Madam, - I read Kevin Myers' Irishman's Diary of February 12th twice to ensure I understood what he was saying. I have two short points to make. First, I have worked in the voluntary sector for a long time. During a stint working with a women's group in a south Dublin housing estate, a number of women had no thought whatsoever for the fathers of their child or children. One woman had four children. They were better versed than I in what payments were available and how to get them. They were all housed by the local council.
This is a problem that needs serious examination. Regrettably, a clumsy and hurtful article by Mr Myers has fudged the issue.
This brings me to my second point: Mr Myers will never be fortunate enough to experience the joy and happiness that the "bastard" placed with our family at age four, now in his twenties and a treasured member of our family, has brought to us, our extended family and our friends. Happily he was unable to read Mr Myers' article, nor would he have understood the offensive term used to describe him. He has a moderate intellectual disability and he is an upstanding member of our community. - Yours, etc.,
PAT WHELAN, Grangewood, Dublin 16.
Madam, - It is my assessment that intense reactions such as that to Kevin Myers' column on young single mothers is often symptomatic of something deep in our own psychology. In this case, I believe it to be guilt and embarrassment.
We know in our heart of hearts that we have a problem - a social and moral problem - but are unable to address it. In addition to the immense practical difficulties, we have socially imposed inhibitions against even talking about the subject plainly and openly. Mr Myers's language was gratuitously offensive and that very offence gave us a way out of our deadlock. In our guilt and embarrassment, we lashed out wherever we could and his use of language presented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how virtuous we are.
The more we pummelled Mr Myers the better we felt about ourselves and the easier it was to suppress the substance of his argument. A classic case of shooting the messenger. - Yours, etc.,
Dr NORMAN STEWART, Seapark, Malahide, Co Dublin.
Madam, - A facile argument has featured on your pages recently, with some correspondents maintaining that Kevin Myers has reinvigorated a "debate" on single parenthood.
Now, I can pull a gun out of my pocket and shoot someone, and I might well ignite a "debate" on my state of mind, the availability of guns in society, the lack of effective sanctions against violent crime, etc. So that's all right then?
The potential for brutality of Kevin Myers' oeuvre isn't accidental - the result of a momentary rush of blood; it's structural. In contrast to most other columnists in your paper, you can usually boil a Myers column down to a single paragraph, in terms of the content of the argument. The modus operandi is to construct a straw man and attack it, with most of the column acreage sometimes witty, often merely acerbic, verbiage. It helps, of course, that he is mystifyingly obliged to fill far more space per week than anyone else.
When you give a self-styled iconoclast that much rope, he'll eventually hang himself. - Yours, etc.,
DARA FOX, Cooley Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12.
Madam, - I think Fintan O'Toole (Opinion, February 15th) has it exactly right. Labelling and name-calling is a way of dehumanising your targets and therefore taking their voice out of the debate. It is a very cowardly action and certainly not a tactic to be used by someone who seems to think of himself as a courageous and outspoken soldier against "political correctness". - Yours, etc.,
JANET BURKE, Elmhurst, Illinois, USA.