The Generation Game

I don’t know about you, but up until she died in the first week of December, I had never heard of Katy French. For someone who reads newspapers seven days a week that might seem quite strange. I do however choose what I read in those newspapers and, not being a fan at all of reality TV or of reading dumbed down articles about such programmes, it was I suppose inevitable that I wouldn’t have happened on the life that was Katy French’s. Apparently she was well known for the last year due to various activities and was hurtling fast towards a life of so-called fame and fortune.

She was buried on the tenth of December 2007 and I was just thinking how things have changed in Ireland over the last two decades. In 1987 we were getting our very first taste of that all American family the Simpsons, the finest Christmas song of all time The Fairytale of New York first appeared and Reagan and Thatcher presided over two countries that received a lot of Irish emigrants to their shores, who came in search of work. The average 24 year old in 1987 was primarily concerned about trying to get a job, any job, and invariably that quest brought them abroad. Our very own variation of “It’s the Economy Stupid”.

The emigrants weren’t badly educated back then, but were probably less qualified than their counterparts nowadays. I bring up education because a lot of what we’ve heard over the past while is the need to properly educate young people as to the evils of cocaine and other such “drugs of choice” currently doing the rounds. There appears nowadays to be a plethora of courses available at colleges around the country, courses not even heard of in 1987. I keep referring back to 1987 because it is only two decades ago even though it now appears to be a completely different world altogether. People were busy packing suitcases with literally everything they owned(and packets of rashers and tea-bags!) to head to the States or anywhere else that would have them.

Today’s younger generation are not to be blamed for not fully understanding what went on back then, how could they know what it was like to leave Horan International not knowing if you’d ever get work. The only people that this present generation see going to New York now from the currently named Ireland West airport are those “going shopping”!! We talk about going shopping to New York as if it was the natural thing in the world! It’s not ya know but has been presented as such.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this line of chat but it’s just a way of highlighting the different circumstances that apply to similar age groups only two decades apart. Speaking to the Sunday Tribune’s Mick Clifford on air the other day, he rightly said that we are all the products of our own specific environment and of how we were reared. Priorities are very different now and Mick referred to the current need to be a “conspicuous consumer” and how instant gratification is essentially a badge of honour. In the Ireland of 2007 both parents work outside the home because they have to, in order to keep things afloat financially.

This means that they are spending less time with their children and as a result tend to “shower” their beloved offspring with lots of material gifts to make up for lost time. This of course has created a culture of always getting what you want and getting it when you want it. This continues for the children when they get older and enter the workforce, they earn and they spend because they want, they deserve, they need! A big difference from the poor buck going through JFK in 1987 wondering if his rashers are going to be confiscated!

A recent survey of teenagers in this country found that the majority of them wanted to be on TV. Not, mind you, to read the news or to be an Entertainer, no, they just wanted to be on TV. You see, just being on TV is now an end in itself. It’s not as though it’s the fault of the younger generation that they never knew bad times. Far from it, it’s just that we have to recognise what they are currently a product of. Is this the first residue of the Celtic Tiger.

Are we now really more qualified and less educated?
Katy French was described this week as being beautiful. She most certainly was that. She was also described as being intelligent. Not described as educated or even qualified, but as intelligent. Maybe she was, but it doesn’t strike me as too intelligent to snort a combination of Cocaine, Rat Poison and Talcum Powder up your nose!

A man that hadn’t any qualifications was Christie Hennessy the singer. He died the day after Katy French was buried. He was 62. He had huge literacy problems but penned some great songs. He had worked on the buildings in England and eventually paid the price for that as it was asbestos poisoning that did him in the end. He might indeed have been one of the guys who packed rashers in his suitcase.

Anything he snorted or breathed in to his body was as a result of him trying to earn an honest buck, and while we have learned lessons as regards exposure to asbestos, we have apparently arrived at time in Ireland when our highly qualified youngsters need educating on certain matters!

Noel D. Walsh

<<< Back