No, no, no: it will not do. Silence would have been my enduring portion on the Roy Keane affair, just so long as we were not treated to accusations that Roy Keane is a victim of anti-Irish racism. Now these have surfaced, both from Eamon Dunphy on RTÉ television, and our own Tom Humphries in this newspaper last Monday.
I admire Tom enormously. His mastery of a vast range of sports is unrivalled not merely in this country but, I should think, in the entire English speaking world. One of these days, I fully expect to see him pen a few thousand effortlessly wondrous words about underwater lacrosse finals in Chad or ladies' Sumo wrestling in Saudi. He is a brilliant writer whose ever-fertile wit and imagery make him one of the great stylists writing in any newspaper anywhere.
But that said, Tom, your presentation of Roy as a victim of racism holds water only if you go along with the politically correct pieties of those fools in the British Commission for Racial Equality who recently said that it was racist for a Scotsman to refer to someone as "an English prat". But no-one has said even anything remotely like that about Roy, that I know of. Indeed, perhaps the most striking feature of the British coverage of the Roy Keane affair is its absence of references to his "Irish temper". If anything, virtually all criticisms have been combined with admiration - and not just of Roy Keane. Throughout the World Cup, the British media loyally backed the Irish soccer team.
Punch cartoons
This is what Tom Humphries said on Monday about British coverage of the Roy Keane affair: "Keane has been portrayed as one of those raging, ape-like figures used to depict Irish people in Punch cartoons in the 19th century. . .So he's a mad Irish ape, who has written more books than he's read. He's Osama Bin Keano. He's a roughneck Eliza Doolittle who can't appreciate what the Henry Higgins that is Manchester United has given him.
"The Daily Telegraph thinks he should be made face the widely admired British justice system. And Des Lynam thinks it's a terrible thing little kids should be seeing Roy Keane on telly."
Just where was Roy Keane portrayed as mad Irish ape? Where as Osama bin Laden? Where as an Eliza Doolittle who can't appreciate what Manchester United has done for him? Why is it so wrong for the Daily Telegraph - the first British broadsheet, by the way, to campaign for the release of the Birmingham Six - to demand that a footballer face the rule of law? (And widely admired or not as British justice might be, on this side of the Irish Sea we share our glasshouse with Nicky Kelly and the fair county of Donegal.)
Self-pitying sensitivity
And why is Desmond Lynam - who is from Ennis - so wrong to say that children shouldn't see Roy Keane on television, when he's clearly referring to Keane's violent deeds? In all truth, I thought we'd left this self-pitying "racism" sensitivity utterly behind us. Just because an Irish person is criticised in the British press these days, it certainly doesn't mean the press is racist. If some of the terminology might get a little slack, that's probably because not every journalist has the command of language or the sophistication of judgment of Tom Humphries.
I wouldn't normally publicly disagree with a journalist whom I admire so much if I didn't feel that the "racism" term, like that other argument-clincher "patronising", is one that comes too readily to hand, and is too easily used to end an argument. "That is a deeply racist remark," is a rhetorical checkmate which requires no proof and from which there is no recovery. "Deeply patronising": the same goes.
Irish racism-sensitivity should long ago have vanished, not least because our newspaper headlines so freely talk about English lager louts and shamelessly identify the national identity of an Englishman accused of rape. Yet on reflection, I can imagine the outcry here if British newspaper headlines screamed about "Irishman Accused of Rape" or "Drunken Irish Soccer Thugs". This week the Times of London carried a feature about the attitude of eminent people in Britain towards British membership of the euro. Leading the Yes campaign was Niall Fitzgerald. Leading the No campaign was Bob Geldof. Both men are Irish-born Irish nationals, though the Times didn't think to mention it. Can you imagine the response in Ireland if two Englishmen had led the debate in this country about whether or not we should join the euro? So, national sensibilities clearly remain very different. Nonetheless, "racism" is too pat an accusation to bring to the Keane affair. He has not been a victim of racism. Though to be sure, the tabloid reportage might well have been maladroit, malicious, misinformed, mendacious, or possessed any other alliteratively alluring quality; yet this should not surprise us.
David Beckham
For did not the same illustrious organs mercilessly pillory David Beckham after his dismissal against Argentina four years ago ended England's World Cup hopes? And what English manager in the past 30 years has not been hounded out of his job and almost into his grave by those same ghoulish tabloids? They're not newspapers: they're The Night of the Living Dead.
And Tom, as for your satirical mock-tabloid observation that Roy Keane has "written more books than he's read", he didn't actually write his "autobiography". The real tragedy for Roy Keane is that you didn't write it either. If you had, it would have been a far better book, and he wouldn't be in half the pickle that he's in today.