I’m sure I am going to be slaughtered for the words which follow, but there are occasional times when it is proper to raise one's head above the parapet and clearly utter what is certain to be seen as a minority view.

The Dutch Nation and I invested in Sky TV about two years ago. Since then I have watched with growing amazement a selection of some of your most popular talk shows.

I've been, of course, especially interested in watching and listening to the work of extremely popular stars drawn from the vibrant Irish-American community.

And what I wish to state here is that Bill O'Reilly and Conan O'Brien and Sean Hannity, all together or separately, just have to represent a highly negative factor to the national and international image of Irish America.

There may be others of a different caliber. I never get to see them. But I have only to press about any button on the remote and I'm almost certain to encounter Messrs O'Reilly, O'Brien and Hannity.

From reading the Irish Voice newspaper over the years I'm aware that all of them have Irish-American backgrounds. I know little else about them, and I did not research them either before writing this. That was a deliberate act.

All three of them may very well be highly gifted and highly intellectual gentlemen. They may be magnificent supporters of the Irish-American culture and tradition.

In their personal lives they may be saintly or almost so, perfect husbands, splendid fathers, pillars of their communities, impeccable citizens in every way.

I devoutly hope this is the case, and would not be at all surprised if that is the way it is. 

But, especially on TV, the screen persona and the body language and mouth language and appearance of the presenter is about as important as the message being delivered.  And it is on this front that all three of these gentlemen let down their own people over there.

They all repel me for sure over here. I really don't give a curse about their politics. They don't matter to me where I sit.

But I cannot watch or listen to any of them for more than 10 minutes without savagely jabbing the button that drives them out of my sight.

We have all heard the phrase the Ugly American being bandied about. In my view all of this trio, no matter what they are discussing, heavily garnish the old Punch magazine view of the Ugly Irishman.

They project a totally negative perception of Irishmen and Irish Americans. They are as close to being repulsive as it gets, at least to somebody viewing them from what they would call the old sod   from which their ancestors sprang.

Somebody said to me once in a discussion about an alleged TV star in Ireland that if you look into gutter puddles on a clear night you can also see stars. Something like that seems appropriate.

I know nothing about any of them except what they project on screen. And I would like to tell ye how they come across to a native Irishman watching them in Clare.

And I will start with Bill O'Reilly, who I know is hugely popular over there. When I see him and hear him in Clare he comes across as the kind of boorish gombeen man we still have a share of.

If I met him on the streets of Ennis as a stranger I would cross to the other side of the street. His kind of man over here is of the type that has parochial power drawn from maybe owning the biggest farm and the shop/bar in the village and the post office.

His kind of man made money by being the travel agent for all the generations of emigrants, by paying pittance wages to farm laborers, shop boys, barmaids and domestic servants.

His kind of man was conservative Catholic, better dressed even than the doctor, overbearing and rude to anybody less powerful, brutal of word and deed when he deemed it to be necessary, cute as a mountain fox when it came to any kind of financial deal.

And almost invariably he was the undertaker that buried you for the highest possible price when you died. 

I'm sure the real Bill O'Reilly is a different man to that, but his screen image and manner is exactly gombeen when you see it from here. And that is a fact.

The Conan O'Brien with the pale face and the quiffed hair does not quite manage to project as negative an image as O'Reilly overseas. But it is very negative all the same.

O'Brien somehow projects a composite memory of all our emigrants who failed to make the grade in your magnificent yet tough society. The ones who died broke in Hell's Kitchen. (Clearly that did not happen to O'Brien himself!)

He recalls to me a gifted but vulnerable relative who was both a poet and a dance band musician here before he emigrated, but rapidly foundered in New York to die a busted alcoholic before he was fifty.

There is something Celtic-brittle and vulnerable in the false happy-as-Larry projection from this one. He could be desperately insecure behind the clowning and the dancing. Like the perennial bartender in the films who would break into “Danny Boy” at the drop of a hat but was always facing personal disaster. Something like that.

In my view O'Brien's somehow frantic kind of  foolery is close to that of  deeply lonely and unfulfilled Irish lads I've shared pints with in late New York and Chicago bars, drinking a little bit too much  and telling stories that were not really funny at all. And laughing too loud at the punchline. 

Sean Hannity?  I don't like this one at all. The button gets pushed quickest for him.

I'm still not quick enough to get away before hearing him beginning to ram his point of view down the throat of his panelist or guest with such force you'd think he might be tempted to use his fists to win the argument.

He's rude and thick in the unique way we all can be rude and thick in our own Irish way. But not, for God's sake, on TV and before millions of viewers, many of whom would bear prejudices against the Irish in advance.  Hannity could be a Rhodes Scholar for all I know, but he does not come across that way.

Back here he is the spitting image of a lot of barmen who happen to be the inheriting sons of the aforementioned gombeen men. They are not paid employees, they have always had it soft in life, they are condescending to their customers. 

They would bar you from the pub as quick as lightning. They would be likely to give you a kick in the backside once they got you outside the door.

I'm certain Sean Hannity is not at all like that, but that is the highly negative image he projects across the Atlantic to me.

Clearly, from the statistics, ye all love Messrs O'Reilly, O'Brien and Hannity over there. However, I would like to think there is a handful of you who might agree with me to some degree at least.

I will crouch down behind the parapet again now, and the next yarn will be about something safe and colorful like the falling leaves of another Irish autumn. Or something like that anyway.