Friday, July 20, 2007
“Don’t mind me, I’m stupid and know nothing about anything”
Kevin Myers just doesn’t understand the Peace Process™. Perhaps someone could explain it to him?
Mick Fealty @ 03:24 PM
Not related to to the post, but I felt I should mention that your ad banner is currently promising “An hour with Gyles Brandreth”. Is this the calibre of filth you wish to fling at your readers?
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 03:52 PMMight be a better idea to explain satire to him. unLOL.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 03:52 PMKevin Myers, for once in his life, is right. He knows nothing about anything. In particular he knowws nothing about British repression and colonialist tactics of ‘divide and rule’. His level of ignorance about the complicity and involvement of his beloved British Army and their political ‘superiors’ is mind boggling.
But he knows nothing, so that’s alright.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 03:58 PMyou go first, mick - we’d all be interested to see your take on it - no phone calls to gibney for help mind!
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 04:00 PMIf this is what passes for journalism in this paper it really is in a sorry state - maybe the author should grow up instead of using sixth form sarcasm (the lowest form of wit) to make a pretty hollow point.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 04:21 PMHave you just finished reading AP esmerelda?
http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/19923
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 04:40 PMBut Kevin is *right*.
Good piece because he has taken to a style of writing reserved for the rhetoric King - Doc Croc Paisley - apparently he communicates at a level understandable to the average 15-16yo:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/ian_paisley/north_antrim#numbers
It’s only a shame that his voters are unlikely to read the Independent because the penny might then drop that they have been exploited through his use of false and misleading premonitions for the future should unionism continue along the GFA track, the ruination of Ulster was the NSMC!
It was do or die for old Paisley - it’s a tough choice over which one I would prefer but I am glad that he chose to ‘do’.
Ignorance takes a while to overcome but a prolonged period of educational up-skilling as to the benefits of power-sharing, and indeed chance to be power-king, has won the old man round before his funeral procession.
Are you DUP-Unionists not going to defend the old master?
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 04:48 PMActually no (pretty difficult to get hold of a copy in Essex!) but I can see why you’d think that! Myers invective didn’t just encompass the shinners BTW - Robinson & Papa Doc got a serve as well. My point is on the writing quality (poor) and the lack of any realpolitik thinking. It’s happening however distasteful Myers finds it (I have my reservations as well - lunatics running asylum comes to mind) and he would be better to constructively criticise rather than heckle from the back in a manner more befitting a teenager.
I have learnt something today though - never been to the AP website before, quite impressive propaganda I thought but not news as in a newspaper which I guess is what Myers assumes he writes for and um, there’s the rub.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 04:53 PMMyers has been paid all these years to write articles in which he is **wrong**
You can therefore make a lot of money being wrong - sometimes.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 05:42 PM“You can therefore make a lot of money being wrong - sometimes.”
Yeah, ah hell of a lot of em do up in the NI Assembly.
But Paisley’s formere wrongs are now his rights in terms of the correct political course to take for unionism.
The u-turn in principles have all happened too soon from within the DUP camp which raises accusations of power for power’s sake, through a strategy of fear-filling the electorate full of political fallacies re N Ireland’s future, unless of course, Big Ian is at the helm.
Sinn Fein, however, have always had a clear intent to bring about peace on certain terms, which they documented back in 1992 and gave to the governments.
The DUPs noes and nevers have only just been muted but those concerns which they had are now proven to be unfounded, given the UUP’s displacement by the DUP, now following along those same lines which the DUP itself once said were leading to Ulster’s destruction.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 05:54 PMKevin Myers was paid to be wrong for a very long time, but he may be right eventually.
The current setup appears to be working, but they haven’t dealt with anything difficult yet. I could take a year or two before we really know if it’s going to work as a long term plan.
I’m anxious to see what happens to reducing the number of local government authorities and academic selection.
Still, it is pleasant to read about a know-it-all admitting he knows nothing.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 06:19 PMI think Kevin Myers, despite his self-mocking inversion of ‘it’s not X that is insane, it’s me’ fully understands that it is, in fact, X that is insane. The part he won’t accept, despite its reality, is that moral codes are subservient to expediency and people can be persuaded to accept repugnancy if the alternative is even more repugnant. As a media propagandist (and partisan), he was outclassed by propagandists who proffered a ‘solution’ that he opposed, so there is an element of personal defeat in that.
He nails all the critical points in his short article: (a) that PIRA violence was not a means of achieving their understanding of the principle of self-determination, as spuriously rooted in the 1916 Easter Proclamation, and the resultant objective of British withdrawal, since that principle and objective was not satisfied in the actual end whereby they ceased their means. Ergo, it was not the republicanism that is was proffered as in-order to disguise its true nature, i.e. a militant nationalist (self-contradicting ‘civil rights’) social protest movement and a quasi-fascist means by which the agitators who orchestrated and controlled the violence would achieve political power and social status; (b) that endless elections was a tactic to wear-out the moderates, allowing the fanatics to move ahead (and that this was accompanied by dispensing “sweeties” to the respective tribes which ensured that voters would elect hardliners who would demand the most and concede the least for their tribe in the sectarian carve-up of the state); (c) that the violent manifestations of the conflict was primarily the result of a very small number of political and militant agitators who used it to secure their own power rather than the result of other factors, allowing the conflict to be solved by granting power to the agitators and allowing Martin and Ian to be best butt-buddies. In short, the trouble stopped once the troublemakers were given what they wanted; and (d) that the agitators feel no remorse for their actions.
“But do any of the main characters in this jolly little Feydeau farce kneel at the end of the day and say: “Dear Sweetest Jesus Christ Almighty, Son of God, Redeemer of All Mankind. Forgive me all those dead, the thousands of them. And the tens of thousand wounded, and blinded and paralysed. The men without genitals, the women without faces. And RUC-man Sean Hughes: incontinent, paralysed, blind all the years of his life. Our people did that, and I’m sorry. I really am.” Do they? Or is guilt something that is solely found on picture frames, and remorse merely a second helping of dot-dash-dot-dash?” - Kevin Myers
To answer him: no they don’t. In fact, they’re making great efforts to ensure that all those “consequences” are expediently forgotten so that the rest of us can see the agitators as peacemakers and not violent sociopaths and don’t feel any guilt either for electing such morally degenerate scum to high political office.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 06:33 PMThe AP article is tremendously entertaining.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 06:50 PM“The AP article is tremendously entertaining.”
Counter productive as well - convinced me that O’Reilly’s on the right track.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 07:13 PMThere is nothing to explain, in the end, after much therapy, the dysfunctional family always comes to its senses. Those that have suffered as a result of the dysfunctionality may not like it; but in the end, the end result is better for one and all.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 07:51 PMGreat post from The Dubliner.
The long overdue process of planter integration has finished moving one step back.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 08:33 PMi remember when i was quite young, i asked a cousin of mine (fairly well known belfast-based journalist) why he was so often such a negative, cynical, sarcastive arsehole in his weekly pieces. i noted that it didn’t matter what he was righting about; it always ended up with the same tint. he started by trying to explain that human nature inclines us to enjoy articles with a darker outlook, and that happy thoughts caused us to lose interest quickly. once i prodded him a bit more he admitted that when sitting down to write, negative, cynical, sarcastive arsehole-like comments always flooded out. happy thoughts came in ones and twos.
when i get into articles like this, with absolutely no constructive point or piece of information, i leave it to human nature and turn the page as quickly as possible…
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 08:55 PM“The AP article is tremendously entertaining.”
Counter productive as well - convinced me that O’Reilly’s on the right track. cruimh.
Why is that , is it because they say it is not true? The sunday world has always been known for producing complete and utter nonsense.The paper hasn’t changed at all over the years.But hey, if they write it , it must be true.
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 11:30 PMIsn’t this the same Sunday World that demands a crack down on the Irish sex industry every other week while offering several pages of dirty chatline numbers nearer the back pages?
Posted by on Jul 20, 2007 @ 11:45 PMMaybe it’s just me but I have never been able to understand why anyone allowed Kevin Myers to be inflicted on a poor unsuspecting world.
LOOK, I don’t mind being wrong about Kevin Myers. It’s absolutely fine that the person who made hell on earth for the readers of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator with their his perpetual hatred is now declaring how absolutely bonkers he is.
I have no problems whatsoever that he has written thousands and thousands of words declaring how wise, how sane he was forecasting the inevitable death of the peace process because of this historic force, or that one. It’s all splendid. Indeed, it’s Wonderful! Excellent! Sublime!
Much like the recent verdict on his paymaster the criminally corrupt Conrad Black.
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 01:44 AMOnce again the anti man playing rule is lifted when it comes to commenting on Kevin Myers, so instead of an honest appraisal of what he is commenting upon all we get is hatred and bile poured on the man himself, the usual Shinner approach to criticism.
So what about answering his main point? I asked the exact same question in a thread a month or two back and I will ask it again,
“What in the name of the ever loving Christ was it all about?”
Seriously, that thirty years of unremitting horror that was inflicted on a generation and whose carcinogenic toxins still infect the very marrow of anyone who has had the misfortune of growing up in that psychotic society, what was it all about?
To create a power sharing executive of Paisley and Martin McGuinness at Stormont? That’s what would have stopped it all along? Jesus, is that what you really all wanted to make you stop slaughtering your neighbours?
Well why the fuck didn’t you tell us that in 1968?
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 02:01 AMGood point Harry. Guys, if you can’t find a ball to play, then kindly say so, tell us why you think that and then, just as the impulse rises in you to take a big lump out of the man’s let, stop.
Rory, you have told us what you feel about Mr Myers, but nothing about what he has written. That is, as you very well know, called playing the man.
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 04:43 AMWhat in fact I have done is lift a chunk of Myer’s text and inserted references to himself where he had commented on his “failure to understand” in an attempt, via parody, to illustrate that his failure was not of understanding but instead an exercise in crude journalistic opportunism.
Myers is a writer paid to buttress the editorial line of the organs for whom he wrote, not an objective academic (if there be such a creature) and as such it is surely valid to use his own style to highlight where in fact his interests in a particular area of propaganda might lie.
His own less than objective use of florid, sensational verbiage to advance his case by high emotion and condemn those with whom he disagrees is certainly valid and robust (if yellow) journalism but it then has to stand and take the blows in the jousting lane it chose.
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 08:23 AMMyers has inserted himself into the article, so it would be difficult to critique it without referring to him.
This piece saddened me. It looks like Myers is nostalgic for the Troubles and that he resents the movement and progress that is being made.
A nasty little piece of writing indeed.
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 08:53 AMrepublican reaction to Myers merely shows that he is on the right track.
Posted by on Jul 21, 2007 @ 09:01 AM
