RTE News apologise for reporting about Cowen caricature

sandrat said:
the rte news story was funny available here
mr cowen is not thought to have posed for the portraits
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Thanks for the link, I hadn't actually seen it. That was good alright, Eileen saying that its thought that Cowen didn't pose!! To be fair, they were absolutely ripping the p**s out of him, how many times did they focus in on the belly?!!I can understand their ire but the govt. have made an ass of themselves in the way in which they have dealt with it.
 
I detest FF. However, I do not believe people should criticise his personal appearance. There are plenty of other things people can make jokes about regarding FF and Cowan.

I'd love to buy prints of the pictures.

Just heard, indecency was the third.
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Indecency in an art gallery?
 
leghorn said:
I detest FF. However, I do not believe people should criticise his personal appearance. There are plenty of other things people can make jokes about regarding FF and Cowan.

I'd love to buy prints of the pictures.


Indecency in an art gallery?
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That's what they said!

By all accounts the paintings are 'worthless', so if you get in there fast you may not even have to pay for prints!
 
I used to respect RTE ... no longer. Why did RTE not report the riots in Belfast on St. Patricks Day? CNN/BBC/FOX/SKY etc. managed to squeeze it in ... what else is this government censoring?
Any chance they'd censor Joe Duffy or Pat Kenny while they're at it????
 
I have risen from my sick bed to post the two terrible portraits, for those of you with weak stomachs look away now

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5971027.ece

I thought he looked better in the pictures than he does in real life...

I understand his beloved isn't happy about her DH being ridiculed.

Last I heard the Artist (genius) had other works of art seized from his private home of other politicians.

Have the gardai not heard of free expression?

Don't they have purse snatchers or drug dealers to chase rather than oppressing artists with a sense of humour...
 
I'll start by saying that I have never supported FF and I'm no fan of Brian Cowen. However I feel that the amount of criticism he gets about his personal appearance is not only wrong but it is hurtful. Yes, maybe he could do something about his size but he can't do much about his face. Yet smart-a...... journalists have nothing better to do than make very cruel remarks about every aspect of his appearance.
Yes, he is a politician and in the public eye but what level have we got to that he, who is the democratically elected Taoiseach, is subjected to this kind of personal , hurtful and humiliating abuse.
It is also hypocritical in that if he were a woman , would they attack him like this?
He is a human being first and this kind of humiliation serves very little purpose. How many of us would be able to cope with this? If many of the journalists and broadcasters who call him BIFFO and write about him in this way were doing their jobs properly when he was minister for finance, and had scrutinised FF budgetary policies, and their own papers love affairs with property, this economy might be in better shape.
Instead it is easier to make remarks the like of which would never be made by anyone with any sense of decency about another person's personal appearance.It just lazy, tabloid journalism and one could compare it to the caricatures of Irish people that were in Punch magazine in the 19th Century.
In a time when no matter what one's policies, any thinking person must realise the need to unite to overcome the present economic horror, surely this kind of ridicule is unhelpful. If Churchill was constantly jeered for his girth, his lips, his cigar smoking and other eccentricities, would the British people have kept faith with him?
 
Its funny how image does mean so much to us now in that we never took Cowen to our hearts partly if only slightly because he doesn't look the part. We mock him and enjoy making fun of his appearance but would be deeply offended and maybe even take legal action if an unflattering caricature of ourselves appeared on the work notice board. We call him fat, ugly, biffo all of which are deeply insulting and have no bearing on the mans abilities or qualities.
Obama is the darling of the press he is athlethic, handsome(so they say!), and black very much the poster boy for success in the noughties and he is given a fairly free ride. Did nobody find comments like 'I look forward to coming to Ireland for a pint' condescending and feeding a stereotype? Could he not look forward to coming to see the beautiful country or any positive image? His latest gaffe about playing bowling at special olympic level would have made massive news if it came from Bush and if Cowen said it, it would have been the end for him.
Do we still have school mentality whereby the good looking popular kid will get away with things while the geeky ugly kid suffers on?
 
Sunny said:
Apparently the Guards called into Today FM to get e-mails that they may have with regard to the artist. Is it against the law to leave a picture in a gallery? Cowan the muppet should have just laughed it off. Now it has made the international media because he has turned a trivial funny story into something newsworthy
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I agree this has been very badly handled ...he should have laughed it off and said he has more difficult things to deal with ..what has happended is that someone rang the gardai, who also have better things to do, and got them to go into Today FM, is sounds like somethings from a small African country...
 
MrMan said:
Its funny how image does mean so much to us now in that we never took Cowen to our hearts partly if only slightly because he doesn't look the part. We mock him and enjoy making fun of his appearance but would be deeply offended and maybe even take legal action if an unflattering caricature of ourselves appeared on the work notice board. We call him fat, ugly, biffo all of which are deeply insulting and have no bearing on the mans abilities or qualities.
Obama is the darling of the press he is athlethic, handsome(so they say!), and black very much the poster boy for success in the noughties and he is given a fairly free ride. Did nobody find comments like 'I look forward to coming to Ireland for a pint' condescending and feeding a stereotype? Could he not look forward to coming to see the beautiful country or any positive image? His latest gaffe about playing bowling at special olympic level would have made massive news if it came from Bush and if Cowen said it, it would have been the end for him.
Do we still have school mentality whereby the good looking popular kid will get away with things while the geeky ugly kid suffers on?
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I disagree.

If we were riding the crest of a high wave he would be loved...Bertie was no looker either.

The plan and simple fact is that Cowen was Minister for finance for the good years, Where is that money gone? He is the leader of a gorverment that is lost. The man could be very handsome and people would have a go at him because he has screwed up.
 
His latest gaffe about playing bowling at special olympic level would have made massive news if it came from Bush and if Cowen said it, it would have been the end for him.
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Obama made his special olympics gaffe. He phoned the chairman of the Special Olympics to apologise. So good was his apology and the subsequent handling of the incident that Tim Shriver said that President Obama's apology was 'very sincere'.

I doubt very much that Brian Cowan and his staff would have been able to patch such a gaffe up. A bit like bertie and his suicide 'quip'. Look at the situation of the pictures, where Cowan was the victim - how do you think Obama would have dealt with this? - Auction the pictures for charity?

So, yes you are quite correct. It probably would have been the end for Cowan because he wouldn't have been able to handle the situation adequately.
 
MrMan said:
Its funny how image does mean so much to us now in that we never took Cowen to our hearts partly if only slightly because he doesn't look the part. We mock him and enjoy making fun of his appearance but would be deeply offended and maybe even take legal action if an unflattering caricature of ourselves appeared on the work notice board. We call him fat, ugly, biffo all of which are deeply insulting and have no bearing on the mans abilities or qualities.
Obama is the darling of the press he is athlethic, handsome(so they say!), and black very much the poster boy for success in the noughties and he is given a fairly free ride. Did nobody find comments like 'I look forward to coming to Ireland for a pint' condescending and feeding a stereotype? Could he not look forward to coming to see the beautiful country or any positive image? His latest gaffe about playing bowling at special olympic level would have made massive news if it came from Bush and if Cowen said it, it would have been the end for him.
Do we still have school mentality whereby the good looking popular kid will get away with things while the geeky ugly kid suffers on?
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People would still laugh if it was Obama in the pictures holding his y-fronts. I don't think it was all to do with his appearance. I agree that making fun out of peoples appearance isn't fair but you have to be able to deal with it. I think his family have a right to be upset but politically Cowan should have laughed it off and stopped FF people going on the airwaves making a big deal out of the story.
 
The issue is not about whether the pictures were in good or bad taste, or whether they might be hurtful to Brian Cowen. This is about freedom of speech, and about how the main government party consides the Gardai and RTE as weapons in an armoury that can be used to control the population.
We saw the supression of "scrap saturday" many years back, and an attempt to muzzle "nob nation" in recent weeks. Some of the core people in Fianna Fail (not necessarily Cowen, I reckon) consider themselves to be our masters, not our servants, and will do what they can to supress satire and dissent.
The question that people should be asking is this. How many other issues have been supressed by RTE at the behest of Fianna Fail, and how many times have RTE producers decided not to run with an item because they feared an intervention by their masters?
 
In the good old days in the Soviet Union some disgruntled citizen sent an anonymous letter of complaint to good old Joe Stalin criticising the way the country was governed.

The KGB seized every typewriter in the town where the letter originated for forensic examination and the tracked down the author.

Another candidate for the Gulags.
 
I agree with Madangan and Lollix.

I'd also add that whether you think the paintings are tasteful is downright irrelevant - the political interference and attempts at censorship mean this is now about the much more profound issues of freedom of speech and freedom of political and artistic expression. It may have been inappropriate to hang the paintings in the galleries and I can see a reasonable argument that there may have been criminal damage. But if we start yelling "indecency" and "incitement to hatred" for the paintings, should we lock Martyn Turner up and throw away the key? Ban satire because it might offend?

The political reaction to the paintings and the reporting have imbued the whole affair with much greater significance than the original practical joke.
 
Dreamerb said:
The political reaction to the paintings and the reporting have imbued the whole affair with much greater significance than the original practical joke.
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Yes, they handled this badly, although that would be consistent with how they handle most things. Cowan always puts me in mind of a Gamorrean Guard from Star Wars.
 
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