Sir , – I find it impossible to believe that Kevin Myers of all people is guilty of anti-semitism ("Sunday Times drops Kevin Myers and apologises for offensive article", Business, July 31st).
No one in the Republic of Ireland has written more passionately and eloquently than he has done of the sacrifice of Irish men and women in the fight against Nazi Germany in the second World War, and at a time when it was profoundly unfashionable for him to do so.
He has made an error of judgment, to be sure, but I have yet to hear any words from him in his own defence.
Perhaps he assumed that he was immune from any criticism of anti-semitism.
Perhaps his anger at the obscene salaries paid out by the BBC to mere newsreaders (as to mere football players) got the better of him as he wrote to a deadline late at night.
I do not know. But we must beware of the rush to judgment. And we need to cherish those like Kevin Myers who have spoken out when lesser journalists have been afraid to do so. – Yours, etc,
Dr GERALD MORGAN,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – What is disconcerting about the furore over the recent Kevin Myers opinion piece in the Sunday Times, is that the disgust and concomitant media attention appears only to have been directed at the anti-semitism within the article, when in fact the vitriol extends much further.
Myers’s presumption of the indifference of women for other women in lower skilled jobs is alarming, not least because of his total ignorance in understanding that the equal pay movement is “equal pay for equal work”.
His insidious assertions from “The human resources department”, which would apparently back his claims that men work harder and are sick less, are sourceless and seem to be based on nothing more than flagrant misogyny.
Perhaps most damaging to the work of equality, and to families in general, is his thinly veiled derision papered over with lacklustre irony, in the statement of superiority; men “seldom get pregnant’.
A damning article, yes anti-Semitic, but let us not elide the misogyny; too often religion masks what is underneath, a human issue.
Fifty one per cent of the population wish Mr Myers well on his job hunt . – Yours, etc,
LAURA DALY,
Stillorgan,
Co Dublin.