Irish Times columnist and professional controversialist Kevin Myers is at the centre of a Category Five shitstorm spawned by his Monday “Irishman’s Diary” column (subs req). Slugger O’Toole was in early with a good thread on the subject.

Ironically, Myers in a way predicted the ensuing controversy in the very column in question. Responses to remarks on single parent families by Edward Walsh, which inspired the column, included “hurtful” and “offensive”, which Myers slammed as,

“the verbal repertoire of the politically correct. This assesses any political observation not on its factual merits but on the lachrymosity of the audience.”

Myers continues in a vein that would not be out of place in “Defining Deviancy Down” by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan or in Clinton welfare reform debates in the 90s, were it not for the explosive use of the ‘b’ word:

So she naturally declared that it would be extremely “hurtful” to suggest that women would choose single parenthood for financial pain[sic - did he mean gain?], or that “they would be put themselves before their children”. No doubt it is hurtful. But is it true? And how many girls - and we’re largely talking about teenagers here - consciously embark upon a career of mothering bastards because it seems a good way of getting money and accommodation from the State? Ah. You didn’t like the term bastard? No, I didn’t think you would. In the welfare-land of Euphemesia, what is the correct term for the offspring of unmarried mothers?

All day today it’s been open season on Myers, with journalists of all stripes queuing up to slam him. Women rang up talk radio to weep on air. The head of the National Union of Journalists declared Myers’ column “unacceptable” on RTE’s Morning Ireland (sound file). Trade unionists demanded a police investigation. Politicians including Mary O’Rourke, FF head of the Seanad, called it incitement to “hatred” on Pat Kenny’s RTE Radio 1 programme.

Mary Ellen Synon, of whom there have been less sightings than Elvis since her self-immolation over the Paralympics, was trotted out on RTE’s Liveline by Joe Duffy to serve as punching bag in an attempt to defend Myers - doing neither herself or Myers any favours, which is precisely why she was brought onto the programme as a foil for Duffy’s huffs.

Myers’ colleagues, Irish Times columnists John Waters and Fintan O’Toole, got into a debate on the subject on Newstalk 106, where Waters suggests that Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy should have to consider resigning over it (as provided by Newstalk to us):

Waters: “I think this is potentially a resigning issue for the editor. Unless this is addressed adequately, today, then the editor should be removed in my view.”

Fintan O’Toole: “No. Let’s just keep this in some kind of perspective….There are two ways to respond really badly to what has happened. One is to ignore it and not take responsibility for it; the other is to go over the top in relation to it. I don’t think it’s welcome that Joe O’Toole is calling for the police to be brought in. I don’t think it’s useful to close down the debate by saying the editor should resign, Kevin Myers should resign or whatever else.”

Waters: “The Irish Times failed to engage in that discussion [about Ed Walsh's comments] and this is what happens with racism as well when you don’t have a proper discussion - extremism comes in. I’m not calling for the editor to gratuitously resign, I’m saying that unless this is addressed and openly and unshirkingly, and that these issues are dealt with, if the Irish Times is to fulfil its function in Irish society and prepared to put this up, then it has to come out and defend it. Up to this moment it hasn’t done so and I don’t think that is appropriate. This cannot be avoided. This needs to be addressed head on.”

Waters, of course, may still have hard feelings after IT editor Geraldine Kennedy tried to sack him in 2003. Waters called her “compromised” on RTE after she spiked a column in which he accused the paper of fiddling with its finances to the detriment of staff made redundant.

But never mind that. Myers also (perhaps unintentionally) put a late hit in the piece that may have provoked Waters, by mentioning Sinead O’Connor, by whom Waters has a little girl. Needless to say, O’Connor and Waters are not together. No more on that or the lawyers will have a field day.

[Further unintended irony: Waters has cover story headlined 'Love' in this month's excellent Dubliner magazine.]

For the record, we think Myers is right to bring attention to the issue of illegitimacy and its correlation to social ills. And while we wouldn’t have used the same language to do so, we stand foursquare behind Myers on one point: if you want to say you have a free press, prepare to be offended occasionally. [On the flip side, criticism is not censorship, but calling for Myers to be arrested comes close. The solution to speech you find offensive is almost inevitably more speech.]

If the Irish Times decides that Myers’ column doesn’t fit their values and is over the line, it’s their right to apologise for it if they choose. If it results in lower sales by boycotting readers, that’s the market at work and so be it.

But all the hyperventilating moralism at RTE and elsewhere is a disturbing symptom of the cancer at the heart of Irish journalism - its self-hatred.

There is an unseemly eagerness among certain journalists with so-called ‘elite’ media in Ireland, who rush at every opportunity to condemn any media outlet or journalist who doesn’t fit the Trinity/UCD educated, ex-Trotskyite left/liberal worldview that sees an OECD study as a really hot story as ‘tabloid scum’ or ‘right wing nut’.

When Joe Duffy brings Charlie Bird, who when not sticking a mic in a some bank official’s face courts extracurricular publicity when it suits him, onto Liveline and praises him for being “brave” in coming forward about ‘tabloid intrustion’ — from Ireland on Sunday, for which Duffy is paid to write a weekly column (and still does) — Duffy doesn’t see the danger.

When the Irish Times gives a lukewarm defence brave Barry O’Kelly, the crime correspondent for the Sunday Business Post who is the first Irish journalist in 30 years to be threatened with prison for having the balls to refuse to reveal his sources, it doesn’t see the danger either.

What’s the danger? In Ireland, a country with a fragile democratic veneer, the media are saddled with the memory of past limitations — governments deciding to impose decades of bizarre and ultimately self-defeating censorship on media, major newspaper that was the organ of the dominant political party, defamation laws that intimidate journalists.

To so readily condemn fellow journalists as being too low-brow or too right-wing to deserve the protection of a free press, is to invite Joe O’Toole (head of trade unions who therefore gets to be a Senator - another argument for another day) to label a newspaper column ‘hate speech’ and call for Kevin Myers to not just resign, but be arrested for ‘incitement to hatred’.

You may be offended by Myers’ column, but is it really the same as painting a swastika on a synagogue? This utter lack of moral perspective is an invitation to authoritarianism, thanks to weak-kneed self-hating Irish journalists. It gives elements within the Irish government what they want — more excuses to pervert ‘free press’ into dirty words like ‘tabloid intrusion’ and ‘incitment to hatred’.

UPDATE: Seamus Dooley, NUJ head and supposed protector of journalists, leading the condemnations of Myers on Today FM’s The Last Word. Nice one.

UPDATE 2: Tomorrow’s Irish Times to carry statement from Geraldine Kennedy on subject, says Today FM.