Terry Prone: Indulging insanity for the sake of Christmas traditions
Nobody is ever going to compete to get the first slice of Christmas cake any more than they’re going to fight each other, elbows out, for the first of the Brussels sprouts, writes Terry Prone
Originally published in the Irish Examiner.
Words such as "brat" may be more popular, in fairness, but I yield to nobody in selecting, as the most boring words in the dictionary, these two: Government formation.
The minute you hear a radio presenter use them, the very second you read them in a headline, despair hits.
Boring doesn’t begin to describe a politician not directly involved in the negotiations, earnestly describing the three layers of topics to be addressed in the government formation chat.
Why the hell do we in media spend such time and space and attention to this dross? And what kind of pathetic earnestness makes otherwise sensible hacks anxiously ask the uninvolved politician how long it’s going to take?
It doesn’t matter how long it takes. We’re doing grand with the interim Government, except for the challenge the concept poses for the broadcasters who can’t pronounce it. Some of the highest-profile microphone wielders announce it as “interm”. Which it SO isn’t.
Producers and editors are earnest by nature. Dutiful. Public-spirited. They are possessed of a conviction that they must educate the public, who, left ignorant, would go to hell in a hand basket.
Hence the government formation items that will relentlessly run up to and beyond Christmas Day. Although “run” might be euphemistic. Those items will do a slow march in diving boots while the rest of us concentrate on the domestic equivalent of government formation: Maintaining Christmas traditions.
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