James O’Brien
Review (replaying the tapes)
by Stephen Kearney
“One thing about you” said a friend of long – very long – standing “is that you reflect, or as you’d put it, you replay the tapes.”
How Not To Be Wrong, James O’Brien’s 2020 work, is a master class in “replaying the tapes” – a singularly apt, if technically outdated, metaphor, given the man’s profession as a radio host.
Now, James O’Brien comes from a privileged class. While his parents were not from that class, they wanted their son to be part of that privilege. He was sent to Ampleforth, reputedly the country’s top Catholic public school, by parents who financially stretched themselves to give their son what they considered to be the best start in life. And as far as James O’Brien was concerned, he did indeed get the best start in life, with a suitable sense of entitlement. With this combination of a good education, the right approaches, public school confidence – “swagger” some call it – and of course, the all important networks, he thought he had it sussed. And then he slowly realised he hadn’t.
As he interacted with the public in radio phone-ins he slowly realised than some of his highly valued superior thinking, was, in fact, nothing of the sort. Via some of the transcripts which he reproduces verbatim, he argues case after case where he comes across as logical, balanced and objective – logical, balanced and objective to someone like him, that is. The thing about the privileged is they usually don’t know they are privileged. They are normal. All their friends and colleagues are much like them and they have their own problems too. How can you call that privileged? Of course it isn’t privileged if you’ve never seriously interacted with anyone from outside your circle – or even met them.
As the narrative unfolds, James O’Brien gradually begins looking at himself and what has made him the way he is. In a telling self revelation, he gradually realises that many of the supposed strengths and qualities that he once admired, implanted in him through his school and subsequent education were, in reality, nothing of the sort. He would repeat and believe in the classic line on corporal punishment, for instance, “it never did me any harm” well into adulthood before realising it actually did; it did do him a lot of harm. But is wasn’t just corporal punishment; it was the whole ethos of the public school that through making him apparently resilient, rendered him unaware and insensitive to others who were not of the same background as himself. That much-vaunted and very expensive education that had cost his parents so much, had, under the veneer of success, actually succeeded in brutalising him. Those very attitudes, through imparting a sense of entitlement combined with one of innate superiority, are the ones that have dominated the political class in this country for a very long time. Those lessons are vital in shaping a personality that can claw its way to the top, ignoring all the pain and hurt along the way – both in what that personality inflicts on others and the pain it must also endure. Some call it a thick skin. And skin is thickest, as O’Brien points out, where the scars are the deepest. Those “highly successful” politicians are, in fact, very damaged people – and they then inflict their own damage on others. As the old saying goes, “hurt people hurt people”.
It has been often said that the purpose of the old English public school system was to produce emotional cripples needed to run the British empire. Well, the British empire is no more but, it seems, the need for emotional cripples isn’t.
Of course most powerful people who have emerged through this system, will go through their entire lives without ever realising the damage they have caused – and the damage that has been caused to them. They can’t afford to, for one thing: could Tony Blair ever admit he was wrong about Iraq, not to mention all the Tory MPs baying for Iraqi blood necessary for parliamentary approval? In a society where whole chunks of people don’t meet whole other chunks of people, where it is so easy to escape from counter-views, it’s a tall order to expect someone, someone apparently successful and hailed as such, to accept that a lot of their lives, values and reputations have been based on a falsehood, a falsehood implanted and secured by privilege. It’s very hard to overcome that head-start and lose, perhaps, money, power, prestige and influence. No wonder those in power don’t replay the tapes. There’s another reason too. It hurts!
Replaying the tapes hurts – and sometimes it hurts real bad. Back in 1986, a friend asked me to sort out his broken-down motorcycle, pitching up at my place at the pre-arranged time – along with his three year old son. We piled into my car and, as we drove around to a few places to pick up the necessary parts, I was beginning to find the three year old boy more and more irritating. Then we had a puncture. As I changed the wheel, the little boy wanted to join in. I didn’t need his useless ‘help’. Suddenly, I’d reached my threshold of forbearance. I snapped. I abruptly picked him up and carried him about ten paces and plonked him down on his feet, whereupon he dissolved into tears. As we got back into the car, I said to the friend “sorry about that” only to be told not to worry about it. The motorcycle problem was duly sorted and away went father and son – but another problem remained.
Alone in my place that evening, the incident with the little boy was sitting on my mind. I certainly didn’t feel proud of myself but, you know, “we all have our days off”. With this reassurance, the bad feeling subsided. But it soon came back. This time I told myself “you never got on with kids anyway and you’re just wasting time thinking about it”. Once again, the bad feeling subsided and, yes, once again it was soon back. “Oh for God’s sake, forget it. Stop wasting time over something you can’t do anything about!” And so it went on, each round with a higher level of irritation than the last. I used every defensive – and pain avoidance – strategy I could think of, angrily stressing the time I was “wasting”. Brief respites were invariably followed by further attacks. This wasn’t going away. I’d tried my damnedest to make it disappear but it just kept coming back every time. I was stuck with it. I really had to examine this.
Alright, what had happened? Why did I behave the way I did? How could I find out? Standing in my sitting room, I replayed the tapes. I started thinking back over the whole incident: fast forward, rewind, play, fast rewind and freeze frame, over and over. Especially freeze frame. How I suffered at the thought of what I had done to that poor little boy. My shame was total. How could I? What sort of a mean bastard was I? Slowly, slowly I went through that afternoon, prolonging the agony many times over. I spent more time – a lot more time – suffering over the agonies of my behaviour that the duration of the actual incident itself. Yes, I was a mean bastard, but why had I done it? After extensive trawling through the tapes, I realised I was simply not interested in that child unless he could engage in full adult conversation – which is a pretty tall order for a three year old. And then it hit me! I was giving him no space to be a child. The real torpedo strike then followed, leaving me physically shaking: that was exactly the way I had been treated when I was a child!
In a flash, I suddenly realised why abused children can become child batterers themselves; why those molested as children can become child molesters themselves. That little boy must now, in 2021, be 38 years old, and if he’s reading this, all I can say is sorry.
Yes, it hurt. It hurt real bad and I reckon James O’Brien must have gone through those same agonies in coming to realise that his apparent advantages that once made him feel good came at a terrible cost.
But there is a further twist. For all the recognised failings of his education, James O’Brien recognises that it still gave him a considerable advantage over most others, an advantage that he wants to pass on to his own children by sending them to private schools. Yes, he knows – and indeed, wrestles – with the arguments. He knows that he is giving his children an unfair advantage through a simple accident of birth simply because he can afford to, just as his parents had done for him. It is indeed one of the great quandaries: what, how much – and whom – do we sacrifice for the sake of a principle. Of course we can make the great stand “on principle” like refusing to buy Apartheid era produce or, in more modern times, refusing to use Amazon, choices that at least have alternatives. But suppose your choice really hurt? Would you, in a state of chronic pain, jump an NHS hospital queue if you could afford to go private? There are no easy answers as James O’Brien realises and full marks to the man for at least facing the issue.
This is some book. Do I have any criticisms? Yes, some of the phone in-transcripts from his radio show are a bit long-winded but that might reflect the mood of the reader and others might see the same issue differently. For instance, through reproducing the full transcript, it could be argued that all the nuance, angles and reflections are allowed to come through, helping the reader to understand the origins of a shift, understanding indeed the veritable art of changing your mind.
It might be called a work in progress because self exploration never ends and few human issues have neat and fully tied up endings. So long as James O’Brien keeps hosting his radio show, parrying the “fact-free fury” of so many callers, he, I believe, will always have time for the intellectual – and emotional – stretch, even if he doesn’t always see it the first time around. And that’s why replaying the tapes can make such a difference.
How Not to be Wrong – The Art of changing Your Mind: review © Stephen Kearney September 2021