Kevin Myers

Richard Delevan has a very good post on the Kevin Myers issue - I'll toddyunct give the honour of the full rant on why he thinks Myers is no addition to Irish journalism. While I felt that Dr Edward Walsh made some interesting observations on Irish society, most of which I agree with - he did acknowledge that anything outside of the politically correct public debate script would always be very contentious.
Myers should have kept his mouth shut. Democracy is based on the concepts of mutual respect and human dignity - the language used in public discourse should reflect that dignity of the human individual and his/her role in society. The Freedom Institute provides exercepts from his piece - as my mother would say - it's no great shakes.
The FI claim that his language was not a "hanging offence" - I won't be so sure...if by hanging one means that Kevin Myers is forced to temper his language and learn new words that allow him communicate in a manner that is non-offensive - I'm all for hanging him!
This incident illustrates what many find noxious about Myers - if you disagree with him fair enough, but when you broadly agree with some of his positions and feel that he should be muzzled there's something very wrong with him - if one takes a position on social issues, as Myers regularly does, it is expected that you believe enough in that position to convince your fellow citizens of its worth and hopefully integrate into public policy. Myers has no such desire - it seems that he would much rather stir up controversy with some carefully chosen insults and then run away from any real and meaningful discussion of the issues.