The response of the show's producers, as reported in the Indo, is like a face of bravery being slapped onto a freshly shot corpse. The law getting involved is no problem: they (the show's writers) "are writing a puppet based musical comedy. It is very funny and we are being responsible in making it." The troublesome 's-word' is missing from the copy. The job of a spokesman is sometimes utterly unenviable.
It's nice to know Anglo is funny and it's reassuring the show's makers have been 'responsible', I was worried about the possibility of 'irresponsible' satire. Anglo has been treated to an insidious and kafkaesque kind of censorship, namely censorship by reasoned legal advice. The intervention of the DPP and Seanie Fitz's lawyers, while legally justifiable, means an opportunity for creating satire may be lost, and satire is a rare and delicate thing in a cozy little country like Ireland - by extension, free speech, a property equally challenged in Ireland, will be just a little more eroded.
More disgusting than disquieting is complete absence of anger among the public. So blind are the regular folk of Ireland to the wrongness of the country's continuing struggle to mete out justice in the aftermath of our economic collapse.
Meanwhile, the most telling satire was found in real life, a mere mile from the Bord Gais Energy Theater, where TD Stephen Donnelly took on the head of Bank of Ireland, Richie Boucher. This one the lawyers couldn't kill, as Stephen repeatedly hectored Boucher to explain the definition and calculation of negative equity. Each time he received the same mumbled answer, straight from Planet Stonewall. Exasperated by the end, Donnelly, who excellently recapped Boucher's responses for the plain people of Ireland watching on YouTube, described the BOI boss's testimony witheringly as being "most illuminating". The Oireachtas Finance Committee Chair was, tellingly, was more deferential to Boucher in thanking him for his presence. Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn could not have scripted anything finer. In Ireland, however, we nix that at the outset, all satire is short lived or incidental.
The real life heroes and villains have, inevitably, kept the best material for themselves. Between the actors in our little economic tragedy and the state's own lawyers, we can't successfully fight to get a platform to describe our ruined reality. Maybe we're not deserving of satire or the efforts of those who wish to produce it, or, indeed, of justice in the aftermath of our banking crisis. That would be "entirely our own fault".
