Sir, - As I sat quietly with a cup of coffee and read Kevin Myers column of January 15th (An Irishman's Diary) I found myself slowly sitting up straighter the while growing increasingly stupefied, as one might at a dinner party where the host begins by commenting on the price of poultry and winds up violently stabbing the chicken with a salad fork. I truly fear for the man's mental health.
All right, Kevin, you think actors are stupid. I got it, okay? You needn't hurl your entire arsenal of frayed metaphors at me, every one of which contained brain-numbing variations on the word vacant. But, on second thoughts, of course you do. Since you obviously believe that the entire population of the planet, including actors and readers of The Irish Times, are operating with a cranial candlepower that is far below the wattage of Kevin Myers's intellectual brilliance. Pass me the eye drops.
Quite naturally, in the piece, you were in opposition to the actors you bravely named and insulted, with regard to their petitioning against the German government's repressive policies toward Scientology and its adherents. But you are wrong, Kevin, and not only are you wrong, but you are wrong at the top of your maniacal voice. With a few elitist taps of your computer keyboard, you labelled that organisation as a cult. How drably and tiresomely populist, how effetely political correct. Freedom of religion, Kevin, freedom of speech. Either of those ring the bell in your ivory tower?
I doubt it. I doubt if you can hear anything above the sound of your own egomaniacal ruminations. Certainly not the reasoning voice of any inferior plebe, situated as we are, so remotely far beneath your palliatively imagined superior intelligence. - Yours, etc.,
Ashcroft, Raheny, Dublin 5.