Fotoole Me Once

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Fintan O’Toole (left) and Kevin Myers

Via Kevin Myers [full article at link below]

…Seldom has Fintan O’Toole plumbed the depths that he did with his vilely dire column about Prince Philip, headlined “asylum-seeker and citizen of nowhere, but rich and white.”

This is typical of O’Toole’s habit of conflating intellectually unrelated issues, which on this occasion even referred to the genocide of the Jews.

In a survey of recent British history, he said: “In October 2016, high on the fumes of Brexit, the then prime minister…. Theresa May attacked those who “have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road”. She warned that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.

He re-interpreted her words as follows: “May was invoking a trope used against Jews by both the Nazis and by the Stalinist Soviet Union: the rootless cosmopolitan.”

This is simply astounding. To have compared Theresa May – apparently “high on the fumes of Brexit” – which she had opposed – with the anti-Semites of the Third Reich and the USSR is an honour perhaps never before conferred upon a British prime minister.

You can argue that May was wrong (and I would not) in her observations of the “citizen of the world”. But she did not use the term “rootless cosmopolitan,” and you cannot intellectually or morally suggest that her opinions can in any way be linked to the murder-machines of Auschwitz and the Gulag archipelago.

To do so is worse than defamatory. It makes her a retrospective handmaiden of The Final Solution…

…Four years ago, he joined the (highly-successful) lynch-mob against me, inventively alleging that I had said that a successful woman must be a ‘monstrous harridan’, a term I have never used.

Of the pay-controversy in the BBC at that time, I wrote: ‘Of course, in their usual, pitifully imitative way, Irish tabloids have tried to create a similar controversy here. That’s impossible, because of the ubiquity of Miriam O’Callaghan and Claire Byrne across the airwaves.’

O’Toole’s version of this runs as follows: ‘Myers tells women to forget equality and man up – but then complains about the ubiquity of Miriam O’Callaghan and Claire Byrne on the airwaves.’

As you can see, a complete fabrication; a process he clearly understands thoroughly when we look at his next words about the late prince.

“So why is Prince Philip’s rootlessly cosmopolitan background of so little concern to the culture warriors of the right? The answer is in those baby blue eyes……”

There we are; a straightforward accusation of racism…

…Of Philip, O’Toole then sneered: “Even the extreme privilege he attained through his marriage is construed as a kind of martyrdom: he gave up everything for his adopted country.”

He arrived in England poverty-stricken, but then began a remarkable career in the largest navy in the world. He turned out to be an outstanding and courageous sea-officer during the war and would very probably have ended up as First Sea Lord, but that possibility vanished with his marriage to the Queen (an event which O’Toole seedily describes as: “this nomadic adventurer, this nowhere man, seduces the princess royal”).

He then buckled down to seven decades of wearisome public service. The only time I met him was at Buckingham Palace about eight years ago, when he was stoically enduring the horrors of yet another state reception, at eight in the evening shaking the hand of every single person present. He was then 91. [more at link below]

Sanctimonious O’Toole in the Gutter Again (Kevin Myers)

Fintan O’Toole: Prince Philip – asylum-seeker and citizen of nowhere, but rich and white (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)

RollingNews

Thanks Charger

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46 thoughts on “Fotoole Me Once

  1. Unreal

    It’s sad to see broadsheet rolling out the Myers barrel for some fake conversation- like George Hook used to do
    Sad

    1. Charger Salmons

      Why ?
      Unless you only want to read stuff you agree with.
      This idea that Broadsheet is here to provide you with opinion that doesn’t offend you is Snowflake 101.

        1. Charger Salmons

          If it doesn’t offend you why are you sad to see Broadsheet printing his stuff ?
          You need to man up a tad old sport if things like that get you down.
          Or get some counselling.
          Try this site.
          http://www.bedwetters.ie

          1. Unreal

            An ever present feature, universally acknowledged, is the disability many natives of the largest of the Irish Isles display in their lingua franca. It’s alright though – the Irishman is always near to teach you to correctly use the Queen’s English. For example – the use of the word “sad” above connotes disappointment, not anger or that offence has been taken. One day you will get there you fetid, obtuse, banal, infertile, bereft and deeply unimpressive fool,
            But in the meantime …

      1. Unreal

        It’s even sadder that broadsheet accepted their story from such a witless pus-sucking hermaphrodite dwarf penis …

  2. Tony

    First Cummins
    Then the angry lad in the quarantine hotel
    Now the Right Honourable Colonel Myers

    Next let’s have John Waters giving Gemma O’D a piggyback

  3. Clampers Outside

    Myers may be a pain, but he is not wrong on the petty writing of O’Toole.

    Pah!

    1. Junkface

      Yep, I agree with that. I don’t like either of them to be honest. I’ve noticed O Toole’s tone got more clickbaity in an anti-British way about 4 years ago. An easy way to pick up popularity for an Irish journalist, especially after brexit, but he’s inaccurate frequently and plays the culture war when he can.

  4. Jimmy the mink

    There’s a point in it, and I don’t like agreeing with Myers.

    We have few columnists as erudite and capable of writing as O’Toole but unfortunately the substance of a lot of his columns wouldn’t be out of place in a Twitter spat.

    I think he’s overly focused on what he should be criticising in any given week and columns are inherently negative as a result. But then that’s true by a media whose agenda is largely led by what’s happening online.

    Irish Times is paid media so you’d hope for a little better.

    1. Charger Salmons

      O’Toole lives in the rarefied air of fawning praise from his fellow smuggeratis on the Guardian and New York Times who re-print his articles and tell him how wonderful he is.
      But he’s basically a racist who has swallowed a thesaurus.
      The tsunami of Anglophobic bile the Irish Times has printed over the years since the Brexit referendum is astonishing.
      Anything similar featuring Irish people appearing in the British media would be met with outpourings of anger from O’Toolbag himself.
      He’s a pompous hypocrite who has always failed to hold Irish governments to account at precisely the time it was needed.
      He was particularly poor during the bank bailout.

      1. Bitnboxy

        Lol. Go on out of that with your aul crap Charage. Kevin “Catering Corps” Myers is nothing but a golf club bore, the loser always propping up the bar and nowt but a runt of a man (his real problem) who made a career of saying truly the worst things about those groups of people he didn’t like. I see little has changed.

        But this tiny little bitter half-man is a husk of his former sanctimonious and smug self who tried to big himself up by being the standard-bearer for those fine Irishmen and women who fought in both world wars when Myers is the very runt apt to deny those very freedoms these people fought and died for.

        To have witnessed Myers’ demise from news print, strung up by his own petard and drowned by his own misplaced hubris, it was a thing of beauty.

      2. Papi

        “He’s a pompous hypocrite”

        Oh, my sides! We need a new phrase for the pot/kettle scenario for you charger.

  5. RuilleBuille

    Corporal Myers rushes to defend an absurd, out dated monarchy and a nasty racist. That’s not news.

  6. Stuberto Silva

    TO be honest…I find most ‘Opinion Journalists’ (O’toole and Myers) to be full of ***** and an awful dose at the best of times. Filled with notions of their own importance, like those people who believe themselves to be ‘thought leaders’ on LinkedIn – Vomits into bucket at just having to think these thoughts – Don’t get me started!!!

    1. Fergalito

      Fair point, who decides that the opining and anointment of particular individuals are worth publication and payment? They’re basically chumps like the rest of us.

    2. Jimmy the mink

      Yeah true.

      I suppose a good one would make you sit back and think every so often. Or amuse you with a wit that wasn’t based on taking anything down.

      1. Fergalito

        A good one would alright. Having to file copy on a weekly basis generally not so conducive to witty or thought provoking writing seeing as there’s pressure to whip something up week in, week out. Constant outrage as opinion is fairly boring assuming there’s only so much a body can authentically be outraged about.

        Sure lookit, gowls be a gowlin regardless. Better to let them at their gowlery and occupy oneself with one’s own gowling.

  7. Rosette of Sirius

    And how old was she when the ‘boul Phillip set his eye on her… 13 you say? Hmmm… Anyways, Broadsheet is of course the perfect place for a Myers rehabilitation.

  8. V aka Frilly Keane

    Two windy blowholes
    who get paid to call out the other, in turns
    Like they’ve got a bit of a mutual interest-cartel agreement between themselves
    A rotation arrangement

    I don’t know where O’Toole gets his notions and floppish gesturing from tbh
    but that being said
    Knowing how stuck up and fulla himself Myers is, a male Averil Doyle kinda
    I’m surprised he bothers to reach over to the lad from Crumlin every now and again

    Or mebbe Myers sees it as reaching down to give F’oole a bit of a scratch

    1. U N M U T U A L

      @ V
      Blowholes indeed, Ahab…;-)All hooked and baited!
      A movable feast for newspaper blubber. Treading water on a sinking ship.

    2. Bitnboxy

      Kevin Myers has probably been emboldened by UK and US-style political polarisation and the appetite among a section of folks for extremism and grievance-mongering in print. Myers doubtless hopes that his little legs and arms can assist him in clawing his way back up to become the columnist voice of those with an axe to grind about societal change, uppity women and mouthy minorities and dreaming of a glorious past that never really was.

  9. Andrew

    Fintan O’Toole has lost whatever perspective he had, not that he had much. His almost daily rants during the Brexit process were unhinged.
    He’s a victim of his own filter bubble, not something you’d expect from someone old enough to know better.
    I never rated Myers as a columnist, his writing style is poor, but he’s not wrong on this. He’s still a bit of a windbag though.

  10. Lilly

    ‘…Four years ago, he joined the (highly-successful) lynch-mob against me’

    That’s what this is about. The outrage on behalf of Theresa May and Phil is just window dressing.

  11. Gabby

    I’d love to see a heavyweight title fight on evening television between Fintan O’Toole and Kevin Myers. Now who would be an impartial referee for that match?

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