Sunday, April 08, 2007
Criticism is valid, and necessary, in a democracy
In the Sunday Independent, Ruth Dudley Edwards provides a ‘weary correction’ to Brian Feeney’s assertion that “all her heroes have failed or failed her” - “Trimble, whom I admire for his courage and decency, did not let me down; the Orange Order was no more a hero to me than Ballinamallard Knitting Circle; and I’ve been denouncing Paisley as a bigot and a wrecker for all my journalistic career.” - before making an important point about elections.. and, indeed, journalism.
I’m in favour of a deal rather than no deal, though I’m gloomy about the prospects of success for a power-splitting arrangement between religious and political bigots which institutionalises sectarianism. But what I enjoyed was Feeney’s nerve in implying that to be critical of the way people vote is to be anti-democratic. This from the man who wrote last year that: “To advertise their political dementia to the world, unionists have repeatedly voted for a man regarded as a ranting buffoon to be their tribal leader.” Quite, Brian. If you had added that “to advertise their moral dementia, nationalists have repeatedly voted for a hypocrite known to be a terrorist leader to be theirs”, we’d be in complete agreement for once.
Pete Baker @ 10:24 PM
perhaps the problem for Edwards and her ilk is the realisatiom that for all their ‘supposed’ power and influence within the media, she is a total irrelevance.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 12:26 AMNo more so that Brian Feeney, surely.. or was that your point?
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 12:31 AMcan I add “to advertise their moral dementia, the british have repeatedly voted for a hypocrite known to be a liar and war criminal to be theirs”?
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 12:40 AMFor once, heck, your single transferable comment is not entirely irrelevant.. given Tony Blair’s involvement in The Process™
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 12:49 AMIf this story is to be linked surely it could be done with the blogger’s normal thoroughness?
This pissing competition was started by Myers:
http://www.unison.ie/columnists/kevin-myers/stories.php3?ca=428&si=1800919
Where he declares the deal won’t stick and has a pop at Feeney.
Leahy in the SBP has also laughed at the Cruiser’s contribution.
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/04/01/story22300.asp
Ruth may be batting for the team as the one looking the least ridiculous at present but if Feeney has got 2 out of 3 right, he is odds on over the last.
(but of course these links don’t appear in the entry above I don’t wonder why)
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 01:20 AMthe Orange Order was no more a hero to me than Ballinamallard Knitting Circle
Looking forward to he book defending the Ballinamallard Knitting Circle then. She could call it Pulling The Wool
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 01:49 AMMyers: Feeney is wrong
Edwards: Feeney is a fool
I await,
Cruiser: Feenye, he ate all the babies after landing in his IRA flying saucer
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 01:59 AMFor someone who has spent a lot of her journalistic career wanting an end to violence and also deriding SF and the DUP, i can see why there is some confusion now.
It’s obviously those pescky, ignorant voters that have caused her problem….. whoops, I mean the problem. :o)
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 06:40 AMWhat do you do with parties addicted to brinkmanship? Throw a few of your own in. Hain has them taped.
Having our commentators tearing strips out of one another is a useful corrective to the tribalism of our media.
Meanwhile the ‘centre’ parties can stand by and wait for the two ethnic pyramid selling schemes to collapse.
And SFDUP try to postpone that day by reinventing themselves as parties of firm and fair governance.
When they fail could they try to sell the same ethnic pyramids again?
Happy Holidays
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 08:24 AMThis sounds a bit like the debate on other topics on the Trolls, playing the man and backbiting in Slugger. Remove Feeny and Edwards from some of these posts and substitute various contributors here and it would be a fair description of some recent discussions / recriminations.
Is political blogging just getting more and more like real life to the point where it isnt about the issues - its just the personalities and debate for the sake of debate?
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 11:14 AMI regard both Feeney and Edwards as deranged. But I’d love to see Feeney writing an article some day about the circumstances under which he parted company with the SDLP. Neither he nor the SDLP seem to be particularly keen to say much about it.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 12:43 PMThis has nothing to do with this thread, but I’ve just stumbled across the ‘live’ coverage of the 1992 General Election on BBC Parliament at present (Sky channel 504, not sure what numbers on any other platform).
Very nostalgic and odd watching it from a perspective of what then followed - especially Chris Patten confidently looking forward to another (fifth) victory in 1997!
We’re over six hours into the programme, so it’s about 4.15am on election night now. No results from NI yet - 15 years and they’re still counting ....
;-)
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 03:15 PMDenis Bradley made a lot of sense in the Irish News last week – and not for the first or last time in his life so don’t even start with me. Bradley (comparatively) gently takes Myers, Edwards, and other journos and academics to task for basing their doomsday scenarios not on “the evidential past” but on “sweeping emotionally-charged presumptions.” The “evidential past” Bradley considers is the enormous, once inconceivable distances already travelled by the British government, by SF, by the IRA, and by Paisley.
Bradley’s conclusion is (again, comparatively) optimistic:
“So the future is difficult!
There is going to be a battle a day.
It is based on flimsy morals!
Tell us something new.
Anyone with an ounce of sense knows how difficult the future is going to be.
But at least it is a future.
All the more reason then that the intelligentsia and academia get past their own prejudice and bile. They have a responsibility, in the future, to contribute to good debate and proper analysis.”
Bradley’s entire piece can be read here: http://www.nuzhound.com/articles/irish_news/arts2007/apr6_time_our_intelligentsia__DBradley.php
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 03:32 PMHi all,
I feel it’s relevant in the feely happy glow of historic handshakes to keep in mind that we were a hairsbreadth away from an armed IRA running the police and community services in NornIron.This was clearly the preferred outcome of the Fianna Fail and the British Labour parties, and was supported wholeheartedly by most of the Irish and British media.
Thank God for the dissenters.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 04:56 PMToo true.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 09:52 PMJournalism is show-business. It’s another branch of the entertainment industry. Anyone who thinks the Sindo is anything more than that is fooling themselves, I can’t aggrandize the role of these individuals into worthy commentators on democracy in action.
Everybody loves a fight and Feeney started one, it’s a journalistic reality show, a way to be part of the story, personality over analysis.
Feeney won. RDE’s weary correction was so weary it couldn’t get out of bed.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 11:09 PMA couple of points
Obscure
Personalities aside, I quoted the section from Ruth Dudley Edwards because she hints at a point relating to both the Finnuala O’Connor article and the attempted chastisement of the BBC’s Mark Devenport by Gerry Adams - namely, criticism is an integral part of a functioning democracy and to attempt to denigrate it, or to wish it away, damages the wider society.
Susan
Relating to the point above, Denis Bradley’s article was, IHMO, disgraceful.
For an active participant in The Process™ to characterise critics as members of “the intelligentsia and academia”, driven by “their own prejudice and bile”, is not, in his terms, contributing to “good debate and proper analysis” - it is blatantly playing the man.
Posted by on Apr 09, 2007 @ 11:28 PMOh. I see. If a commentator portrays the electorate as driven solely by their own prejudice and bile it is good journalism and the only sane conclusion of all right-thinking people everywhere, but if Denis Bradley points out that Feeney and Myers in their hyperbole and intra-journo feuding are not immune from prejudice and bile themselves, then that is “disgraceful” and “playing the man.”
Bradley isn’t coy about which critics he is criticisng:
“There is a group of journalists, political commentators and academics who are also outraged at this coming together of Sinn Féin and the DUP.
This group is made up of some of the most experienced and respected of commentators. They write for some of the best newspapers, they teach in some of the most respected educational institutions. They say important things and, often, very insightful things. They are influential in many political and social circles. They inform the opinion of people who inform opinion.
There is quite a large group of them but the most public and best known are Kevin Myers and Ruth Dudley Edwards.”
Bradley examines some of their recent work and argues that some of their grim predictions are more coloured by their emotions and their own presumptions than by logic and the evidence of the recent past.
Obviously you disagree, Pete, and you may even be right. But criticising the critics is also valid, and necessary, in a democracy and is well within the rules of fair play.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 12:52 AMSusan
Criticising the critics is entirely within the remit of my original point.
The important point to note, I’d suggest, is that Denis Bradley first casts his net widely.. before narowing it to named individuals.
“There is a group of journalists, political commentators and academics..”
In doing so, I’d argue that he seeks to group all critics of The Process™ under his subsequent analysis.
And it’s that analysis that I criticise.
Because he does not, as he exhorts others to do, engage in “good debate and proper analysis”, instead we are advised that “intelligentsia and academia [should] get past their own prejudice and bile. They have a responsibility.”
As I said, he has been an active participant in that Process™.
As such it is disingenuous, at least, for him to now criticise the critics of that Process™ by avoiding their criticism, and instead ‘play the man’, claiming that they are abdicating their responsibility by voicing such criticism.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 01:24 AM“As I said, he has been an active participant in that Process™.”
So. You haven’t defined what that participation was and why you think that means his opinion should be dismissed (other than he clearly doesn’t fit your world view).
He doesn’t dismiss criticism, he dismissed prejudice and bile and you seem to be the one rejecting a view you don’t like in your case with the undefined man-not-ball dismissal of his views as he is a ‘participant’ as if that matters a hill of beans.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 01:43 AMSusan, Bladley’s spiel is an exhortation to all to abandon reason and ethnics, and watch the bright new future being forged for us by the same depraved sociopaths who forged our dark past. Yes, the mad shall lead the blind to the Promised Land… or so the mad would have the sane believe.
Bladley’s article, unwittingly, is a good example of what those commentators he condemns mean by the moral corruption that underlines the process and how corrosive that insidious corruption is to a society’s values. People have voted for some truly awful people who are fundamentally devoid of decency and principle. In the case of PSF, people who murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands for no purpose other than achieving political power for the sociopaths who orchestrated the violence and for the sectarian gain of the nationalist community who supported that violence. It is a direct reward for mass murder campaign, conferred jointly by the nationalists and the governments upon the sociopaths under the threat of further violence were said sociopaths not so rewarded. Paisley, likewise, emerged from this moral sewer in the political ascendancy, also rewarded. Those convicted of murder were released by into the communities they terrorised. Their gangs rewarded with million pound donations from the taxpayers. Bladley sees this as progress and undermines those who apply a moral system or critique that generates a different view to the process-sponsored view. He implies that dissenters are either hypocrites, misguided, unbalanced, elitist, begrudges, or otherwise flawed in their opposition, distaste, or disapproval. Just as we surrendered our future to the lunatics, so too, he implores, must we surrender all moral codes and critical judgement. Bladley has been forced into a moral sewer by the process. He is welcome to it, but he has no right to demand that others join him there.
As Vice Chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, his lack of support for the concept of opposition and free speech is particularly disconcerting.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 02:14 AMI’ll have to go for the man not ball when it comes to Bradley. He was a dishonest broker, and as such has no credibility in my opinion. Why he’s even still hanging around puzzles me.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 02:55 AMYou make a lot of sense, Pete. Quite a few people are interpreting this election as a fait accompli. A prize. A triumph. A ‘justification’ of their long march, without analysing that long march itself. As if it was enough that the road to power, like the road to Hell, be paved with good intentions.
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 03:04 AMRDE, Kevin Myers, Conor C - what a weary bunch of nobodies. Why should we all be excercised by these bufoons?
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 10:00 AMPete
“Relating to the point above, Denis Bradley’s article was, IHMO, disgraceful.”
You mean you disagree with his analysis. That’s all.
“For an active participant in The Process™ to characterise critics as members of “the intelligentsia and academia”, driven by “their own prejudice and bile”, is not, in his terms, contributing to “good debate and proper analysis” - it is blatantly playing the man.”
First off, could you clarify exactly why you include a TM every time you refer to the peace process? It’d be interesting if you could just spell out exactly what you’re trying to say.Secondly, whether Denis Bradley has been a participant in the peace process is makes no difference in terms of whether his analysis is correct or not. (You also seem to imply that as a participant in the peace process, he should be somehow disallowed from responding to critics of that process - where’s the logic here?)
Thirdly: to describe Edwards, Myers, O’Brien, and let’s add Harris in for good measure, “the intelligentsia and academia” is simply a statement of fact; to suggest that they have been motivated “their own prejudice and bile”, seems like fair comment. Bradley is ten times cleaner a ball-player than any of these.
Furthermore, there is an eminently reasonable debate to be had about the phenomenon of the anti-republican, pro-union, rightwing quasi-British tendency (personified in Harris, Edwards, Myers, Cruiser) that dominates the Irish print media - a phenomenon largely at odds with the instinctive tendencies of the population at large. And within that debate, it will of course be necessary to refer to the work of specific individuals. They are all public figures, paid handsomely for their work - they are fair game for such debate.
But again you’re confused by the fact that you tend to agree with the Edwards-Myers-Cruiser-Harris axis - hence the bluster about playing the man etc.
“...Denis Bradley first casts his net widely.. before narowing it to named individuals. In doing so, I’d argue that he seeks to group all critics of The Process™ under his subsequent analysis.”
So you think that by naming two specific individuals, he “groups all critics under his analysis”? Explain the logic of this.“As I said, he has been an active participant in that Process™.”
What does that have to do with whether his point is valid?“As such it is disingenuous, at least, for him to now criticise the critics of that Process™ by avoiding their criticism, and instead ‘play the man’, claiming that they are abdicating their responsibility by voicing such criticism.”
Sorry Pete, but you’re jumping through hoops to try and find an excuse to lambast Bradley - when it’s very clear to all that your problem with him is his role in what you so derisively refer to as the Process TM.Who’s really playing the man here?
Posted by on Apr 10, 2007 @ 03:48 PM
