Best Read Cold

at

Gulp.

Burning heresies by Kevin Myers

Previously: Hoist With her Own Petard

Pic: Hodges Figgis

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71 thoughts on “Best Read Cold

    1. Nigel

      Get Trump tand Johnson and their like to pass a few laws. Criminalise the defense of minorities, and the teaching or publishing of histories that includes slavery or racism, declare protesters against police violence to be terrorists, allow the police to beat up and imprison journalists, declare parts of the country LGBTQ-free zones, search women going into toilets to make sure their genitalia is standard, that’s the sort of thing that should shut people up.

        1. Nigel

          …or Trump… or don’t you think Trump dropped any bombs while trying to control the curriculum at public universities and setting riot police on peaceful protesters?

          1. bisted

            …nope…don’t recall Trump or Boris for that matter, starting any new wars…time yet of course…but they would have to try hard to kill as many kids as crooked Hillary…or restore the slave markets like Obama…or displace millions like Bush

          2. Nigel

            So Trump hasn’t dropped bombs, made drone strikes? Thinking that must make you feel warm and cosy as Trump gets increasingly authoritarian and criminalises dissent and supresses voting.

          3. David

            Read what he said very recently about the military industrial complex. Trump is in many ways a despicable idiot but he’s not a warmonger

          4. Nigel

            He’s a nationalist, an isolationist, and he’s increased military spending, increased bombing and drone strikes while removing oversight, retains the right to use the military against threats to the US, and has a keen interest in looting riches, treasuries and resoures. He’s another Iraq War-level miltary catastrophe waiting to happen.

        2. bisted

          …now now Nigel…you and I know that had crooked Hillary got her hands on the button then the world would be different today…Trump may be dreadful but there are a lot of people alive today…thanks to Trump…many of them US soldiers..

          1. Nigel

            Nah, not really. You only think that because Trump ended oversight, and also he tells lies, and apparently you like to believe him, but I can’t help that.

          2. Pat Mustard

            “Get Trump tand Johnson and their like to pass a few laws. Criminalise the defense of minorities, and the teaching or publishing of histories that includes slavery or racism..”

            Who wrote the crime bill which gave the cops carte blanch?

            Who wrote the Patriot Act?

      1. Tony

        Myers comment about Jews being shrewd with money was some clanger. Then claiming he meant it as a ‘compliment’!

        And now whining about getting ganged up on?

        What a bleeeeedin chancer!

        1. Lilly

          In his defence, he was a columnist, paid to ruffle feathers and generate hoo-ha. The sub editor should have flagged this, or failing that, the editor. He was paid for years to be an enfant terrible, then left flapping in the wind. That said, I won’t be reading the book.

          1. Dara

            In one of his Irish Times columns, he repeatedly referred to unmarried mothers as “mothers of bastards” and afterwards claimed that he didn’t know it was insulting.

            I have no sympathy for him.
            He was a crap journalist.

  1. Sham Bob

    I’d say it’d make you blush alright. I’m surprised he let the hipster graphic designer make the cover look like a bit of harmless lifestyle-lit.

    1. Truth in the News

      The image of him displaying his book inreality defines his arrogance and the delusion
      of self importance as a hack and to name his book Burning Herecies adds the myth
      he has cultivated around his inflated.ego, once he is ignored he will fade away into
      Oblivion

        1. Janet, dreams of big guns

          Sara has very totalitarian, unbending, unreasonable views about lots of things, everyty Sara disagrees with shouldn’t even be heard , is this lefty or righty, I can’t keep up. Sara is also new around here, or is she ?

    1. Nigel

      Leave Hodges Figgis alone. Disgruntled reactionaries’ monies are as good as anyone’s in this economy.

    2. Lilly

      Oh for heavens sake, the idea of a bookshop singling out particular authors and refusing to stock their books is ludicrous.

      1. newsjustin

        It’s the epitome of our times. An attempt to reach enlightenment by striving for a new Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

      2. george

        Running a bookshop does involve choosing what books to stock but they didn’t say it shouldn’t be available.

    1. missred

      One of them interviewed the other a couple of months ago, too much windbaggery in one conversation for my liking

  2. Neil Murray

    The great thing about people like Myers is that he shows us the deep intolerance the Irish Left posses. They are the catholic church of the 1960s. Like him or loathe him, for that we should be grateful.

    1. Sham Bob

      Erra yeah – he was welcome on the pages of national newspapers until he pushed it too far and went antisemitic. The left always hated him I’m sure but he messed up when he lost the centre. Then he was put into a gulag and never heard of again.

    2. george

      You can only really “tolerate” things that are bad though. Crap word, should be binned.

      There’s no obligation to tolerate awful people.

  3. Jonboy

    Cancel Culture doesn’t exist. It’s a phrase manufactured by blowhards to mitigate against the inevitable backlash their shitty opinions will receive. It’s the ‘free-speech’ equivalent of ‘religious freedom’ i.e. “you need to be tolerant of my intolerance or it is you in the wrong”.

    Your opinions, if controversial, will face scrutiny but it seems that some people who have previously been able to say whatever they want from the safety of their soap-box now have to put up with the general public taking them to task.

    We live in a world where someone who said Obama wasn’t American is now President of the USA and a man who has published articles calling gay people bum-boys and black people pickaninnies is the PM of the UK. How could these things happen with the all-powefull left-wing agenda of cancel-culture was running the world?

    1. hansel

      Unfortunately “cancel culture” does exist, even if you don’t like the name or connotations. It’s a description of a group of people who disagree with someone’s opinion trying to nullify that opinion through means other than argument or counter-opinion. It’s the modern equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “la-la-la-la” or getting physically violent during an argument or debate.

      Myers opinions generally seem awful, to me. But when you silence him, these opinions don’t just “go away”. There’s plenty people out there who share his opinion. Refusing to engage doesn’t make them just go away or suddenly become enlightened. If we don’t leave them voice their [contrary] opinion, and counter their arguments with our own, we’re every bit as bad as they are. This might be a tedious and torturous exercise but it’s important.

      By all means just say “Myers is a knob” or whatever, but chasing them around trying to make sure their contrary opinion can’t be heard isn’t productive.

  4. Jonboy

    Cancel Culture doesn’t exist. It’s a phrase manufactured by blowhards to mitigate against the inevitable backlash their terrible opinions will receive. It’s the ‘free-speech’ equivalent of ‘religious freedom’ i.e. “you need to be tolerant of my intolerance or it is you in the wrong”.

    Your opinions, if controversial, will face scrutiny but it seems that some people who have previously been able to say whatever they want from the safety of their soap-box now have to put up with the general public taking them to task.

    We live in a world where someone who said Obama wasn’t American is now President of the USA and a man who has published articles calling gay people bum-boys and black people pickaninnies is the PM of the UK. How could these things happen with the all-powefull left-wing agenda of cancel-culture was running the world?

  5. Gabby

    If you publish an article, a thesis or a book that disturbs some people, other authors can publish articles, reviews and books that refute your facts, ideas and interpretations. That is a process known as intellectual engagement in the public square. If you don’t like intellectual engagement, you can stick to comics, sports commentaries, Cosmopolitan and tabloid journalism.

    1. Jonboy

      The worst part is that Myers has been courting controversy for decades, you don’t right an article titled “Africa is giving nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS” unless you want to provoke, but now he is directly confronted with the outrage he seeks he acts like a victim of ‘cancel culture’.

      1. wearnicehats

        It’s an interesting article. You should read it. You don’t have to agree with it but it does provoke debate, which is precisely what is wrong with cancel culture. It nullifies debate. And it does so because we all fall over ourselves to be politically correct. Don’t ban Katie Hopkins, don’t ban David Icke. Let them get on with it. Problem is, that doesn’t get you that little thumbs up on the facebook post. No one in their right mind would post anything to counter that kind of populist tide. Except some people do – and they are cancelled.It’s ironic because everyone on here is free to post away whatever they like about how someone shouldn’t be allowed to post whatever they like,

  6. Gerry

    Kevin Myers can say what he wants, I’m not in favour of cancelling him or anyone.

    I won’t be buying his book though, I know of a number of occasions when he acted like an arrogant boor, once when visiting my school’s memorial wall.

    I suggest reading Jon Robson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed instead, a wonderful book from the man who wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test

    1. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

      I love Jon Ronson. I emailed him about a funny piece in either the Guardian or Observer when he was a columnist and got a very nice reply.

  7. dav

    I wonder if he’s included the transcript of him being eviscerated by BBC news, now THAT was a great interview.

  8. Ruille Buille

    Mary and Myers discussing Uganda. Yuk!

    Interesting that Kenny, Myers and Rowling were all lefty/progressive when young until they got a bit of money and then mysteriously took to the rabid right.

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