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The points he makes are reasonable, though hardly remarkable. What’s remarkable is how he says it. The language and style are amazing:
“Perhaps more tellingly, it bespeaks the absence in this country of much willingness in the media or in the political debate to scrutinise Irish liberalism rather than genuflect to it…”
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Reasonable? How is the American wingnut meme of “Liberals are the real bigots” in any way reasonable?
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They’re actually such nonsensical arguments it’s as counterproductive to debate them as it would be to point out the inconsistencies of an argument by Ann Coulter or some similar genius.
Here on one side of the debate you have Kieran Rose, who’s obviously thought about the matter a great deal and who has a great deal invested in it being counterbalanced by someone whose sole interest in the question is as an opportunity to rattle off a few flip Jeremy Clarkson has a go at the PC brigade quips. It’s nonsense.
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The language and style are basically Pubtalk. The incoherence, the lack of logic, the paranoia and above all the carelessness. In the circumstances his use of a phrase like, ‘intellectual undernourishment,’ suggests a slight lack of self awareness.
It’s basically just a cranky Liveline call set down in print, the argument being, “I don’t have anything against the gays but you know like they just think they’re great so they do and they’re not like.’
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Do my eyes deceive me, or did Witchard actually “come out” in that article?
Way to go as an article to come out in! He might be as daft as a bag of badgers, but he certainly has a certain …er..chutzpah.
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He came out as gay in the Daily Mail around this time last year. It doesn’t really lend any strength to his argument unless you feel that the colour of Herman Cain or Alan Keyes’ skin means they’re right when they chime in with right wing arguments against affirmative action.
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He was out in 2006, certainly. A typical Waghorne opus in that year, decrying the numbers of gay people in the Irish blog scene:
http://fifiefoefum.blogspot.com/2006/02/liberal-bias-in-boggersphere.html
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The day after the Abortion Bill fiasco also seems a singularly inappropriate time for the Times to publish a column about the unopposed triumph of liberalism in Ireland.
The problem with a lot of this right wing guff is that while they pretend to be writing about Ireland they have one eye on America so often the article doesn’t really correspond to the political realities here. In a way this bunch of lightweights are like white English kids playing at being Mississippi bluesmen by creating an hommage to their original inspiration.
I used to think that people on this site display an unnecessary level of loathing towards Nick Cohen. No more. For which great Irish intellectual’s work did he display on his site the other day? Ian O’Doherty. It’s Political Obtsuseness Gone Mad.
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So:
Richard Waghorne is the Rolling Stones, sycophantic seekers of the approval of authority, while claiming the mantle of authenticity via their appropriation of the style of American musicians;
Fintan O’Toole is Horslips, authentic homegrown culture, brought to the world without compromising on its original nature.
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Richard Waghorne isn’t The Rolling Stones, he’s Foghat or Ten Years After.
Horslips aren’t ‘authentic homegrown culture.’ They are a fascinating merger of the native and the international. Not sure what Fintan is.
Bagatelle?
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That’s harsh: I’d say `merger of the native and the international’ wouldn’t be a bad description of FO’T, a possible heir to Hubert Butler?
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OK, we’ll give him Horslips. I don’t know if he’s quite up to Butler though, those collections of short Butler essays pack an incredible amount of punch. He may have benefitted from not having to churn it out at the same rate as Fintan.
Actually Horslips always said they suffered from gigging too much so perhaps that proves your O’Toole point.
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Where was he quoting Ian O’Doherty? Had a look at the site there but couldn’t find it. But I did find Nick’s idiot mates comparing him to Milton, Mill and the Smiths, which was bad enough.
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Posted up on Nick’s site and still there, a masterly piece of political analysis by Iano from the Irish Independent on March 31st entitled, ‘Where Are The Irish Left Protests Against Syria.’ Hang your heads in shame appeasers and Islamofascists.
Ed, it’s right beside those Milton, Mill and Smiths quotes. I presume you were blinded by the dazzling light of erudition.
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Sad to say, not least because I’ve defended the man over the years, but the term ‘dimwitted’ springs to mind re his having that up on his site.
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I was actually surprised myself. A sad ‘pas d’ennemis a droite’ moment for Nick. Though O’Doherty is perhaps more daft than droit.
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Populist, in the worst sense of the term. No ideology, no guiding star.
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Oh yeah, it was on the next page. Just above an article with the headline ‘Why the Left turned against the Jews’. Lord spare us …
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‘Where Are The Irish Left Protests Against Syria?’ is a constant refrain of Henry McDonald, The Observer Ireland Correspondent, whenever Ship to Gaza is mentioned.
Despite his angst, I don’t think Henry’s concern has extended to him actually doing anything himself about a ‘Ship to Syria’.
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In fairness (not), there seems to be a lucrative establishment career path in this move.
“Even the socialist Nick Cohen”, “even the gay Richard Waghorne” etc. Though I suppose for most of them, it’s the one card they’ve got to rise out of well-deserved obscurity.
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The problem with a lot of this right wing guff is that while they pretend to be writing about Ireland they have one eye on America so often the article doesn’t really correspond to the political realities here.
And here you’ve nailed it on the head exactly – Waghorne’s stuff is just reheats of stuff he’s read on American and English right-wing blogs, with added random quotes from Leo Strauss, Edmund Burke etc.
(He described his political heroes as Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet etc. and has been a water carrier for Bush, Sarkozy and Merkel in the mid-2000s. The only Irish ones that I recall were MacDowell and Ganley).
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@EamonnCork I don’t think he’s quite in the same league as Butler (he doesn’t have to put up with the abuse Butler did) but I think the clarity and honesty are there.
Eoghan Harris would be Fergal Sharkey: started off as a leading member of a respectable outfit, but ended up a corporate lackey.
Still can’t think who would be Bagatelle.
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John Waters as Bagatelle? Based in Dublin, aimed at a country audience and not of much interest to anyone since the eighties.
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And there was the double act with Sinead O’Connor …
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In fairness is it just the musings of a man, behaving like a toddler seeking nay demanding attention! Richard wagging his horne trying to create a debate and every now and then throwing his toys out of the pram!
Richard Waghorne@richardwaghorneReply
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My ‘Irish Liberalism & The Gay Marriage Debate’: http://richardtwaghorne.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/irish-liberalism-the-gay-marriage-debate/ > IT version has closed comments, comments possible at this link.
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Verily.
In all seriousness the piece is overwritten in terms of style and underwritten in terms of content. Who precisely is this ‘intolerant liberal faction’. We know no more at the end of the piece than we did at the beginning.
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That ‘aha, but you’re the real bigot because you’re intolerant of my intolerance,’ golf club bar sophistry got old a long time ago.
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But this was in the IT, though casting one’s eyes across to John ‘I know what young people want… what they really really want’ Waters why am I surprised?
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I think complaining about the IT for being right wing and the Labour Party for being unprincipled is, at this stage in the game, a bit like criticising David Norris for being gay.
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Yeah. Tbh I think the IT’s lurched further rightwards under the new guy, but in a fairly cloth-eared and unthinking way.
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Think you might be right whereas I think Kennedy with the recruitment of Krauthammer, Steyn and Breda O’Brien had a genuine ideological sympathy for the wilder shores of international conservatism, O’Sullivan seems more in thrall to the ‘common sense’ approach of Dan O’Brien, Power and the Dublin Branch of Littlejohn and Clarkson University.
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The new editor introduced The Social Column on the back page of the weekend review. That says screams and screams volumes about where he wants to take the paper.
Maybe we should help the scribbler ensure the content of the page better reflects the readership:
“Cedar Lounge Revolution ocassional contributors Tomboktu and Smiffy were seen comparing notes at their union conference at the weekend, while site master Worldbystorm joined Tomboktu for a pizza in a Dublin eaterie on Wednesday”.
Change the names for the brother of a judge and the nuncio, and it become more interesting or relevant??
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It surely does!
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Richard famously threw his toys out once with a major hissy fit over how some wingnut cause celebré or other hadn’t been marked on Irish blogs at the time – of course, it turned out that he hadn’t referred to it at all at the time, either.
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“Who precisely is this ‘intolerant liberal faction’. ” good example of his imagination running wild! I would be thinking along the lines of “you could’nt make this up” but obviously Richard has !
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Yeah, the IT has actually gotten worse since Geraldine Kennedy left, which takes some doing. I don’t think there’s any ideological shift though. It could be that things are so bad now that there’s less room for equivocation, ‘nuance’ and crumbs of noblesse oblige, so sides are being picked more blatantly than in the past.
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Well, for one thing it’s given Richard a much-desired stamp of official approval for his mediocre career.
Expect to see much CV reference in the future to “Irish Yimes columnist” Richard Waghorne.
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What would you expect from a pig, but a grunt?
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I assume this is the same R. Waghorne who has endorsed Marine Le Pen for the French presidential elections?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2132611/French-elections-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-responsible-vote-France.html
Read that link, if you think you can stomach it. Pure Breivikism.
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Could there really be two RW’s?
But beyond that I guess if Pinochet was one of your political heroes why not Le Pen? Though how that sits with a pro-Israel stance escapes me. Or indeed the FN’s neo-corporatist approach.
But no she remains ‘an imperfect choice in urgent times’.
One could not make it up.
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You know what? Fuck this guy.
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Well, cheerleading for the FN and Le Pen crosses a line in my book, that’s for sure.
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Though how that sits with a pro-Israel stance escapes me. Or indeed the FN’s neo-corporatist approach.
He marked some rocket attack or other in Israel with a post entirely in Latin.
Logic and consistency are alien to young Mr. Waghorne.
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Not as young as he used to be I’d imagine.
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He has the air of a man following the Mary Ellen Synon trajectory.
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True. Though even more rapidly.
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In this worldview there’s no such thing as a Fascist, just someone who’s ‘not very PC.’ If these boys had been around in the forties they’d have written columns along the lines of, ‘Adolf Hitler may have his problems but personally I love the way he gets up the noses of right on liberals.’
Though re Waghorne and the boys I’m inclined to think of Thomas Kinsella’s lines, “It’s double foolishness to flatter/by attack what doesn’t matter.”
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I think that’s a great point.
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Except that these idiots may be less irrelevant than we would like to think. Breivik cited Melanie Philips more than once, remember. . .
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But it is often useless to attack that with which you can scarcely hope to engage.
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Reasonable point Dr X.
However there’s a bit of a schemozzle going on at the moment stateside over an article on the New York Review of Books blog by William Pfaff about the murders in Toulouse which argues that political capital shouldn’t be made out of them because in the final analysis what we’re dealing with is a nutcase.
He’s been accused of minimising the problem of Muslim anti-semitism for saying this but I do see his point. Much as I dislike Philips and her ilk I think it’s a bit of a stretch to blame them for the deeds of someone as transparently mad as Breivik.
Of course if Breivik was quoting people on the left those right wing columnists would be the very first to tar everyone on the left with the same brish. But it strikes me as a dodgy argument whichever side makes it.
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