Adieu

20 February 1997

The Chinese Leader, Deng Xiaoping, died yesterday [February 19 1997]. CNN News reports this morning that many Chinese are unaware of this fact, not because of media censorship, but because of an overly respectful media. It seems that Chinese TV announced the news of Dengs demise, then went straight into somber music. If you missed the initial announcement, you never got a chance to see it later. CNN carried interviews with several bemused Chinese who were unaware of the reason for the disappearance of regular programming, and all flags flying at half-mast. In fact, they seemed to be going about their business quite contentedly, even after the news was broken to them by western journalists.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to memories and legends of Ireland the week Eamonn DeValera died. Granted I was only seven or eight at the time, but I do remember that for days on end there seemed to be nothing but funeral dirges on both TV and Radio.

Years later, I attended a conference where Pat Kenny spoke about his life as a journalist, and he related the following story, which he swears is true.

It seems that at this time, Kenny and Larry Gogan were the young Turks at RTE, promoting newfangled 'pop' music at every opportunity. Naturally, when Dev finally departed this Earth, the word came down for on high that a proper attitude of respect was to shown, and everyone complied.

After about three days, Kenny was fairly chomping at the bit, and began arguing with management that it was time to lighten up a little. Eventually, an agreement was reached, and Kenny was allowed to play something more upbeat, but instrumental pieces only, no vocals, and it would have to have an Irish theme. Kenny went into the studio for his next show armed with his Horslips albums.

The intro to his show finished, and Kenny went into his patter about TV coverage of the funeral, while at the same time putting one of the Horslips albums on the turntable.

Kenny then spent several minutes organizing his playlist for the show. When the piece finished, he reached for the album jacket, switched the microphone to Live, and announced, "We'll have more information about the State Funeral of President DeValera in a moment, and the piece you've been listening to was "The Snakes Farewell to the Emerald Isle".

Now I think that's funny, no matter how you vote.