Colin Sheridan: Sometimes the simplest messages are the most difficult to deliver
Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has accused Jeremy Corbyn of overseeing a 'sexist boys' club' locking women out of the founding of a new left-wing party the pair announced earlier this year.
A few years ago, a friend of mine received a text from his mother in Mayo that read:“WELL ANY NEWS THE CAT IS DEAD LOVE MAM.”
It was confusing, not because of the all caps, nor the lack of punctuation, but because of the cat. My friend didn't have a cat. His family never had a cat. He wondered if this was the beginning of something nefarious. The start of the Great Decline. He rolled the message over in his mind. Discussed it with siblings. Sought the informal advice of medical professionals in his social circle. Might there be a hidden meaning? Was it a cry for help? A “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes” type signal?
It turns out it was none of those things. When he eventually called home, he was rebuked for his concern and told that The Cat O’Connor (not his real name), a local man who had terrorised young lads jumping out of ditches by yelling obscenities, had succumbed to his fondness for the fire water and died. He was the cat in question. And the cat in question was dead.
My friend's mother, for the life of her, could not figure out what the hell was so confusing about her nine-word message, which, to her mind, achieved three distinct things: it asked a question (any news?), imparted some information (a local character — The Cat — had died), and expressed affection (love mam). With the benefit of hindsight, she had a point.
Now, I have another friend. And she — admittedly in the early days of texting — erroneously thought “LoL” stood for “Lots of Love”. She would routinely end messages this way, regardless of the tone or tenor. “Congrats on the engagement LoL.” “Looking forward to getting home LoL.” “Real sorry to hear about your dad LoL.” LoL, of course, stands for “Laugh out Loud”. I'm not sure how many friends she lost, but she understandably earned a reputation for being a sarcastic so-and-so.
I have another friend who drove the length of the country on a Friday evening to break up with his girlfriend, but left on Sunday, engaged. All of which is to say, communication is hard. And it doesn't matter who you are and what team of paid communication consultants you have around you, sometimes the simplest messages are the most difficult to deliver.
Take Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has spent his entire adult life communicating with constituents in public and private. This week, Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new political party hit a wall — even before its bricks were laid. Sultana launched a paid “membership portal” without getting full sign-off. Corbyn, backed by fellow MPs, called it “unauthorised,” urging supporters to ignore the portal. Sultana responded sharply: claiming she was sidelined, excluded from decision-making, frozen out of finances, unfairly treated by what she called a “sexist boys’ club.” LoL indeed.
Presidential candidate Jim Gavin was a pilot, a job that requires surgical levels of accuracy when communicating with crew members. At the Ploughing Championship on Tuesday, he sounded like an elderly parish priest trying to explain to parishioners what TikTok was when fielding the most rudimentary questions about his dearth of political experience. Heather Humphreys, who, unlike Gavin, has buckets of reps in the Dáil chamber, sounded equally clumsy when trying to differentiate between a picnic and a parade.
Which brings us to our Communicator of the Week. A person or persons who packs so much relevant detail into their hurried correspondences that they would leave my friend's mother to shame.
In the aftermath of the shooting dead of Charlie Kirk in Utah, US prosecutors have made public excerpts of the alleged text message exchange between the chief suspect, Tyler Robinson, and their roommate.
In the excerpts, the messages purportedly sent by Robinson give away so much detail regarding motive, logistics, current emotional state and future plans, that it all appears too good to be true. If scripted, whoever did it should teach communications at post graduate level or, better still, become a couples therapist, because if this is the standard of their back-and-forth in the midst of what has to be the most traumatic event of their lives (that is, assassinating somebody with a sniper rifle and being the subject of a nationwide manhunt), then they are operating at a level that makes THE CAT IS DEAD look like an obscure piece of abstract art scribbled on a subway wall with invisible ink.
The truth will out, and if it ever transpires that these text messages were in fact fabricated or amended, it will only confirm what all of us already knew. Or didn't know. Depending on what is said. Who said it. And how it's read.
The Cat is dead. Long live the Cat.
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