Mugged by God in a hoodie
What we might learn from the story Sinead O'Connor, the Irish singer-songwriter, told her friend shortly before she died recently.
If you’re not Irish, you almost certainly won’t know who Ryan Tubridy is.
In American terms, think Jimmy Fallon or Jay Leno. If you’re British, someone like Jonathan Ross might fit the bill.
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Tubridy was, for a long time, the most famous broadcaster in his country. He was the host of RTE Television’s The Late, Late Show, one of the world’s longest-running chat shows, for 14 years, and also had a daily show for the national radio broadcaster.
He was also, by some margin, Ireland’s best paid broadcaster, earning more than €500,000 a year.
Nobody’s going to ask you to feel sorry for Ryan Tubridy, but for me anyway, I find myself empathizing greatly with those who find themselves at the center of some major public scandal. Maybe it’s just that shame — being shamed — is our greatest fear, above death and sharks and public speaking.
That’s what happened Tubridy in 2023, when he stepped down from his chat show job before being engulfed in a public expenses scandal.
The details were seedy enough — underhand negotiations between his agent and the executives at the State-funded national television and radio organization, which saw certain portions of his agreed salary paid in a circuitous route through corporate sponsors in exchange for a handful of event appearances and other PR engagements.
Not fitting for a publicly-funded organization, sure, but the kind of thing that happens in corporate boardrooms a thousand times a day.
Tubridy, as both the primary beneficiary and someone who was seen as more pious than he deserved to be, a bit “holier-than-thou” in the parlance of Irish social commentary, was always going to be the scapegoat.
Over the course of a few weeks he found himself on the newspaper front-pages and radio talk shows every day for weeks, with queues of virtual body-kickers lining up to have a go.
Soon enough, a point of no return was passed and all his commitments to RTE came to an end.
![From shaved heads to tears shed, a look at top Late Late Show moments through the years as it turns 60 | The Irish Sun From shaved heads to tears shed, a look at top Late Late Show moments through the years as it turns 60 | The Irish Sun](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe732ec3d-0809-466f-bcef-380fb1caed0c_2500x1667.jpeg)
People wondered where he might end up next; Ireland is not, after all, weighed down with broadcast companies keen to stump up half a million a year for a man behind a mic, let alone one who has just become persona non grata in the consciousness of the public he would be expected to speak to over the airwaves.
As with many an Irishman before and, you can safely can assume, many an Irishman in the future, Tubridy found solace and a new home across the water in the UK, kicking off his time as host of Virgin Radio’s mid-morning show host in January.
And around about that time, he spoke about a conversation with his friend and fellow Dubliner, Sinead O’Connor, who had died suddenly at the age of just 56 in the middle of all the Tubridy public shaming in the summer of 2023.
Sinead called me two weeks before she died and she said, ‘How are you?’ and I said ‘I’m okay, I’m so-so’.
—She said, You know you’ve been mugged by God in a hoodie?
—I said, ‘I don’t really know what means.’
—‘Well you’ve been kind of stabbed and punched and kicked around the place by what you think is a bad guy in a hoodie, and then he walks away and he puts the hood down and it’s God saying, ‘You’re welcome!’
The neuroscientist and modern philosopher Sam Harris — himself no stranger to being kicked around the place a bit on the streets of public opinion — once wrote (my emphasis):
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