Colm O'Regan: Donie O'Sullivan has that expert flow, that sureness of his fact, but in a very Irish way

Donie O’Sullivan. A classic name. The name of a fella who has the keys of the Hall, the fella who lines a GAA pitch, owns jump-leads, has a bag of raffle ticket-books in the boot.

But now it’s the name of a CNN intrepid reporter who calmly talked to the world while Trump supporters skittered past excitedly after attempting a coup. He was like some sort of post-apocalyptic Marty Morrissey doing the pre-match build-up outside Croke Park.

This is not the hagiography of Donie O’Sullivan. I assume he’d hate that. Kerry people generally hate being known as the star of the show. It’s how you win All Irelands. The last thing they want is to have their words pinned to the world’s dressing room wall.

But this is a bit of praise for the journalists who ‘put the work in’.

When Donie was talking to Wolf Blitzer -a real name- , he had that expert flow, that sureness of his facts but in a very Irish way, as if were explaining to Wolf that the ‘alternator was shagged’ and he ‘could be talking up to a grand at least’,

That confidence comes from having done the work for the last while. Going out with his long-handled mike all over America interviewing normal people who were convinced that Trump is an almost-literal Messiah.

People are querying if that ‘it’ could happen here. Could someone in a helmet looted from the Viking Splash Tour break into the Dail?

I don’t know because I haven’t put the work in. So treat my opinion with the respect it deserves. Opinion-writing in itself is not a problem, as long as you are aware I really don’t know anything, that it’s not my area and I haven’t done the research. 

I’m moderately good at making some people laugh. I used to do computers for a job so I know how to switch it off or switch it on again. But otherwise, all I have is anecdote based on life experience.

So don’t mind this langer. But do take the time to read journalists who have put the work in. Those who have done the interviews, but also the boring stuff, the research, the Freedom of Information Requests. The unpleasant stuff: talking to people in real life who were hostile to them.

The message here isn’t as facile as BUY A PAPER. You need to decide what to do with your money especially if it’s just the PUP. But maybe we all need to be doing more ‘reading up’ this year. 

Because a lot of us are just sharing and parroting without reading and understanding. And it might seem a really long leap from sharing an image of a non-existent criminal record to sitting in the Speakers Chair with a knife attached to a flagpole. But a lot of people last Wednesday looked like fairly normal people. Yes, there were was a guy in a Viking Helmet. But he was a voiceover artist. And you know what they’re like.

There were plenty of soccer moms and beer pong guys. People who fundraise for charity and love animals. If you browse Facebook and check out the people who respond to Irish covid-deaths with laughter, they’re not all Matrix Something-Pillers. A lot are normal. They like GAA and cars and the Cranberries and Bridgerton and they love their children and would give you jump leads and if you met them you’d probably think they were sound.

But as we continue to meet no one in real life and get all our affection in the form of emojis from strangers, we should remember you don’t have to go to Washington in a horned helmet to drift into some strange places.