If you read the letter on Monday from cuddly, much loved Senator David Norris which, amid much politically correct froth and frenzy, accused this column of being obnoxious, you might well wonder what monstrosities I had perpetrated. His letter, I admit, was not obnoxious; merely silly, hysterical and inaccurate.
On the one hand, one is on a hiding to nothing taking on David Norris; he is the media pet, Joycean, boatered, yet right-on in every regard, with a perfectly-pitched sanctimony, yeasted with the right amount of wit and victim-hood. And of course, who could fail to admire his tenacity and his courage in almost alone ending the barbarous laws against male homosexual acts. Who would ever take him on? On the other: into the valley of death . . .
Senator Norris: "He [i.e. K.M.] attacks people who got themselves into a fine old lather blaming the west for arming Hussein . . . As one of those people, I refuse to retract a single word . . . Weaponry of all kinds, including the means to manufacture chemical and biological weapons, were made available to Saddam Hussein by the West."
Counterproductive
I know you're a busy man Senator, but you'd probably scribble "Could do very much better," beneath an essay from a student who presented such a dysfunctional, counterproductive argument as that. What I actually said was that both West and East sold Saddam weapons. Yet in his letter the Senator pointed his finger at the West alone, even though Saddam's air force was Soviet-supplied, as were his Scuds, as were his tanks, as were his infantry weapons. So why does the Senator not even manage to mention this in his reply? Why is the West held solely responsible for the evils of the Hussein regime?
"Not only that, but the political opposition was betrayed into his hands so [my italics] that they could be murdered." Leaving aside the singular noun commanding a plural verb - after all, the Senator lectured in literature, not in writing correctly - he uses "so" as a conjunction meaning "in order that". Is that what the West intended? That the opposition be rounded up and murdered? Which not merely makes the West thoroughly evil, but also one of Saddam's best friends. This a) makes all those sanctions and downed Iraqi aircraft rather puzzling, or b) suggests the Senator doesn't understand the role of a conjunction.
That's more than possible. He speaks of my "nonchalance" in opposing the sale of Hawk aircraft parts to Robert Mugabe's air force. Nonchalance? What is nonchalant about the words I used - "vile", "majestically cynical", "wholly wicked"? Is he writing in a dialect of Martian? He adds: "I have consistently opposed such deals for precisely the same reason as I opposed them in East Timor. Then I would, wouldn't I, being a liberal gay critic of certain aspects of American and European foreign policy?"
Relevance
Leaving aside that curious final question-mark, which performs no grammatical duty other than tell us that this former lecturer in TCD doesn't know a subordinate and rhetorically interrogative clause when he writes one, I ask myself: what is relevant about his homosexuality? Why bring that into the sale of Hawks to Zimbabwe? Why can he be relied on to introduce this now thoroughly tedious aspect of his life into almost every conversation - even at a Bosnian solidarity meeting I attended several years ago? A word of advice, Senator: proclaiming your homosexuality at a meeting which is discussing rape-camps and mass-murder is mere attention-seeking self-indulgence.
Misrepresentation
The Senator's letter went on: "Kevin Myers objects to `liberals' resisting Mugabe's mindless and vicious persecution of gay people in Zimbabwe." Tell me, Senator: Were your lectures as complete a farrago of misrepresentation as that single masterpiece of the genre? I do not and did not object to "liberals" resisting Mugabe's "mindless and vicious persecution" - if that is indeed what it is - of homosexuals. Persecutions should always be resisted. What I said - are you attending here, Senator? - was that "it says something about the disordered priorities of the Holland Park Lefties of London that what really disenchanted them . . . wasn't the (corruption) . . . or his £2 million wedding, or his lunatic war a thousand miles away . . . or even his slaughter of the Ndebele in 1982. Nope: what did for Mugabe among the bien-pensant was his dislike of homosexuality."
The Senator says "He [i.e. K. M.] can well-afford to be cavalier about what he light-heartedly describes as Mugabe's "dislike of homosexuals". The Senator clearly has as little regard for the meaning of words such as "cavalier" and "light-heartedly" as he has for grammar. Of his regard for the largely heterosexual people of Matabeleland butchered by Mugabe's troops while he was in public life, I cannot speak, having been unable to find one single condemnation by him. Maybe he would care to enlighten me in my ignorance.
One does not need to be light-hearted or cavalier to see this obvious truth: measured against his numerous sins, Mugabe's dislike of homosexuals - such idiotic phobias are common amongst the pathologically authoritarian - is as nothing compared to the murderous monstrosities he has visited on the peoples of Zimbabwe and the Congo.
Try harder next time, Senator. And most of all, please, please, spare us your sexuality at every bloody turn, all right?