Tag Archives: Kevin Myers

From top: Richard Flynn, the only person charged with the death of Father Niall Molloy; ‘Burning Heresies’ by Kevin Myers

‘[my partner] Grania and I were invited to the Westmeath Hunt Ball in Mullingar and later we left for a house party.

We were welcomed by a tall handsome man in a dress suit, whose lordly hospitality was tinged with a patrician charm.

His very attractive wife served the drinks. I retired to bed around four. Grania got up at seven, along with most of the household, for the hunting field. I lay unconscious until Midday, then rose. There was just one person remaining when I trickled downstairs.

‘Hello, I’m Richard Flynn,’ the man said affably.

‘Forgive me, there were so many people last night – you are…?’

‘I’m your host. I own the place.’

‘Sorry, I’m a little confused. Who was the fellow serving the drinks?’

‘That was Father Molloy.’

‘Father? You mean he’s a priest?’

‘And a family friend.’

Richard cooked me brunch and chatted about his life. He had been a farmer, but had contracted brucellosis, and so, unable to be near cattle, had gone into business, at which he had been remarkable successful. I asked him how the illness had affected him.

‘Aches all over, a terrible lassitude, which I have to fight every single day.’

I did not ask about the third symptom, impotence, and our conversation affably toured the world until the hunting party returned. I liked Richard enormously, so much so that we stayed in touch, and I visited him a couple of times at his auto spare shop in Blackrock, county Dublin.

A few months later, after a wedding party for one of the flynn daughters, Father Niall Molloy was found beaten to death in the Flynns’ bedroom. Richard was charged with assault and manslaughter. The case went before Judge Frank Roe, who ordered the jury to acquit, and Richard walked free. Personally, I felt happy for him, though justice had clearly not been done.

It was later alleged that Roe had been a friend of the Flynns, but I doubt whether any Irish judge would have accepted a case that could have so fatally compromised him. However, Roe was an ardent Catholic who would probably have done his utmost to protect the ‘good name’ of the Catholic Church, a term which had not yet become risible. The clearly sexual nature between Niall Molloy and Teresa Flynn might have been exposed in any trial, which Roe was apparently determined to forestall.

It was in Charlie Haughey’s imperishably worthless aphorism, an Irish solution to an Irish problem.’

Kevin Myers, Burning Heresies; A memoir of a life in Conflict 1979-2020 (Merrion Press) chapter 12.

The Killing Of Father Molloy (RTÉ)

Previously: Fr Molloy on Broadsheet

RollingNews

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

Gulp.

Burning heresies by Kevin Myers

Previously: Hoist With her Own Petard

Pic: Hodges Figgis

From top: Kevin Myers (left), JK Rowling; A tweet from Ms Rowling following Mr Myers’ sacking from The Sunday Times

This afternoon.

In the latest issue of The Spectator.

Journalist and broadcaster Kevin Myers, writes (full article at link below):

…This time three years ago, I was a well-known journalist in Ireland, with a modest profile in Britain.

On the last weekend of July, on the basis of a poorly written column in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times about the pay differentials in the BBC, London social media vilified me.

I was then denounced worldwide as a misogynistic, anti-Semitic Holocaust-denier. One of my most successful accusers was J.K. Rowling.

And now it is her turn, as her entirely justifiable scepticism over the dogmas of transgenderism have rendered her into what she is clearly not, that mythical beast, a ‘transphobe’.

So welcome to the world you helped create, J.K.

In Ireland, I had long been recognised for my unremitting hostility to the IRA, support for Israel and my many articles about the horrors of the Holocaust.

Yet these easily verifiable points were ignored as some foul internet charlatan with my name but none of my beliefs briefly entered the global imagination.

A tsunami of smears from other publications obliterated protestations from the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland that I had told the Irish people truths about the Holocaust that they would not otherwise have known.

But perhaps the most damning contribution came from J.K. Rowling, whose global influence is tectonic.

She tweeted to her 13 million followers an utterly foul distortion of what I had said, namely:

‘Women and Jews deserve what they get. This filth was published in @thesundaytimes. Let that sink in for a moment.’

Deserve what they get? So women deserve to be paid less than men, and Jews merited the Holocaust? The former is bad enough, but the latter assertion is the most wicked representation even by Twitter’s sordid standards.

Despite the proclaimed support for me from Jewish groups, plus two Israeli ambassadors as well as numerous women, their voices could not be heard above the cacophony of my enemies. When the fangs of Rowling’s Twitter followers close on their prey, there is only one outcome….

Welcome to the world you created (Kevin Myers, The Spectator)

Rollingnews

Kevin Myers

Today.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland released its latest decisions on broadcasting complaints.

In respect of a complaint made against RTE’s Morning Ireland – in which former Sunday Times columnist Kevin Myers was called a “holocaust denier” by one of the show’s presenters – the BAI upheld the complaint.

RTE has reported that it is considering a response to the finding.

BAI’s summary of the complaint – by Karl Martin – states:

The complainant states that one of the presenters on this programme described Mr. Kevin Myers as a ‘Holocaust denier’. The complainant states that this was an absurd claim based on a newspaper article written by Mr. Myers over eight years ago under a misleading headline that he didn’t write.

The complainant states that Mr Myers took issue with the word ‘Holocaust’ on account of its Greek origin, meaning ‘destroy by fire’. He stated that there was no single Holocaust because it took many forms; Jews were shot in pits, beaten to death, frozen and starved to death, burnt alive in their homes and synagogues and gassed.

The complainant maintains that it is quite clear from the newspaper article that Mr Myers believes that there was a Nazi genocide of the Jews – he typically and pedantically takes issue with the word. The complainant adds that Mr Myers has written many times about the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jews and that it is ridiculous and offensive to label him as ‘Holocaust denier’. The complainant states that no senior member of the Irish Jewish community has called him ‘a denier’.

In support of his complaint, the complainant submits the following:-

a) A copy of a statement issued by the Jewish Representative Council defending Mr. Myers from, inter alia, the claim that he had denied the Holocaust in an article eight years ago.

b) A copy of the Guardian newspaper’s correction to its earlier description of Mr. Myers as a Holocaust denier.

c) A copy of The Times of Israel published defence of Mr. Myers by the Jewish blogger, Mr. Jonathan Hoffman.

The complainant states that despite all of the above, the broadcaster still claims that it was correct to refer to Mr. Myers as having previously written a column in which he “denied the Holocaust”. The complainant states that this is, to quote the Jewish Representative Council, “an absolute distortion of the facts” and is based on the selective use of certain phrases taken out of context.

RTE’s response to the BAI is summarised as follows:

“The broadcaster states that the references to Mr. Myers in this context relate to articles written by Mr. Myers for the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph newspapers in 2009. In reaction to commentary on the articles following Mr. Myers’ final Sunday Times newspaper column, the Irish Independent immediately removed the article in question from its website.

The Belfast Telegraph had not, at the time of replying to the complainant, removed its version of the article. These are quotes taken directly from the article:-

“There was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths.” “It is an offence in Germany to say that six million Jews did not die in the holocaust. Very well then, I am a criminal in Germany.” “I’m a Holocaust denier.”

“The broadcaster states that these are Mr. Myers’ own words. He may have then qualified his headline statements by then writing that there certainly was genocide waged against the Jews by the Nazis, in what he describes as “one of the most satanic operations in world history.”

The broadcaster maintains that if he is being referred to around the world as a Holocaust denier, it is because he described himself as such.

The broadcaster refers to the contents of this article as unarguable evidence that the statement by the presenter that Mr. Myers had “previously written a column in which he denied the Holocaust” was accurate and fair, did not misrepresent Mr. Myers and was not in any way misleading to listeners.

In its decision to uphold the complaint, the BAI said:

“While noting that Mr. Myers had described himself as a ‘Holocaust denier’ in a typically provocative newspaper article that he had written, it was evident from the article as a whole that his description did not in fact amount to a statement denying the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazi regime.

Rather, the article was a comment on how language is used and the criminalisation of individuals or groups who engage in Holocaust denial. In this context, the comments by the presenter were considered to lack fairness to Mr. Myers and both misrepresented his views in a manner which would likely mislead audiences as to his views. Accordingly, the complaint has been upheld.

Read the decision in full here

UPDATE:

Meanwhile…

George Hook

A complaint about comments made by George Hook last September on his then High Noon show on Newstalk has also been upheld.

On September 8, 2017, Mr Hook had made certain comments in light of a court case concerning a sexual assault.

Mr Hook said:

“But when you look deeper into the story you have to ask certain questions. Why does a girl who just meets a fella in a bar go back to a hotel room? She’s only just barely met him …. then is surprised when somebody else comes into the room and rapes her.”

“Is there no blame now to the person who puts themselves in danger? There is personal responsibility. You then of course read that she passed out in the toilet and when she woke up the guy was trying to rape her. There is a personal point of responsibility, because it’s your daughter and it’s my daughter.

“And what determines the daughter who goes out, gets drunk, passes out and is with strangers in a room and the daughter that goes out, stays half way sober and comes home. I don’t know … but there is a point of responsibility. The real issues nowadays and increasingly, is the question of the personal responsibility that young girls are taking for their own safety.”

The complaint to the BAI was made by Fiona O’Toole, who summarised her complaint as follows:

The complainant states that it was not appropriate for the presenter to blame an alleged
victim of sexual assault for the fact that she was raped. The complainant states that it is irrelevant that she chose to go back to a hotel room with one man; she should not be raped by a second.

The complainant expressing the opinion that the presenter believes that the victim is responsible for this assault is offensive and harmful. The complainant states that
nobody would suggest that men who are mugged walking down Grafton Street in Dublin are responsible for being mugged and it is not appropriate for the presenter to blame women (and their parents) for rape rather than the rapist and their parents for how they raised them.

Newstalk’s response to the BAI was…

The broadcaster states that the day following the initial broadcast, Saturday 9th September, the programme presenter and Newstalk issued an apology for the on-air remarks.

On Monday 11th September, the presenter, while on-air, issued a further, more detailed,
apology. The broadcaster states that an internal process within the station in relation to the comments was undertaken and, on Friday 15th September, it was confirmed that the
presenter had been suspended from his duties at the station while the process was
ongoing.

The broadcaster states that on the 22nd September it was confirmed that the
process which reviewed the circumstance that led to the presenter’s comments had
concluded and Newstalk confirmed that the presenter would be stepping down from his
lunchtime slot and would return in December when he will take on a new weekend show.

In upholding the complaint, the BAI stated:

“In the case of the programme that is the subject of the complaint, the Committee noted that it is aimed at an adult audience and the programme and presenter’s sometimes provocative style are well established and understood by the audience.

The Committee also recognises that it is permissible in broadcasting to deal with the question of personal responsibility in covering issues of crime and criminal behaviour. However, this topic was raised in the programme in the context of a then ongoing UK court case about rape and the issue of personal responsibility was described by the presenter as “the real issue” in this matter.

As such, the Committee considered that the manner and context of raising the issue of personal responsibility in the context of a specific case of alleged rape caused undue offence and there was a strong possibility of causing distress to audience members who might personally identify with this issue.

In considering this complaint, the Committee acknowledged that the broadcaster subsequently undertook remedial action and has accepted the substance and validity of the complaint.

It also noted that the presenter explicitly stated that he does not condone rape.

However, the broadcaster had a responsibility to take greater care to prevent the possibility of undue offence and harm, including taking timely corrective action where content is likely to have caused offence.

The Committee was of the view that the broadcaster had failed to take corrective action in a timely fashion, action which may have ameliorated the undue offence caused. Given this and given the content of the programme, the Committee has decided to uphold the complaint.

Decision can be read in full here

Kevin Myers

Last night.

Five months after his sacking by the Sunday Times, columnist Kevin Myers appeared on RTÉ 1’s Claire Byrne Live to discuss his removal and the fall out.

Mr Myers was told he will never work for the Sunday Times again after he used a crude Jewish stereotype in an article on BBC pay.

The paper’s move was supported by Taoiseach Leo Vardkar.

Kevin Myers; “…Nobody has the right to say this man will not be employed again. No one can do that. And then what happened next was even worse. The Taoiseach came out and said that The Sunday Times action was wholly justified and so did the Táaaiste [Frances Fitzgerald].

Now Claire, I’m not like you. Nor the people out there. Nor the people at home. I chose to be Irish. I had a British passport initially. I chose. That was going to be my nationality, my identity.

And never in the history of the Free State, or the Republic and the Free State before, has a government sided instantly with a multinational against the interests of a citizen of that state. it has never happened before, since 1923. There was no consultation, no discussion, nothing. My reputation was destroyed.”

Claire Byrne: “Have you had any support of people in the media, in public life, in politics since all of this happened?”

Myers: “A very small amount of support from the media, apart from David Norris more recently, he was abroad at the time [of the sacking], none that I could speak of in public. Privately they’ve said what’s happened is a great shame but nobody in public has spoken out…”

[Later]

Byrne: “You write very challenging things about women? You write that men work harder than women, men are more charismatic, you write that men get sick less frequently than women, men seldom get pregnant.”

Myers: “That was a joke. Of course.”

Byrne: “What about the rest of the stuff? Do you believe that men work harder than women?”

Myers: “The issue is am I allowed to say that? The issue is not my beliefs. The issue of freedom of speech is the real issue here. Otherwise you’re going to have one set of beliefs, uniform and compulsory across the entire media…are we allowed to differ from the politically correct consensus norm which now dominates the media.”

Watch the full interview here

Kevin Myers

On Thursday, September 28.

In St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.

Kevin Myers will moderate a talk, entitled ‘How censorship stifles debate and undermines the tenets of free and democratic societies’.

Anne Sheridan, in the Limerick Leader, reports:

The talk will be given by Jodie Ginsberg, of the Index on Censorship, which publishes the work by censored writers and artists and campaigns for free expression worldwide…

David O’Brien, chief executive of Limerick Civic Trust, which has organised the series of talks, said he has not read Myers’ widely criticised article, entitled ‘Sorry, ladies – equal pay has to be earned’, but stressed their talks are about “encouraging debate and having opposing views”.

But Prof O’Connor [Prof Emeritus Pat O’Connor, of sociology and social policy, at University of Limerick] said her concern is that “with this platform, they are framing Kevin Myers as the defender of free speech by putting him in that position.

“I suspect that it is simply an attempt to drum up an audience by being controversial. In these sort of situations, the best thing one can do is to ignore.

“It’s not an acceptable position to say everyone is entitled to free speech if it stirs up hatred against any one group. It’s not an uncontested right,” said Prof O’Connor.

“I have no time for political correctness. I think if the heart is right, the lip can be forgiven. But it seems to be giving a platform to Kevin Myers, and legitimising opinions that many people found offensive.”

Prof O’Connor, a visiting Fellow at University College Dublin’s Geary Institute, said she won’t be attending the talk, as there were “too many crazy assumptions in his column”.

…“I have no time for political correctness. I think if the heart is right, the lip can be forgiven. But it seems to be giving a platform to Kevin Myers, and legitimising opinions that many people found offensive.”

…“He said men are more charismatic, and that is one of the reasons why they get ahead, but I’m afraid we all know an awful lot of boring men. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. When there are as many mediocre women as mediocre men in the top jobs, we’ll have equality,” she said.

Yikes.

Previously: Listening To Kevin

‘I’m Sorry This Has Happened’

Kevin’s Gate

From top: The Stand with Eamon Dunphy podcast; Kevin Myers

Three weeks ago, Eamon Dunphy posted an interview he carried out with Kevin Myers for his podcast The Stand.

This was prior to the fallout of Mr Myers’ column in The Sunday Times on July 30 and his subsequent sacking for the same.

During the 71-minute interview they discussed The Irish Times and Mr Myers’s  time in Northern Ireland, Beirut and Sarajevo.

He told how he wasn’t invited to Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the war memorial  in memory of the Irish soldiers killed in World War I, in Islandbridge, Dublin; and how a journalism student told him he was warned not to mention Kevin Myers’ name if he wanted to proceed on his course; and how media/journalism courses in Ireland teach conformity.

He also lamented the lack of “good columnists” in Ireland under the age of 40, or even 50.

From the interview…

Eamon Dunphy: “Now you got the job of writing the Irishman’s Diary in The Irish Times which was very prestigious. You had some very amazing predecessors in that slot, you might tell us about. But it’s quite onerous because I think it’s three or four times a week?

Kevin Myers: “It was five times a week when I started.”

Dunphy: “Tell me who’d done it before.”

Myers: “Well, Patrick Campbell famously.”

Dunphy: “Yes…”

Myers: “Not famous anymore. He was a very, very celebrated man in the BBC and a very funny man and, before that, or well, after him, there was Seamus Kelly whom I never knew. He had a reputation for being very irascible but perhaps that was because he was drunk every morning by 11am and he had terminal cancer for a long time, so that would make you irascible.”

“But, it was, I didn’t want to be a diarist, I didn’t want to be a columnist. It seemed to me to be onerous, too onerous. But it was something that was a marking in the absence of anyone else, somebody else, a journalist in the newsroom pool, would be given the diary to write. So I was doing, they were going down well. Douglas…”

Dunphy: “In journalistic parlance, just to make it clear, a marking is a gig.”

Myers: “Yeah. And, I…Douglas Gageby that then edited The Irish Times didn’t like me at all. And made it very evident that he didn’t like me. He didn’t want me to be employed by The Irish Times but the overwhelming impression, decision amongst his, opinion amongst his senior editors around him, I should be employed, he was emphatically against me being employed as a columnist but, again, there was no one else to do the job.”

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