‘Reputation of office’ was not an issue at Mahon

THE Taoiseach has no clothes.

After being largely stripped of his reputation for economic management, Brian Cowen has now been exposed as lacking a sense of proportion.

With 1,000 people being thrown on the dole every day, a home repossessions crisis looming and yet another emergency budget to deal with, it seems the Taoiseach is more concerned about his vanity.

Why else would the gardaí descend on Today FM to seize information on an artist who contacted the station regarding semi-nude portraits of Mr Cowen that had been mischievously placed in two Dublin art galleries?

Strange how it took the Guards more than a month to finally raid scandal-hit Anglo Irish Bank, yet they moved in to try and bust the Ray D’Arcy show within hours.

“The powers that be want action taken,” a sinister-sounding detective told incredulous production staff on the programme.

Since the story has escalated out of control, the Government has taken fright and insists the galleries initially brought in the gardaí — but it’s curious they took no action until it became a national embarrassment for the Taoiseach.

And which is worse? Mr Cowen’s media machine attacking RTÉ for broadcasting a totally innocuous Nine O’Clock News item on the portraits, or the state broadcaster caving in and giving a groveling apology as if it were TV Albania genuflecting before the grumpy dictator?

A sombre-looking Eileen Dunne was forced to say sorry if any “disrespect” had been shown to the office of the Taoiseach by the offending report.

Funny, I don’t remember Mr Cowen or anyone in this Government expressing similar concern for the damage done to the reputation of the office of the Taoiseach during the tawdry spectacle of Bertie Ahern spending 13 days in the witness box of the Mahon corruption probe trotting out extraordinary stories about winning cash “on the horses” and having bundles of used twenties flop down on his desk at St Luke’s.

The heavy-handed, bully-boy tactics deployed by the Government in this matter have, inevitably, totally misfired, achieving exactly the opposite of what they intended. The RTÉ report — hastily removed from the broadcaster’s website — has inevitably re-surfaced on YouTube. What cack-handed move will the Taoiseach and his media handlers deploy now to suppress the images?

Perhaps they will copy China’s action yesterday when the Beijing regime was so annoyed at an item on the video-sharing site it completely pulled the plug on YouTube across the people’s republic.

The portraits of Mr Cowen, which are presumably intended as political satire, are certainly unflattering and of questionable taste, but bringing down the weight of the state on those responsible — let alone those who merely report news — is the real outrage here. The alleged offences being investigated — incitement to hatred, indecency and criminal damage — are nonsense.

The pictures are less indecent than a run-of-the-mill Lucien Freud roly-poly nude, the attempted satire grotesque — but then so was Jonathan Swift’s 1729 pamphlet urging the Irish poor to better themselves by selling their babies to the rich for food stuff. And as for criminal damage — putting a nail in a gallery wall? Would Garda time not be better served on, for example, Ireland’s burgeoning gun culture?

However ridiculous the artist made Mr Cowen look, it is nothing compared with how stupid the Taoiseach’s over-reaction makes him appear to everyone else. Mr Cowen needs to get over himself — and get on with trying to get a grip on the economic crisis before we all lose the shirts off our backs.