New Ireland

It's not often I watch 'The Late Late Show' these days for varying reasons but the odd time I do catch it, it can make for compulsive viewing
This weekend just gone, they had a panel of journos, politicians and various other media commentators: Ian 'O Doherty (Irish Indo), David Norris, George Lee, Karen Coleman, Ronan Mullen and a few other people I didn't recognise
The discussion was about New Ireland and how we've changed as a nation for better and for worse
Unfortunately I missed the first half of the discussion but the second half was engrossing, the debate becoming increasingly heated with both Norris and 'O Doherty getting quite agitated (more about this later)

Things were fairly peaceful early on with some valid points made by a woman who seemed to be some sort of religious correspondent, and she was to some extent backed up by Ronan Mullan - following this, Karen Coleman raised the temperature somewhat harping on about her almost 10 years with the Beeb and the malign influence of the Catholic Church in the 80s and how great it is to be free of that today - I normally like Karen Coleman but I think she lost the run of herself somewhat on the show

But that was nothing compared to what came next!
David Norris began to talk about the lack of respect for authority in today's Ireland only to be shouted down by Ian 'O Doherty who clearly disagreed with him
'O Doherty then proceeded to spend the next 10 or 15 minutes making snide comments about Norris, lawyers (he may have had a point there on that one!), the Catholic Church and whaever else came into view
I don't have a problem with his views - everyone is entitled to an opinion
But 'O Doherty comes across as the worst type of journalist - jumped-up, smug, arrogant, ignorant and disrespectful to the others on the panel in particular David Norris
In short, everything that is wrong with modern Ireland encapsulated in one individual - quite an achievement!

Not surprisingly, a slightly shaken Pat Kenny called a halt to proceedings shortly afterwards
Fascinating TV while it lasted though

Incidentally, whilst looking for some other comments about this debate on the Late Late, I typed in 'david norris' + 'late late' into google
The first hit it came back with was a hate fuelled anti immigrant discussion on the forum of the infamous 'stormfront' website with most of the comments coming from the more redneck end of Irish society - pretty sad that there are Irish people online spewing out this filth