"I intend that you shall hear... the non-stop, monotonous mince and moan of those queer (English) natives beating, across the suburban wilds, their peeping tom-toms of credulity, suspicion and misinformation."

These are the words of Dylan Thomas, broadcast on Wednesday morning in the world premiere of a newly discovered piece of wartime radio propaganda for the BBC. You have to excuse the wordiness – those were different days, and Dylan Thomas was Welsh.

Thomas was commissioned to write a feature on the subject of the British government's World War II propaganda campaign, 'Careless Talk Costs Lives'. As to why it was not broadcast until 2008, we were not told.

His reference to "credulity, suspicion and misinformation" was a warning against idle gossip, which might slip important information into the hands of the enemy. But if you substitute the word 'American' for the word 'English' in the above quote, you will have a reasonable description of what was going on on Today FM's
The Last Word on Tuesday.

Matt Cooper invited his regular contributor, Cal Thomas, to co-host the programme. It was mystifying. Thomas is one of those seemingly ubiquitous American pundits who go way further out onto the right wing than the conservative establishment. However, Thomas is personable, so Matt Cooper was all pally with him.

We needn't scrutinise Thomas's shoot-all-welfare-recipients- to-relieve-the-burden-on-the-wealthy ideology too closely here. But just for those who don't know, this is the man who bemoans the "failure" of the Zionist mission. He says Palestinians should be expelled from Israel because he believes the fiction that Jews, "gifted with thinking the best about human potential, have made decisions that too often are not in their interests, such as allowing mortal enemies to live among them and giving up land seized for their own protection". In another of his contributions to the Jewish World Review, he also lamented the lack of a conservative woman candidate for national office, and blamed it on the fact that conservative women are too busy minding their children. This was in June, before Sarah Palin emerged, slime-coated and mewling, from the loins of neocon opportunism.

But that is neither here nor there. Cal Thomas's job is to be inflammatory, and he does it ably, and hopefully the day is gone when any fruitcake's propaganda could be regarded as truly dangerous. But having Cal Thomas as a contributor on the programme is one thing; inviting him to co-host is something else. It may have been because the producers of The Last Word wanted to get their listeners' blood up, to be like American shock-jock radio. This is all very thrusting and mass-market, but it's a bit beneath them.

Anyway, as it happened, Thomas didn't acquit himself all that well. He was like one of those Yanks who come over looking for their roots, and stand around Bunratty wincing at the taste of Guinness, repeating themselves and spewing out blandishments about Eyerland.

In an effort, presumably, to get a proper White Elephant Saloon brawl going, Amnesty International's Colm O'Gorman was also invited on the show to debate Guantanamo Bay with Thomas. Sure enough, this is where you find yourself ushered into the red corner, being turned into the lowest common denominator against your will. However, anyone who was afraid that sheer frustration would cause our team to crumble into incoherence need not have worried. Colm O'Gorman was dazzling.

Defending Guantanamo, Cal Thomas wished we lived in a perfect world, in which "everyone would be treated equally and everyone would have the same access to the courts system". O'Gorman was "bemused" by that. He thought the principle of everyone having equal access to the courts system was "pretty much the founding principle on which US democracy has been based".

Later he made a famously dismissive remark. He said: "Many of Cal's positions on this are colourful; many are somewhat obvious; but sadly they are just incorrect." Obvious! The worst insult for a pundit.

Thomas said that "doing away with judicial process is exactly what the terrorists wish to do". He wondered how you should approach people "who have absolutely no respect for our constitutional principles with a constitutional principle that they want to destroy?"

O'Gorman said that what you don't do is "allow them to succeed by abandoning those principles yourself". The fight went on for some time afterwards, but as far as this listener was concerned, that was the moment the bell went.

On the same programme, Matt Cooper also spoke with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, just to get the last of the audience properly white hot with ire. I'm not even going to go into that part of it. At this rate, why don't they just fire Matt Cooper and buy the Rush Limbaugh syndication?

etynan@tribune.ie