Kevin Myers – ‘a Taxi driver with a lap-top’

Today we salute Kevin Myers, possibly the greatest mong on the island of Ireland. And Lord knows, there’s quite some competition…


The Irish Times has carried yet another turgid rant from Supertroll Kevin Myers – again disgracing the pages where Flann O’Brien once wrote. Having previously insulted just about every ethnic, religious and secular group in the country, Supertroll has turned his attentions to unmarried mothers. Or, as he so delightfully puts it ‘MoB’s’ – Mothers of Bastards.
Copyright laws prohibit me from copying the complete text of the article, but I’ll give you just this small sample of Supertroll’s latest discharge:
“Even as things stand, we are bribing the unmotivated, the confused, the backward, the lazy into making the worst career decision of their young lives, and becoming professional unmarried mothers, living off the State until the grave takes over. Our welfare system is creating benefits-addicted, fatherless families who will be raised in a culture of personal and economic apathy – and from such warped timber, true masts are seldom hewn.”
Bastard indeed
Where to begin? Well let’s seeeeeeeeee. Ok, how about the choice of the word ‘lazy’ to describe single mothers. Well, Kevin dear, my sister is a single mother.
Allow me to paint you a little picture: She rises at about six in the morning. She makes breakfast for her two children. Whilst they eat she makes their lunches. She gets them to school. Then she goes to work for five hours. After that she comes home, cleans the house and tries to find two hours to work on her writing (she’s a published writer) after which she cooks dinner for her two kids. When she’s done with that she attends an AA meeting. Then she comes home, helps the kids with their homework, cleans again, helps with more homework, gets the kids to bed and collapses into bed to try to sleep over the sound of the gang-warfare and screaming outrside her northside Dublin council house window.
A lazy bastard no less?
How dare you describe her as lazy, you feckless, talentless hack. She does three times the work that you ever will and recieves no help from the Government or the useless scumbag that she had the misfortune to marry. Yes, the same scumbag that the Irish judicial system seems to have gone out of it’s way to protect.
Fatherless Kevin? You’re damned right those children are fatherless. Frankly, I would rather see them recieving the parenting you so desperately lament from Osama Bin Laden than from a father that doesn’t care for them.
Or perhaps Kevin, it hadn’t entered that cabbage on your shoulders that sometimes a mother is single by choice?
Backward? Are you for real? Your medieval, McCarthy-like witch-hunt rant has betrayed you as the only one in this exchange who can truly be described as backward.
Apathy Kevin? You speak of apathy? Not a day goes by when I don’t marvel at the staggering levels of energy which my sister throws into raising her kids and which she lavishes into helping those less fortunate than herself through her work (she works in the back to work schemes you laugh at) and in AA.
Let me ask you….
Let me ask you Kevin – were you bullied as a boy? Did Mommy not hug you enough? Did Daddy fuck you in the ass with a rolled up tricolour? Did a single-mother tie you up during a particularly wild college scat-game and shit down your gullet? Just what happened to turn you into such a vile, insensitive human being?
Or perhaps I should just stop wasting my time asking you questions (the courtesy you extend to no-one) and just see you for what you are: a tired, old, pathetic crank whose time has passed.
Or perhaps even better still I should see you simply as a colleague (oh yes, by the way, we’ve been discussing you over lunch Kevin, and everyone, to a man, thinks you are a joke) just described you – ‘a taxi-driver with a laptop’.
More:
Bastardgate – the awful truth
I, mother of bastards

damien
Damien DeBarra was born in the late 20th century and grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He now lives in London, England where he shares a house with four laptops, three bikes and a large collection of chairs.

13 comments

  1. Hey he could be a subject for The Guardian’s competition :
    “…..we are inviting readers to write a biographical sketch, in 3,000 words, of a public figure, past or present, whose life and work illuminates the social and political challenges of the times we live in. The winning essay will be published in the Guardian Saturday Review and its author awarded £3,000.”
    More details at;
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/benpimlottprize
    Jen 🙂

  2. Well put. The man seems to be doing his level best to string out a career as the Irish Robert Kilroy-Silk (minus the popularity).

  3. I don’t generally read editorials in newpapers so I didn’t get to read this one. Perhaps I’ll dig it out of the pile at home.
    From the bit you’ve posted I think you’re jumping to conclusions. He says lazy people are being ‘tricked’ into becoming single mothers. This does not mean he’s saying all single mothers are lazy…
    Anyway, more fiery rants please !

  4. well, Myers certainly succeeded in getting a rise out of people. Which, I suppose, is what he’s paid for.

  5. http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1335870&issue_id=12055
    Irish Times ‘very, very sorry’ over slur on unmarried mums
    THE Irish Times admits today that it is “very, very sorry” for the offence caused by controversial references to unmarried mothers in the newspaper’s Irishman’s Diary column.
    A banner headline on Page One of the paper saying “I am very, very sorry” and referring the reader to ‘An Irishman’s Diary’ inside sets the tone for its apology.
    http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1335870&issue_id=12055

  6. Hey there all. An Armagh fool signing in. Just discovered this site and I quite like it. I wrote a song about Kevin Myers not so long ago. It’s inspired by one he wrote and is meant to be sung in the style of Camptown Races. It’s meant to read as an attack on his colossal hypocrisy, and not as a pro-IRA song (great rant by the way, Damien especially the bit about his da and the tricolour):
    Song for Kevin Myers (What About the IRA?)
    Who cheered on the Baghdad scorch?
    I did. I did.
    Shock and Awe it lit my torch,
    Go USA!
    Who likes bombs on Arab heads?
    I do. I do.
    Mothers, children ripped to shreds,
    But what about the IRA?
    Chorus: I drench my page with bloody ink,
    Filthy words all the way,
    Raise a glass as the bodies start to stink,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who says it’s fab to shoot a Prisoner of War?
    I do. I do.
    Splatter that mosque with brains and gore,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who creamed his pants when Iraqis smashed like eggs?
    I did. I did.
    Now they have no arms and they have no legs,
    But what about the IRA?
    Chorus: Now lets all bomb Iran,
    Turn life into decay,
    Sizzle Arabs in the pan,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who screamed that Guantanamo proves your sin?
    I did. I did.
    They’re all fucking terrorists by the colour of their skin,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who whips up fears about the Muslims here?
    I do. I do.
    Saying they’ll kill our women and ban our beer,
    But what about the IRA?
    Chorus: Who kicked the gypos into touch?
    No caravans on display,
    Filthy beggars want too much,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who supports the Cheney cause?
    I do. I do.
    Any lie he tells gets my applause,
    But what about the IRA?
    Who opposes violence then preaches might?
    I do. I do.
    Murder’s wrong except when it’s right,
    But what about the IRA?
    Chorus: I’ve never walked on the knife,
    Been on the sidelines all my day,
    Avoided war all my life,
    Just wrote about the IRA.

  7. I see he’s saying that his comments shouldn’t have caused such a fuss because he’s not Mitchel McLaughlin. Greatest case of whataboutery I’ve ever heard. Hats off to him.

  8. Hmm, generalisations at dawn. Osama might make quite a good father, his political ideologies notwithstanding.

  9. Myers original article was written in an insulting and derogatory tone, however there is real substance to the debate regarding the massive state subsidies given to single parent families which unfortunately Myers rant has largely silenced (sadly, thats his worst crime). Unforutnately writing most insulting and derogatory articles isn’t really helpful.
    The problem remains is that one lone parent may be getting a top class third level education on a back to education scheme and cash payments up to 400 euros a week plus council housing, while her (or his as it sometimes is) neighbour may be working her/his butt off for the same net figure (or less) and nothing towards rent/mortgage. The problem is that a lone parent who works is entitled to very little and is likely to be much worse off than the lone parent who doesn’t (or won’t). The whole point unfortunately has been lost due to a flurry of incidendary attacks on that nasty way in which Myers wrote.

  10. Nice article but no offence nobody cares about your sister and it is just about what is best, Kevin had some valid arguments but it is just that we tend to confuse benefit scroungers with women who see no other role for them than a mother… insightful article though

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