THE MARTYRDOM OF KEVIN MYERS by Donal Kennedy

I’m bemused by Joe Horgan’s sympathy for Kevin Myers, whose paid services at the Sunday Times have been discontinued. Mr Myers is seventy years old. In December 2006 at the age of 65 my employers terminated my employment.  It seems to me that the Sunday Times was very kind to Mr Myers in keeping him on their payroll well beyond the time allowed to mere mortals.                                                                                          I’m even more bemused by  the speed with which the Sunday Times dissociated itself from the begrudgery, misogyny and anti-semitic tone of Mr Myers’ comments. Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz appear to be beneficiaries of a sense of chivalry  which was never previously suspected of that paper.

Take the case of Carmen Proetta,, a blameless and respectable married woman, who was washing dishes in her Gibraltar home, when, looking out her window she witnessed the calculated shooting dead of an unarmed and unthreatening person just outside. She told what she saw and was then was  assailed by posses of British papers, led by  the Sunday Times and  its  stablemate The Sun, owned then, as now, by Rupert Murdoch..Mrs Proetta was called a liar, a tart and a prostitute, and her equally innocent husband a sleazy drug dealer. Ms Winkleman and Feltz were relatively gently treated by Kevin Myers. But, to be frank, I would be surprised if, in all his commentary on current affairs and history, Kevin Myers wrote a syllable in defence of Mrs Proetta’s character.                      Carmen Proetta had witnessed the extrajudicial, execution of an IRA volunteer, at the orders of the British Government and the Sunday Times and it’s collaborators were acting in a accordance with that government’s approval, if not at its direction. ThamesTelevision, whose report “Death On The Rock” earned its disapproval, had its licence revoked shortly thereafter at Government direction.   It would be remiss of me not to mention that Kevin Myers has earned the praise and sterling support of right wing journals in Britain and has in Ireland championed a discredited charlatan, the late Professor Peter Hart, whose central witness was apparently contacted through a medium, as the “witness”had died some time before his alleged interview, had been incapable of conversation for even more time, and had left neither written nor other record to support Hart’s thesis.