Nothing could be more predictable than the right-on constituents of Righteousland should come leaping out of their corner following the recent criticisms of His Moral Loftiness John Pilger in this column. And sure enough, out they've leapt, flailing around them with much sanctimonious abuse and moral posturing, best typified by the letter from Mary Ryan last Thursday. I am deeply grateful to her for managing to encompass in so few paragraphs the attitudinal disorder which it would have taken even the redoubtable Monsignor Pilger twice as much to convey. Good girl, Mary.
Now, of course she did not attempt to rebut my criticisms of the monsignor, perhaps because she was unable to, or perhaps because she, like her hero, prefers to be hurling abuse from the sanctuary of high moral ground rather than dealing with actual facts. So of course she did not address the criticisms I levelled at Pilger, but sneered at my use of "disyllabic" and even, God protect us and save us, "trisyllabic" words.
Syllables
She is, by her own account, a teacher. It's a little worrying that a teacher of, I presume, the young and impressionable, should apparently think that the employment of a disyllabic word - such as "Pilger", maybe? - or even a really whopping trisyllabic one - such as "criticism"? - is proof of an attempt at, in her words, "gravitas". (A trisyllabic bullseye, Mary! Excellent! Go to the top of the class.) Does she get by in her doubtless riveting (three syllables Mary - more gravitas again!) classes with words of just one syllable? What a jolly interesting teacher she must be. Good Morn Ing Child Ren. Furthermore, her pupils' parents might also be interested to hear her public criticisms of her "many immature, attention-seeking male students whose efforts to get attention in the classroom often drive me to suggest providing them with a playpen." Ah now, steady there Mary, love. Say what you like about me and my opinions - you're not alone in disliking either. But don't you think you might leave the little angels whom you are being well paid to teach out of the line of your fire? They're not to blame for what I say.
But back to Cardinal Pilger, who described the US as the most rapacious imperial power in world history. Does Mary Ryan, teacher, genuinely think that the US is more rapacious than the Soviet Union under Stalin, the Third Reich under Hitler, Communist China under Mao? Does she really believe the US will, as Archbishop Pilger declared, "stop at nothing to secure its domination over human affairs"? (Apart, that is, for the time being anyway, from putting ground troops into the middle of a nasty little shooting war, something Mao, Adolf and Josef had no problem doing.) If she does, I can only hope she doesn't teach history.
Factual points
She didn't deal with any of the factual points I made about US policy in Bosnia, nor with the extraordinary allegation from His Holiness that "among a number of proposals seriously considered by the Americans for NATO is a nuclear expeditionary force, `primarily designed for use against Third World Countries', according to one report." Where did this "one report" come from? It's an extraordinary allegation, and His Goodness had the liberality of this newspaper to state its origin, but he didn't.
This is not good journalism. It is bad journalism. It is moral sound and fury, vapidity in two dimensions. In a time of peace, such showboat posturing would be neither here nor there, but this is not a time of peace. And when Mary Ryan says that my "badly thought out, ill-advised and dangerous puerile rant is an insult to the thousands of people being displaced and murdered in Central Europe in response to NATO's actions", she enlists the victims of Kosovo as her moral allies.
Denouncing NATO
Do you know, Mary, I haven't spoken to these people before they are machine-gunned to death in pits by Serb fascists or as they are driven from their homes in vast pilgrimages of death and mystery, and I suspect you haven't either. But I have not seen one ethnic Albanian denounce NATO as John Pilger did specifically (five syllables) and you did implicitly (only four). I somehow think that the survivors of the holocaust sweeping the region would take my side rather than yours, and it is a little rich and more than a little disgusting to see them conscripted in all their misery to add ethical weight to your fact-free and abusively hysterical screeching.
Finally, Mary Ryan, teacher from Malahide, you declared that I was not fit to clean your hero's boots. For entirely different reasons, I too feel I am unsuited for such domestic duties; so in the Pilgerine footwear department, Mary and I are as one. Otherwise, Mary: Must Try Harder.