Edge of misogyny in criticism of Helen McEntee is unmistakable

You’ve probably heard of Jack Smith, the low-key Trump prosecutor with the Paul O’Connell death stare. Smith has entered the annals of US judicial history by indicting a former and campaigning US president on charges of conspiring to violently interrupt the transfer of power in a democracy. The case will turn on Trump’s state of mind, ie whether he genuinely believed he had won and that Mike Pence had the power to replace electoral ballots with fake ones, also known as the too-stupid-to-know-what-was-going-on defence.

The worst anyone of relatively sound mind – mainly a former Virginia state governor prosecuted by Smith for corruption - can say about the prosecutor’s earlier career is that he is overzealous.

The man has trodden on some powerful toes.

He has overseen many prosecutions of high-profile legislators and worked in the Hague as chief prosecutor in a Kosovo war crimes court where he indicted a former Kosovo president.

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He was a trial lawyer in an infamous case where a Brooklyn police officer was accused of participating in the rape of a Haitian immigrant with a broken broomstick. But one of the most revealing stories about Smith relates to his early years as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. He once spent a weekend sleeping in the hallway of an apartment building so he could intercept a victim frightened of testifying in a domestic violence case. She took the stand in the end, after what Smith called “a long, long talk”.

[ McEntee under spotlight as street crime becomes the issue ]

[ McEntee offers to meet family of US tourist attacked in Dublin and says Ireland is safe to visit ]

Aside from a willingness to work anti-social hours and sustain the preternaturally patient, unseen slog of getting such a case to court anywhere in the world, the story also suggests that Smith’s relentless sense of justice stretches all the way to what one of our TDs at least is pleased to call “social airy-fairy issues”.

In a piece about Minister for Justice Helen McEntee – who entered office with a clear agenda that included tackling long-neglected issues such as hate crime and domestic violence – the Sunday Independent’s Hugh O’Connell recounts the many gripes various TDs now have about her and her notions. A most pressing complaint is that a small gold pendant she wore over her jumper for a press conference in Store Street Garda station was absent during her earlier inner city walkabout with the Garda Commissioner and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe among others.

The implication, of course, is that the wussy womany Minister for Justice felt her shiny pendant would be irresistible to some inner-city miscreant even with the commissioner and local man, Paschal, in tow. It’s not the first time that comments about McEntee have carried a misogynistic edge, rarely expressed openly but handily channelled through some of the comment, say, on her controversial hate-speech legislation. A Minister accuses her of merely wanting the photo op while the same source expresses admiration for Simon Harris’s decision to cancel everything for an emergency walkabout of Rathkeale while he temporarily held the justice brief during McEntee’s maternity leave.

Most readers, including Harris, might find it hard to parse the difference. Disaster strikes, Minister does a walkabout, looks grim, promises resources.

But the most interesting part is the quotes attributed to a Fine Gael TD who accuses her of “chaining herself too much to the hate speech and the social airy-fairy issues”. Her hate-speech legislation has met much robust opposition and been called many things but to dismiss her wider agenda as “airy fairy” suggests a deeper problem with certain mindsets. Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea at least opined out loud that she was “playing to the woke gallery”. If nothing else it has the virtue of sounding rather more strategic that “airy fairy” which carries a peculiarly feminine kind of giddiness.

[ Dublin attack: McEntee vows response to ‘thuggery’ after tourist’s life-changing injuries ]

[ How did the hate speech Bill find itself at the centre of a swirling culture war? ]

Though not a politician, Jack Smith would recognise some of the language in a country where every word and deed is politicised and polarising. Woke, as one writer put it, is the number one meaningless word right now, used to signify any acknowledgment of racism or sexism, expressing an opinion while black or female, or “just a new thing that I don’t like”.

But silly and hackneyed as it is, it has the potential to be damaging. Observe how Donald Trump harnesses the word. This week he poured scorn on the US Women’s World Cup team and trolled its striker Megan Rapinoe – a high-profile advocate for racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights in sports – for missing a penalty. “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA”.

He has said and done much worse, of course, calling Smith “mentally ill”, a “psycho”, and a “deranged lunatic”. But as his once-loyal lieutenants begin to acknowledge out loud that he lost the election after all and slither into Smith’s office to save their skins, Trump knows he is losing the battle.

In the meantime, our Government representatives might examine their mindsets and casually damaging language and count their blessings. A Minister for Justice with an inclusive agenda and an on/off pendant is far from the worst thing that could befall them in the next 18 months.