HOW THE MEDIA CAN PORTRAY POLITICAL SUPPORTERS AS NUTS OR WORSE…
(Originally published in the Western People on 2024-09-10)
‘See what happens when Trump supporter talks to CNN reporter about the Constitution’ (CNN website 2024-04-26)
What possessed me to wear a canary-yellow shirt to the Fianna Fáil meeting in Ballina? I was glowing in a sea of monochrome jackets, jumpers and tops, only matched by my throbbing red face. Most of the other party faithful, representing the various ‘cumann’ or local party branches in the North Mayo region, were gathered in the large, weakly lit ballroom of the Downhill Hotel. The backslapping, laughter and excited chatter had spilled slowly in, but then quickly fanned away from the TV crew from Dublin ensconced inside the door, creating a large empty gap where only a careless or unwary visitor would stray… or someone in a canary-yellow shirt.
Most attendees at Fianna Fáil events are allergic to media attention and were certainly unwilling that night to give a truthful comment on the ‘facts on the ground in county Mayo’ as asked by the burly RTE reporter. The Dublin media had come to Ballina as our former minister and local political institution, Pádraig Flynn, was under pressure to resign as EU Commissioner, for gaffes he made on RTE’s Late Late Show (see my article of August 20). At least that’s the event I remember, though it could have been one of several scandals involving Fianna Fáil politicians around the turn of the century.
A fellow Moygownagh cumann member, Gerry, your typical local party stalwart, was nabbed ahead of me and now standing transfixed in the camera light he dug deep within his Fianna Fáil persona to find a suitable response for ‘the meja’. His slight frame became rigid, his face ashen, as he stoically insisted he had full confidence in Pádraig Flynn ‘who was a great man’ and there was no way that he or anyone there thought otherwise. He then broke away to several backslaps and a promise of a drink for a grand job done. I was next in queue, with the reporter’s firm grasp on my arm as he tried to break my colleague. Yet, I wasn’t fully unwilling, though doing my best to display a suitable distain for the media in front of my (mostly) older audience. Thus my own answer was stuck somewhere between wanting to repeat my in-depth political analysis of pub-talk and the ‘tell the effers nawthin’ whispers of senior members who shuffled past. The result was a garbled one minute soundbite of clichés revolving around ‘that every man is innocent until he is proven to be a Fianna Fáiler’. Released finally from the reporters grip, my shirt and I drifted to our allotted seats with several sideways looks that suggested I rather liked my place in the camera a bit too much.
I don’t remember what happened next. Probably a lot of talking and feck-all, as is usual at such political meetings. They were akin to the social obligation of attending Mass or funerals but with a bit more craic afterwards, and drink. It was something you did as a party member, though even then I could feel some generational shift as I was easily one of the youngest there, in a room of greying or bald heads. The next evening, Gerry and my shirt featured briefly in the TV news relaying how the party faithful were reacting to the latest scandal down in north county Mayo, which could be summed up simply — the biased ‘Dublin meja’ were out to get our Pádraig Flynn who was a great man according to his supporters, including the young fella with the speech impediment in the roadpaint-yellow shirt.
Donald Trump has long referred to the mainstream media as the ‘enemy of the People’, or really any media who dare to criticise him, even if it amounted to simply reprinting his words or repeating his statements. His rallies often feature him pointing to the platform where the attending media were encamped and repeating this phrase, to the enthusiastic boos of his MAGA faithful. So it should have been of no surprise that a man was tasered and arrested when attempting to forcibly access the press area at Trump’s campaign event in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on 30 August last. Moments earlier, the former President reprised his familiar assertion that the media is a collective “enemy of the people” and as the scene ended he grinned and told the crowd ‘“Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”.[1]
That’s kind of the point, or at least was the point, with Trump’s rallies. His freewheeling populist tirades with off-the-cuff remarks ridiculing or goading his opponents, were often funny. Saying things no politician would say, while speaking directly to his supporters was markedly different to the carefully choreographed campaign stump speeches people were used to. People were excited by him. He was a showman, with undoubted charisma and a learned ability to say so many disjointed words and outright lies to overload any in-time fact checker. He was also a bully, taking (and sharing) delight in making fun of anyone who refused to like him — or at least say so. Ironically the news or entertainment media who interviewed his rally attendees took a similar delight, though from an opposite and suitably holier-than-thou stance.
Comedian Jordan Klepper from the popular Today Show and ‘the Good Liars’ political comedy duo of Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefle, are perhaps the most well-known interviewers of crazy, racist, sexist, stupid, misogynistic and uninformed attendees hanging around Trump’s events. Even Kerry-born CNN reporter, Donie O'Sullivan, has had his fair share of such chats, included one contentious broadcast of 26 April with a Trump supporter, Julian Lightfoot, wearing a red baseball hat saying ‘Trump save America’ [sic]. She adamantly insisted she was entitled to her own objective truths, that the media lied about massive voter fraud in the 2020 election and that God was integral to the US constitution (none are true). The general sense from this continuous lampooning of Trump’s supporters is thus a cult-like MAGA following of brainwashed red-necks, hanging on his every word and prepared to do or say whatever he wants.
But are these interviews so far removed from my own in a canary-yellow shirt or of Gerry and his ‘tell the effers nawthin’ answers? Most ordinary Republicans are probably as circumspect as bygone Fianna Fáilers about being publicly interviewed by the dreaded ‘meja’. These are supporters at a religious ceremony, concert and football game rolled up all in one. For those few moths to a flame, thrust in front of a camera in full view of their comrades with bravado and MAGA excitement in the air — what else would an unsavvy person say? While undoubtably heartfelt, their own heightened interviews are hardly fully representative of what they would say at home — much less characterise the political thinking of near half of all voters in America.
The smug Pádraig Flynn was not liked by most of the attendees at that Fianna Fáil meeting in Ballina. Respected certainly, as the minister who ‘had made Castlebar’ through channelling grants, roads and jobs there, he held their loyalty as the party’s representative up in Dublin or in Europe. Yet few lost any tears over his eventual disgrace and resignation. But as a senior Fianna Fáil politician would later observe about the forced resignation of a similarly disliked Phil Hogan from his own EU Commissionership, ‘he might be a bollox, but he’s our bollox, out there’. Flynn was probably similarly regarded by the cumann representatives that night in Ballina. Though you wouldn’t have known it from the TV news, although that might have been what the wide-eyed lad in the bright yellow shirt was driving at… it was hard to tell, as he sounded like a MAGA nut.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/man-arrested-after-storming-press-area-at-a-trump-rally-will-face-charges-police-say