# RTÉ show "Now its Personal" featuring Emer O Kelly



## thedaras (8 Nov 2011)

Hi all, did any of you view this programme tonight?

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I thought it was Stunningly ridiculous..they had a woman on,who has no children!

What is the point in that..there is no way she could have any idea what life with children is like,nor any idea what its like to work and have children.
Utter rubbish..


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## DerKaiser (9 Nov 2011)

It was ridiculous, got me thinking though.

There are some situations where women need to work to support the family and such women should not feel like any less of a mother. 

But that was not her main point, her main point was that having being educated, women need to use that education by going outside the home to work.

My two main arguments against that are:

1) Most secondary school & college courses do not prepare you very well for the workforce at all. From experience, most learning is on the job. So there is no huge squandering of a fantastic education. Even if I do go into a mathematical field, for example, have I not equally squandered my years of history & Irish studies?

2) Child minding is actually a very highly valued commodity in this country. Choice of working or staying at home is not necessarily a luxury. Many have maternity benefits and after they have run out many women would still be financially better off staying at home full time than working a job, being heavily taxed and paying exorbitant child minding costs.

She didn't get those two points. She seemed to feel the need to justify her existance by placing a rewarding career on a par with raising a child. It came across as sad that women one third her age were more qualified to make that comparison.


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## DB74 (9 Nov 2011)

My God this was one of the worst things I have ever seen RTE produce and that's saying something.

I turned it off at the point where she refused to respond to the "baby" crying.

It's only after you have children of your own (or have to actually mind children for at least 1 whole day) that you realise what a difficult and often thankless job it is to bring them up. Don't get me wrong, it has many many rewards but I know sometimes I'm glad to get into work in the morning because I know that it is a hell of a lot easier sitting at a desk than it is looking after 2-3 children all day every day.

Anyway I always thought feminism was about giving women the choice to either go to work or stay at home (or a mix of both) and not about pressurising them (either financially or emotionally) to have to do one or the other.


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## Ceepee (9 Nov 2011)

Emer O'Kelly seemed so proud at the end that she had stuck to her 'principals' and not had her mind changed by her experience.  It struck me as utterly ridiculous that, even at the end of this pointless social experiment, she still perceived _principals_ rather than practicality or pragmatism as being the decisive factor in working outside the home v staying at home with the kids.


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## Purple (9 Nov 2011)

To me it smacked of finding a vehicle for an RTE lovie.
The concept wasn’t bad, if hackneyed and done to death on UK TV for years, but the execution was awful. 
Badly made and quite sad.


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## liaconn (9 Nov 2011)

I switched it off after about ten minutes.
I don't know who was more annoying, Emer O'Kelly with her ridiculous views or that annoying earth mother type sitting with her patchwork blanket breastfeeding her four year old child.

By the way Thedaras, lots of us who don't have children ourselves are quite involved with kids and would have a pretty realistic idea of what life with children is like. Not Emer, obviously, but it was still a sweeping statement.


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## Purple (9 Nov 2011)

liaconn said:


> I don't know who was more annoying, Emer O'Kelly with her ridiculous views or that annoying earth mother type sitting with her patchwork blanket breastfeeding her four year old child.



Yea, I agree.


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## TarfHead (9 Nov 2011)

Purple said:


> To me it smacked of finding a vehicle for an RTE lovie.


 
I hadn't seen her or thought of her in years 'til I saw the promo for the programme. Nothing in the promo made me think to watch it.

Sounds like it came from the Alan Partridge school of programme commissioning.

And now on RTE1, "Monkey Tennis, with Charles Mitchell"  !


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## Sunny (9 Nov 2011)

Who is she?


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## Mrs. Doyle (9 Nov 2011)

I have always found her to be a pain on any of the programmes that I have seen her on.  Always think that accent sounds so false and 'put on' or 'grand'.  Don't think it was half as bad when she read the news many moons ago.

I think the last programme that I saw her on was the one where they review books or something and she was so boring I switched it off.


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## TarfHead (9 Nov 2011)

Sunny said:


> Who is she?


 
Former RTE newsreader. She may have other achievements in her life, but that's all I'm aware of.


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## Mpsox (9 Nov 2011)

I watched some of it with growing annoyance. We have 2 kids, my OH recently made the decision not to return to work after her career break. The decision was made for a number of reasons, some economic but mostly quality of life. Financially (and I accept we are lucky here) we didn't need her to go back so it boiled down to what would make the kids happiest and us less stressed out then rushing around in the evening, making sure they were collected, dinners made, lunches packed etc etc. It was a no-brainer as far as my OH was concerned

What really annoyed me was the lecturing tone by Emer O'Kelly, she seemed to think that because she was once able to read out loud on the telly ( now there's an achivement) she was entitled to tell a whole chunk of Ireland that how we lived our lives was wrong. Whole programme was a waste of licence fee money


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## Mrs Vimes (9 Nov 2011)

Didn't see the show, read the review of it in the Independent.

What came to my mind was the stat in Freakonomics that the single most significant factor in predicting whether a child will go to college is whether its mother did. Maybe that alone means it wasn't a total waste of an education.


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## Marion (9 Nov 2011)

Rubbish programme! She was also a journalist for the Independent or Sunday Independent?

Also this evening's programme - the Naked presidential Election thanked the Independent Newspaper and  Lisa Hand amongst others!?????????? 

Marion


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## thedaras (9 Nov 2011)

liaconn;121810) said:
			
		

> By the way Thedaras, lots of us who don't have children ourselves are quite involved with kids and would have a pretty realistic idea of what life with children is like. Not Emer, obviously, but it was still a sweeping statement.



Yes, I agree with you, I should have written it this way

"There are people who don't have children, and  would still have a fair idea what its like, but some others haven't a clue ,like Emer."

I have been following this story online, and I can honestly say I have not seen one positive mention of the programme or Emer..


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## Shawady (10 Nov 2011)

Didn't see or hear anything about the show only what I read here, but I seen an ad for next week's show on the TV last night. It involves the journalist Ian O'Doherty spending some time with the muslim community. He's been quite outspoken about them in the past.


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## Sunny (10 Nov 2011)

Shawady said:


> Didn't see or hear anything about the show only what I read here, but I seen an ad for next week's show on the TV last night. It involves the journalist Ian O'Doherty spending some time with the muslim community. He's been quite outspoken about them in the past.


 
Dear Lord! Ian O'Doherty, Brendan O'Connor and Emer Kelly or whatever you call her. Have independent media bought RTE???


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## Ceist Beag (10 Nov 2011)

Shawady said:


> Didn't see or hear anything about the show only what I read here, but I seen an ad for next week's show on the TV last night. It involves the journalist Ian O'Doherty ...


I stopped reading at this point...


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## Shawady (10 Nov 2011)

Ceist Beag said:


> I stopped reading at this point...


 
Good one


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## annR (10 Nov 2011)

I recorded this programme to watch but amn't going to bother as I think it will just annoy me, sounds awful.


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## STEINER (10 Nov 2011)

I switched over after 2 minutes.  more often than not I don't read her piece in the SINDO.......


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## Sunny (10 Nov 2011)

Why are these people getting TV time though? I am not a media snob and there are actually some good journalists working for the SINDO and the independent in general in various areas but there are an awful lot of opinionated wafflers who we seem determined to give a profile to.


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