I was in Claremorris a week ago saying a few words at the opening of the annual Claremorris Open Exhibition, a community-inspired art event with global ambitions, entitled "Speak to Me", writes John Waters.
The idea is to invite leading artists to submit works which are exhibited at various locations in the town - shops, an alleyway, the library, the town hall. For its three-week run the exhibition will, in a sense, subvert the smallness of Claremorris by pushing the boundaries of what is thought of as everyday.
One exhibit, for example, is "Knock Knock", a startling piece by Mick O'Shea, which has blow-up latex figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary being prodded at precise intervals by a mechanical contraption. Not long ago, such an exhibit would have created ructions on a national basis, causing devout citizens to take turns to recite decades of the Rosary outside Mr Fix It's shop on Mount Street. Nowadays nobody bats an eyelid, because people have a sense that one of the "purposes" of art is to stretch perception, to challenge and undermine the clichéd and restrictive ways a public language can set limits on the interior, personal voices.
I've been wondering if Mr Enda Kenny perhaps had the misfortune to stop off at Claremorris on his way to Dublin, in advance of making a speech that left him open to a journalistic mauling the weekend before last. Perhaps Mr Kenny, intoxicated by the artistic and intellectual breadth of the works on display, got carried away with the idea that freedom of expression is still permissible. In front of journalists, he told a fairly unexceptionable story involving use of the word "nigger".
The anecdote concerned an incident in Portugal some years ago in which a Moroccan barman, in the hearing of Mr Kenny and two other Fine Gael politicians, described the late Mr Patrice Lumumba as a "nigger".
As a result, Mr Kenny was subjected to an outpouring of sanctity in the Sunday newspapers. Was he a racist? Had he expressed racist views? If not, he had at least "cheapened the debate" about racism, by using an "abusive racial epithet". Various worthies from the anti-racism industry were trotted out to tut-tut, and Mr Kenny himself was quoted as abjectly apologising for any offence he had caused. There was much fretting about whether, in a "multicultural society" Mr Kenny made a suitable taoiseach-in-waiting. One commentator described Mr Kenny as "a stupid man who should resign but won't".
It is difficult to divine from the reporting what the precise intention or meaning of Mr Kenny's anecdote may have been, but I gather it had something to do with the irony of one black man describing another as a "nigger". Perhaps Mr Kenny was making some point about the naivety of himself and the couple of political chums who were with him at the time. Perhaps his point had to do with the pointedness of the Moroccan's irony in saying this in front of three white Europeans. I don't know, because the reportage of the episode was so intent on screwing Enda Kenny for the crime of uttering a six-letter word that it did no more than sketch in the context in the rush to nail its victim. Perhaps the anecdote was entirely pointless, rendering Mr Kenny open to the charge that he is a purveyor of pointless stories, a serious matter but not as serious as racism.
THERE is stupidity to be found in this episode but it does not reside with Enda Kenny. For here we have a journalism which seeks to construct a story where there is none by pretending a level of stupidity way in excess of what it is possible for any reasonably educated or sophisticated adult to exhibit. We live in a society which claims an interest in openness and tolerance, with journalism claiming for itself a large part of the credit for nurturing these qualities.
Journalists would be the first to pour ridicule on anyone who objected to Mick O'Shea's installation in Claremorris. And yet, such journalists, who in one arena would arrogate to themselves the right to push boundaries in multiple directions, in another insist they have the right to ban outright the use of a particular word, regardless of context - to say, "in future no adult shall utter this word, under any circumstances, without inviting serious consequences".
Surely, if it was wrong of Mr Kenny to use the word in relating his anecdote, it was equally wrong of journalists to use the word in reporting the story? To call this political correctness would be a gross understatement. It is small-town gobshitery of the lowest order. It is also far closer to racism than Mr Kenny's anecdote, for it ascribes to black people a level of intelligence so low as to render them incapable of distinguishing real racism when it occurs.
What next? A ban on all books, records, films and TV programmes in which the word "nigger" is used? A prohibition on references to culchies, Paddies, Micks, Prods, Kerrymen, pygmies and mothers-in-law? Or perhaps we should just have a ban on the use of the word "infantile" so such journalism can no longer be named for what it is.
jwaters@irish-times.ie