It's Kevin Myers who is the bastard

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Wednesday February 09, 2005 10:56 by Michael Hennigan - Finfacts.com

In Tuesday's 'An Irishman's Diary' in the Irish Times, Kevin Myers wrote of single parents milking the welfare system and repeatedly used the term 'bastards' for their children.

The use of an outdated perjoritive term for children who in times past were termed to have been 'born out of wedlock,' shows what an insensitive bastard the Irish Times has in its midst.

Some years ago, when I had adopted my own two children, I was told of a story from a town in the 1960's west of Ireland.

A local woman had adopted a baby and one Sunday after mass, a neighbour approached her and said:

'How could you leave a stranger's child into your house?'

It was of course a time when an 'illegitimate' child was termed a bastard. Even when a person who had been adopted, reached adulthood, the craw-thumpers and breast-beaters whispered about their origins.

Kevin Myers is old enough to know that when he uses the term 'mothers of bastards,' he is using the word as the word 'nigger' was used in the past - to imply an inferior status.

Recently, Myers' former editor Conor Brady brought him to task for amnesia on his past positions on the peace process. He appears to be at a stage where he is like an old pub bore searching for a subject to show that he still has relevance. It's time for columnists like him to be put out to grass and make time limits the norm. There are very few columnists who can maintain a long shelf life at the top of their game.

Fintan O'Toole is one, because his columns often reflect his background work on a subject rather than shooting from the hip. George Will of the Washington Post and the late Hugo Young of the Guardian also come to mind.