Enda Kenny And The Retrieval Of Civility

Back in the 'seventies the brilliant British film director Ken Russell was then at his apex with his trilogy of classics, "Women in Love", "The Music Lovers" and his masterpiece "The Devils".

Don't worry, Ireland hadn't yet crawled away from the coal- black shadow of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and all his works, so Russell found himself with the distinction of becoming the most-banned mainstream director in Irish film history.

Still, he was in good company. He was hardly the first genius to feel the wrath of the censor's scissors.

Mercifully, things have improved; indeed, many would say that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

This week one of Ken Russell's statements came to mind from that era. When asked about his opening scenes, which tended to grab the viewer by the scruff of the neck and thrust him head-first into the action, he replied to the effect that this wasn't the age for whispering invitations into the ear of the viewer, it was the age of getting their attention by kicking them in the crotch.

I'd dispute this. I recently bought his much earlier film "Elgar" and was once more riveted by what is clearly a gentle and heart-felt labour of love by a man who is besotted with the composer's wonderful music. Gentle is the key word.

In naïve fashion I had hoped that on entering the new millennium we had learned something from the "late, unlamented twentieth century".

I'd hoped that we were entering a new age where our wonderful technological advances would make this planet - not an Eden or a Utopia, that would be too unrealistic, but - a better place to live in.

Talk about an old hippy's daydreams! All we've done is make killing and maiming more efficient, used wonderful tools like the Internet not only to source and expand human knowledge, which is great, but to alienate others and to wrap ourselves more than ever in a Web of solitude and loneliness.

Isn't it ironic that the groups who have really organised themselves are the perverts and the nutters? The fruitcakes can now find a partner on the Net who will be happy to eat them. To EAT them, for crying out loud!

The paedophiles that would even a few years ago be on their own now can contact so many like-minded deviants that they come together as one and in effect normalise their aberrant behaviour. And don't bother to sharpen your little claws at my "unhelpful" vocabulary because I've heard it all before and to me they are nutters, vermin and perverts and no, I'm not in the slightest bit interested in their human bloody rights.

So we tippy-toe around these creatures, afraid to offend them, polite as can be while paradoxically we as a society are getting more and more rude to each other.

We see it in shops where it is a trial for the assistant to be civil to the customer; we see it when we accidentally bump another person in the street and apologise only to be met with a hostile glare - or worse.

Case in point: some time back I was entering a shop and held the door for a group of perhaps fifteen- or sixteen-year old girls. They barged past, of course, and certainly I didn't expect a thank you, but the final young "lady" offered the pièce- de-résistance: "That's right; you just stand there like a f*****' eejit."

Well, they get it from somewhere, don't they? It's almost impossible for people in Ireland to have normal, civilized conversations anymore. The F-word, indeed, is so ubiquitous that it has lost any meaning it ever had.

It's not a noun, it's not a verb, it's just an expletive that morons feel quite entitled to use in front of anyone. The old taboo of "not in front of women and children" doesn't come into it. You're quite likely to hear it come FROM them with the same unconscious ease.

Which brings me to our politicians. Ah, the people we elect and expect somehow to present some sort of moral standard. To be a group that we can be proud to have representing us on the world stage.

Again, how naïve I am at times. I'm often surprised at how so many supposedly intelligent men (and yes, I'll stick with the men for this one) feel that they are somehow bonding with someone like me - fifty- year-old, working class background, tend not to wear a tie - if they swear, tell a dirty, cringe- inducing joke that isn't witty and generally behave like a Neanderthal in order to make me feel at home.

I'm no prude, but what kind of home do they think I come from? I'm generalising, of course, but there's enough. Trust me, there's enough.

At the moment and for some time past it has almost become a national sport to, in my eyes inexplicably, poke fun at a decent and civil man like Enda Kenny, leader of Opposition party Fine Gael.

His crime? As far as I can tell he isn't loud enough and nasty enough when asking questions. (I don't have the space to go into policies here, this is about the slow death of manners.)

He is always immaculately dressed, without seeming to try. It just looks as if it comes naturally. Of course that COULD be a sin here. Whoever said that politics was show business for ugly people was definitely looking at Ireland.

No wonder a politician stands out here if they have some sense of decorum or just plain old-fashioned table manners. Kenny has these in abundance and do you know what? It doesn't seem put on.

When I had the chance to talk to him a few months ago I waited with weariness for the inevitable disappointment. It never came.

What I did get was a man who was forceful, visionary and clear in what he stood for and in what he wished his party to represent. This may be in direct contrast to what others say about him but that is the way he appeared to me.

I don't think he was putting it on and the warmth in his eyes when talking of his family was certainly not faked or I'm giving this job up.

He did irritate me on one level though: he has eight years on me and if I had looked so disgustingly fit TEN years ago I'd have been happy. But really, it was a treat just to have a normal chat with someone in his position.

So why does he receive so many brickbats? I don't know, is the simple answer.

As anyone who reads these columns has probably figured, I don't have a great love for politicians so perhaps when I meet one that I take an instinctive liking to I throw caution to the wind. That's OK; I go often enough in the other direction.

Here's something I just don't get, though. A few weeks ago our current leader Brian Cowen called the Opposition "f******" in the Dáil, picked up by a microphone and broadcast.

The general consensus was, sure don't we all do it? Did ye never curse yerself, bejaysus? Yet it's not too long ago that we poked fun at dog-rough Australian politicians, is it? So there you go: pig-ignorance has somehow become cool while polite, mannerly and pleasant individuals like Kenny get short shrift. Well, let me go right against the herd: I think Kenny is pretty damned solid.

Do you remember when you could go into almost any pub in Ireland and be mesmerised by the sheer amount of learning - literary, theatrical, cinematic, artistic - gathered in sometimes the most unlikely of places?

Now, often such knowledge is mocked and belittled. It's as if it went out of fashion somewhere along the line. And it shouldn't have. I think that people like Kenny represent a return to something that was lost.

As I say, I don't get this lowering of standards; but I do know this: given a choice between a gurrier and a gentleman like Enda Kenny, I'll take the latter every time.