The DUP has long had a problem with women. Was it a dream I had, or did DUP party members make mooing sounds when members of the Women’s Coalition stood up to speak? You might want to argue that the DUP did make a woman – Arlene Foster – the party leader; but it also dumped her suddenly and brutally. Although that may have been because she was considered an ineffective leader than that she was a woman.
No such ambiguity with the former DUP councillor John Carson. Some time back, he posted a tweet that Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin First-Minister-in-waiting, would be “put back in her kennel” by, I think, Edwin Poots. A judge has just ruled that Carson’s post didn’t amount to libel, since it wouldn’t decrease Michelle’s standing in the eyes of colleagues or the wider world.
He got that one right. It was the old case of the remark telling us more about the speaker than the person at whom his insult was aimed. Is there a single republican or nationalist who will think less of Michelle O’Neill because of Mr Carson’s post? (Sudden thought: Is there a Mrs Carson, I wonder? And if so, what does she think of her hubby’s way of talking?)
But let’s be fair – John Carson isn’t unique. As I mentioned, the DUP once (allegedly) went into paroxysms of hooting and mooing at the sight of a Women’s Coalition member speaking. And to be more up-to-date, it’s only a couple of weeks since Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister in Israel, referred to the Palestinian fighters as “human animals” and urged the IDF to launch even more missile strikes against a defenceless Gaza.
Mr Gallant and Mr Carson: two very different men in very different circumstances. But both intent on using animal imagery against their opponents. First de-humanise your enemy, and then call for bombs to be dropped on them or at least for them to shoved in a kennel. Take a bow, John Carson. You’re in good company and you’ve reminded us of how some in the DUP see republicans and what they’d like done with them.
And they say that everyone should be nicer to unionist politicians….
Well said Jude !
Hope this buffoon is never confused with a previous councillor,John Collins (UUP) an absolutely gentleman it seems who welcomed the first elected SF councillors to BCC and showed them the ropes.