Florencio Ávalos was the first to pop his head out of the hole, like a blinkered mole – only less furry, obviously. He hugged his little boy and his wife before being congratulated by Chile's president, Sebastián Piñera.

It was immensely moving. This was human courage and ingenuity triumphing over nature. You wouldn't have believed it if you'd seen it in a movie.

A billion tuned in. It reminded people older than me of the Apollo 13 rescue mission. I recalled Brian Keenan being released from captivity. I'm sure the screenplay is already being worked on.

I stayed up late that night to watch El Presidente hug the last miner out, Luis Urzua. The heroic supervisor's rescuers struck up the national anthem and shed manly tears. During the singing, I noticed the president fixing his hair. (His own, not Urzua's). I timed their chat. It lasted 16 minutes before he headed off, presumably to meet his wife. I don't know about you, but if I'd been underground for months, the first person I'd want to hug would be my wife, not some guy playing up to the cameras. It seemed stage-managed – which it was. The president used to own a TV station. I thought, tomorrow the analysis is going to be predictably self-righteous and lazy: 'How we can learn from Chile president's leadership'.

I went to bed and dreamed of all the cynical marketing that had surrounded the disaster: all the 'freebies' which included iPods from Apple's Steve Jobs. The following morning, I checked the papers. There it was: 'Irish can learn from Chile's triumph of human spirit'. Too comment-by-numbers, I thought. All I had learned is how much of a media junkie El Presidente is. I looked at the miners' faces again and tried to analyse why I was being so cynical.

It dawned on me I had watched the final rescue as a hack, not a human. The relentless coverage of bad news here, and for my part, commentary on it, has made me so cynical that I was picking holes in a miracle. So what if Piñera profits from the goodwill he generated? So what if anybody profits from this bloodless near-disaster?

I also realised that my cynicism has been sharpened by the endless profiteering from our own bloodless disaster. This time last year there was a slew of banking crisis books released for Christmas. There's another slew coming this year. More Misery Porn about how it all went wrong.

October is, traditionally, Christmas book-promoting time. For the past two weeks, commentators with Misery Porn to sell have been popping up faster than miners out of a hole. Day after day, the same voices are repeating the same thing over and again: 'We've been screwed'. It's become like white noise.

One book scrapes the proverbial barrel when it "reveals" that "The taxpayer took Poland's top government auditor out for dinner …[and drinks] in Roly's Bistro in Ballsbridge, at a cost of €232." So what? Roly's isn't Patrick Guilbaud's and the auditor is a foreign dignitary. Should they have gone to Supermac's?

Does anyone recall the days when Ginger McWilliams and Eddie Hobbs were the only economists in Ireland? Now there are economists everywhere. There are days when the radio is unbearable. Vincent Browne's sepulchral show has been banned from our TV for months.

The more I hear from these Misery Pornographers, the more it strengthens my belief that the only people making money these days are 'economic experts'. David McWilliams has even turned his shtick into a play.

The papers, too, are revelling in Misery Porn, churning out headlines to keep us terrified in the run-up to the Budget. My newsagent told me people have stopped buying his papers because of all the bad news. Naturally, as a hack, I thanked him for that piece of cheerful information.

Can anyone remember what we used to talk about in 2007BC (Before Crash)? I'm so sick of the Profiteers of Doom that I found myself reading Rosanna Davison's agony column in the Evening Herald last week. (It was pure agony all right.) Things can't get worse than that.

So here's a plea: can we finally come to some general consensus about the economy and stop navel-gazing? Can the Misery Porn merchants please stop trying to ruin Christmas? Can the press ease up on Doom coverage? I was wrong to be cynical about Chile's president. His positive outlook and media-spinning helped his country through two agonising months. The media and politicians shouldn't be bedfellows, but Chile's example shows that the occasional truce in the national interest can be justified. At the very least, it's good for morale.

Speaking of morale: I'm getting out of here if Ireland's misery fest doesn't end soon. I know a newly-vacated hole in Chile if you care to join me…

dkenny@tribune.ie