Mary Lou and the media – by Philip O’Connor

I know I shouldn’t have been, but when I saw that Mary Lou McDonald was set to appear on the Free State podcast with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning (links at the bottom of this post), I was first mildly shocked, and then intrigued – in a media ecosystem where Sinn Féin are only to be pilloried, this interview was never going to follow that particular script.

I was almost as surprised as I was when Free State was launched – never did I imagine that two characters as seemingly different as Joe and Dion would come together to talk about what it is they have in common, and even more about what they don’t share. Since the launch they have been in our feeds twice a week, talking to each other and guests in a way that is disarmingly refreshing.

The result has been one of the few truly disruptive moments in Irish media in decades – two intelligent, educated, compassionate men speaking openly and from the heart, every week, about everything under the sun.

Sometimes they tease, sometimes they banter and back-slap, sometimes they vehemently disagree. There have been tears of frustation and anger and sadness and love and joy from both men, and in a land where men are still learning to express their feelings without fear, the podcast has become essential listening.

That is why Mary Lou McDonald being featured on a show so grounded in the human condition is so surprising, because in the eyes of the Irish media, neither Mary Lou nor Sinn Féin are ever allowed to be human.

They are the IRA’s shadow – the apologists for monstrous deeds of the shadowy gunmen and the bombers, and in some cases one and the same.

In Irish media, Sinn Féin are only ever portrayed as a dark historical artefact, an orb of swirling woe and evil and darkness to be kept hidden from public view.

They are not to be presented as other politicians are allowed to present themselves, only as the defenders of mindless slaughter and violence, the subtext being that these psychopaths cannot be trusted.

In the meantime, the photographers select their finest prime lenses to take portraits of Those Who Can Be Trusted To Govern, blithely ignoring the violence that is more than 4000 homeless children, or the months and sometimes years-long waiting list for medical care in Ireland, or the tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands forced into exile because they want a life of dignity that Ireland cannot, and in many cases blatantly will not, offer them.

Never once will the gargantuan blatant lies that make up their electoral promises be raised with them by print journalists, for fear of losing access to the top table and all the perks that go with tugging the forelock and reporting verbatim what the powerful want the public to hear.

The Free State interview with Mary Lou, published in two parts this week, was interesting in no small part due to the journey that Dion himself has been on, on the podcast.

Regularly mocked, and sometimes not so gently, by Joe for his “West Brit” tendencies (liking cricket and association football rather than Gaelic games, for example), Dion’s historical and visceral aversion to IRA violence has softened somewhat, as over the course of their discussions he has perhaps come to understand that it did not happen in a vacuum – that, of course, does not excuse or make any of what the IRA did right, but it goes a long way to explaining why they did what they did.

The interview was the worst nightmare of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – in the Dáil chamber they can ignore her, invoking the name of Jean McConville instead of answering her questions (yet, oddly, never mentioning Jo Jo Dullard, for whose disappearance and murder the son of a prominent Fine Gael TD was questioned during the week, to a deafening silence from the pol corrs – imagine if it was a Sinn Féin spokesperson’s son arrested and questioned?).

On Free State Mary Lou came across exactly as the people who know her would describe her – caring, compassionate, confident, at times conflicted, and convinced that the time has come to change how we do things in Ireland.

And that is an existential threat to the status quo.

The next move on Free State will be intriguing – the leaders of the other major political parties have been invited to appear on the show, and whether they do so or not might perhaps be what comes to define this election.

Whatever about the others, my gut feeling is that neither Micheál Martin nor Simon Harris will take them up on that offer – they are only interested in media that they can control, and I’d sincerely doubt Joe and Dion are going to content themselves with hopping on a pre-approved photo op to ask a few empty questions.

The biggest problem for them is not that they would reveal their own humanity – it is that the electorate would become acutely aware of the lack of it.

Because when you can look on and do nothing as house prices rocket, waiting lists get longer and child after Irish child suffers after decades of your governance, what can you say in defence of your own humanity?