To Cork, to give a reflection at a small ceremony at the Aula Maxima of UCC in memory of the 40 staff and students who died in the Great War.
Brian Bermingham and his small voluntary committee put together a short, simple and moving recital of music and poetry.
The emotions they evoked proved once again that even at a distance of over 100 years, the First World War can still prompt what the poet Wordsworth called “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.
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The great songs A Long Way to Tipperary and Waltzing Matilda recalled photographs of the Munster Fusiliers waving from trains at what is now Kent Station, as well as sombre thoughts of the slaughter at Gallipoli.
Even more evocative were the popular songs of the period, On Moonlight Bay and Sweet Sixteen, which proved the truth of Noel Coward’s cry: “Ah, the potency of cheap music.”
During the recital my thoughts turned to Kevin Myers who, more than anyone, is responsible for returning the officially forgotten Irish dead of the Great War to the bosom of their own people.
Kevin Myers was also mainly responsible for our recovered memory of the Protestant victims of the IRA during the War of Independence and Civil War.
For both of these acts of good authority he was never forgiven by the snot-green nationalists who formed a savage Twitter mob to shred his reputation when he ran into trouble two years ago.
RTE played a sordid role in that squalid affair by wrongly branding Myers as a Holocaust denier, a defamation for which it paid dearly – with our money – in a recent settlement.
That is why, last Wednesday, I stared in disbelief at a tweet from Jon Williams, head of RTE News, approvingly referring to a defensive piece by the BBC’s head of news in relation to its coverage of the general election.
Williams wrote: “A piece to disappoint the conspiracy theorists on both sides of the Irish Sea. News organisations like #BBC and #RTE try hard to get it right. Sometimes we fail. But cock-up, not conspiracy.”
The word “cock-up” conjures up an image of an inadvertent one-off mistake. But RTE did not opt for that defence – admit an appalling error and save us money by eating humble pie. Instead it brazenly defended its defamation over two years.
The Jon Williams Twitter account is headed “RTE News and Current Affairs” with the logo “Truth Matters”. How does that square with RTE’s determined distortion of what Myers wrote?
I say determined because RTE’s depiction of Myers was sustained across many programmes in the month that followed the defamatory Morning Ireland broadcast – despite the Jewish Council of Ireland defending him.
Myers’ legal team had to put RTE through the wringer for nearly two and a half years before RTE finally had to acknowledge its case was untenable.
Even then RTE did not do the decent thing. The apology was read on the morning of the four by-elections – and thus buried – and to my knowledge was not reported on any RTE News bulletin.
As is usual in RTE, no senior manager will be sacked for this travesty of “public-service broadcasting”, not just in relation to the defamation on Morning Ireland but also for the month thereafter when programme after programme lynched him.
In this they were aided and abetted by his former colleagues at The Irish Times – which failed to report the RTE apology.
Indeed, with the honourable exception of Patsy McGarry, one of the most despicable aspects of this ugly affair was the speed with which former colleagues of Myers at The Irish Times formed a media mob to kick him when he was down – a scene reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s polished shoes kicking a poor devil to death on the ground in Goodfellas.
Why the rabid reaction? Some of it was jealousy of Myers’ great talent. But mostly it was dislike of his conservative politics, there being nothing more intolerant in my experience than a liberal mob.
RTE’s refusal to seek an early settlement is more complex. But my brother, former councillor Joe Harris, cut to the chase in a text to me at the time.
Joe wrote: “Hit job. They destroyed him. Why? Because he told the truth on republican violence.”
Like Joe, I believe RTE’s obsessive refusal to issue an immediate apology to Myers, even after it knew he had been wronged, had nothing to do with a cock-up and everything to do with the political culture of Montrose.
Historically, RTE has been reflexively hostile to the pluralist and anti-Provo politics represented by me and Kevin Myers.
Jon Williams should be free of this, having spent most of his professional life in the UK, but he has a duty to interrogate the political culture he has inherited.
He should ask his staff why last Thursday’s Six One news carried a report on the Children’s Hospital which featured not one but two members of Sinn Fein – and no member of Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
******
Let me turn with relief from RTE’s peculiar notion of public-service broadcasting to plug four books as Christmas presents which I read myself with pleasure and that I am certain will please the men and women you love.
Two Souls by Henry McDonald is the book I would give to those who enjoy reading Declan Lynch, and not just because it’s set against the background of the 1979 Irish Cup Final, between mostly Catholic Cliftonville and mostly Protestant Portadown.
At heart, Two Souls is a love story – Sabine is one of the most enigmatic and engrossing women I’ve come across in fiction, woven into a wider Faustian struggle for a man’s political soul.
Friends who read it waxed lyrical about the David Bowie songs and the total recall of the punk scene. But what I loved most was the black Belfast comedy. Like Robin McLiam Wilson, I found this novel scabrously funny.
The Curious History of Irish Dogs by David Blake Knox is already a classic.
Being a dog lover still in mourning for Posy, I could not put it down. Spoiler alert: this book is not just about dogs but also about Irish history, politics, culture and the people whose love of dogs helps build bridges between the peoples of these islands. The author rightly regards the central figure of his book, the Irish Wolfhound, as “a fitting symbol of the Irish people”.
The Irish Wolfhound is a pluralist. President Michael D Higgins was greeted at Windsor Castle by Domhnall the Wolfhound, mascot of the Irish Guards; another is mascot of the 3rd Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army, another of the Royal Irish Regiment, recruited in Northern Ireland.
Collected Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, introduced by John Banville, adds more lustre to one of my favourite writers who in her life, as Banville acutely noted in a review, “learned the Irish Protestant trick of determinedly not noticing the most dreadful events”. But luckily not when writing stories.
Finally, for those who love Ireland’s flora and fauna, including the human ones, don’t miss Lay of the Land by Fiona O’Connell, drawn from her columns in the Sunday Independent.
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Eoghan Harris: 'Kevin Myers – one more victim of the toxic flash mobs on Twitter'
Eoghan Harris: 'Kevin Myers – one more victim of the toxic flash mobs on Twitter'
To Cork, to give a reflection at a small ceremony at the Aula Maxima of UCC in memory of the 40 staff and students who died in the Great War.
Brian Bermingham and his small voluntary committee put together a short, simple and moving recital of music and poetry.
The emotions they evoked proved once again that even at a distance of over 100 years, the First World War can still prompt what the poet Wordsworth called “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
The great songs A Long Way to Tipperary and Waltzing Matilda recalled photographs of the Munster Fusiliers waving from trains at what is now Kent Station, as well as sombre thoughts of the slaughter at Gallipoli.
Even more evocative were the popular songs of the period, On Moonlight Bay and Sweet Sixteen, which proved the truth of Noel Coward’s cry: “Ah, the potency of cheap music.”
During the recital my thoughts turned to Kevin Myers who, more than anyone, is responsible for returning the officially forgotten Irish dead of the Great War to the bosom of their own people.
Kevin Myers was also mainly responsible for our recovered memory of the Protestant victims of the IRA during the War of Independence and Civil War.
For both of these acts of good authority he was never forgiven by the snot-green nationalists who formed a savage Twitter mob to shred his reputation when he ran into trouble two years ago.
RTE played a sordid role in that squalid affair by wrongly branding Myers as a Holocaust denier, a defamation for which it paid dearly – with our money – in a recent settlement.
That is why, last Wednesday, I stared in disbelief at a tweet from Jon Williams, head of RTE News, approvingly referring to a defensive piece by the BBC’s head of news in relation to its coverage of the general election.
Williams wrote: “A piece to disappoint the conspiracy theorists on both sides of the Irish Sea. News organisations like #BBC and #RTE try hard to get it right. Sometimes we fail. But cock-up, not conspiracy.”
The word “cock-up” conjures up an image of an inadvertent one-off mistake. But RTE did not opt for that defence – admit an appalling error and save us money by eating humble pie. Instead it brazenly defended its defamation over two years.
The Jon Williams Twitter account is headed “RTE News and Current Affairs” with the logo “Truth Matters”. How does that square with RTE’s determined distortion of what Myers wrote?
I say determined because RTE’s depiction of Myers was sustained across many programmes in the month that followed the defamatory Morning Ireland broadcast – despite the Jewish Council of Ireland defending him.
Myers’ legal team had to put RTE through the wringer for nearly two and a half years before RTE finally had to acknowledge its case was untenable.
Even then RTE did not do the decent thing. The apology was read on the morning of the four by-elections – and thus buried – and to my knowledge was not reported on any RTE News bulletin.
As is usual in RTE, no senior manager will be sacked for this travesty of “public-service broadcasting”, not just in relation to the defamation on Morning Ireland but also for the month thereafter when programme after programme lynched him.
In this they were aided and abetted by his former colleagues at The Irish Times – which failed to report the RTE apology.
Indeed, with the honourable exception of Patsy McGarry, one of the most despicable aspects of this ugly affair was the speed with which former colleagues of Myers at The Irish Times formed a media mob to kick him when he was down – a scene reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s polished shoes kicking a poor devil to death on the ground in Goodfellas.
Why the rabid reaction? Some of it was jealousy of Myers’ great talent. But mostly it was dislike of his conservative politics, there being nothing more intolerant in my experience than a liberal mob.
RTE’s refusal to seek an early settlement is more complex. But my brother, former councillor Joe Harris, cut to the chase in a text to me at the time.
Joe wrote: “Hit job. They destroyed him. Why? Because he told the truth on republican violence.”
Like Joe, I believe RTE’s obsessive refusal to issue an immediate apology to Myers, even after it knew he had been wronged, had nothing to do with a cock-up and everything to do with the political culture of Montrose.
Historically, RTE has been reflexively hostile to the pluralist and anti-Provo politics represented by me and Kevin Myers.
Jon Williams should be free of this, having spent most of his professional life in the UK, but he has a duty to interrogate the political culture he has inherited.
He should ask his staff why last Thursday’s Six One news carried a report on the Children’s Hospital which featured not one but two members of Sinn Fein – and no member of Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
******
Let me turn with relief from RTE’s peculiar notion of public-service broadcasting to plug four books as Christmas presents which I read myself with pleasure and that I am certain will please the men and women you love.
Two Souls by Henry McDonald is the book I would give to those who enjoy reading Declan Lynch, and not just because it’s set against the background of the 1979 Irish Cup Final, between mostly Catholic Cliftonville and mostly Protestant Portadown.
At heart, Two Souls is a love story – Sabine is one of the most enigmatic and engrossing women I’ve come across in fiction, woven into a wider Faustian struggle for a man’s political soul.
Friends who read it waxed lyrical about the David Bowie songs and the total recall of the punk scene. But what I loved most was the black Belfast comedy. Like Robin McLiam Wilson, I found this novel scabrously funny.
The Curious History of Irish Dogs by David Blake Knox is already a classic.
Being a dog lover still in mourning for Posy, I could not put it down. Spoiler alert: this book is not just about dogs but also about Irish history, politics, culture and the people whose love of dogs helps build bridges between the peoples of these islands. The author rightly regards the central figure of his book, the Irish Wolfhound, as “a fitting symbol of the Irish people”.
The Irish Wolfhound is a pluralist. President Michael D Higgins was greeted at Windsor Castle by Domhnall the Wolfhound, mascot of the Irish Guards; another is mascot of the 3rd Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army, another of the Royal Irish Regiment, recruited in Northern Ireland.
Collected Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, introduced by John Banville, adds more lustre to one of my favourite writers who in her life, as Banville acutely noted in a review, “learned the Irish Protestant trick of determinedly not noticing the most dreadful events”. But luckily not when writing stories.
Finally, for those who love Ireland’s flora and fauna, including the human ones, don’t miss Lay of the Land by Fiona O’Connell, drawn from her columns in the Sunday Independent.
Source: Read Full Article