Dublin 1 donated the ‘Taking of Christ’ to the Jesuit Order. She had obtained the painting at an auction of the effects of one, William Hamilton Nisbet, in whose banorial Scottish abode the painting had previously hung.
The Scot was under the impression that this non-impressionist painting was the work of a Dutch follower of Caravaggio, one, Gerard van Honthordst. Which belief was based on fake premises, as things subsequently transpired. When in the early 1990s Sergio Banotti, oops, Benedetti, senior conservator of the National Gallery of Ireland, gave the Irish art world a wake-up call.
When he showed that the van Hontrhorst painting was in fact a fake, having been, in fact, painted by Caravaggio. This fake news was exposed when the accumulated flakes had been scraped off.
Nothing fake or flaky, however, about a particular gory detail of the gunning down of Captain Percival Lea-Wilson in Roaring Twenites. Having eye-witnessed said Captain (allegedly) beat seven bells out of the holy terrorist Tom Clarke in chokey in the immediate aftermath of the hellish Easter Outrage 1916, a minor player in the GPO swore unholy vengeange which he pronounced, ‘vingince’.
Curiously, Mimsy O’Call-again somehow failed to quizz (the technical term in broadcasting is ‘tease out’ even in an easy peasy way) the entirely Grand Nieces Mary and Nora about the death sentence which their nice granduncle (for it was he !) passed in Erse (allegedly) on Captain Perce (definitely) in Gorey that gory day in 1920 when June was busting out all over and the sheep wern’t sleepin’ anymore, and all the rams were chasing ewe-sheep, all determined there’d be new sheep and the ewe-sheep weren’t even keepin score.
That sorta thingy. (See, incidentally, Whole Grain Bread in the RTE Granary far above).
Having already zzzzzz’d himself to sleep counting, erm, ewe-sheep, there was no need for The Perkin, at this point, to reach out for the N-word:
-N for Narcotics.
A beauty sleep is born.
Loved it.
Beir bua, BP.