Sir, - I have not read Mary Ellen Synon's writings about travellers, but I feel it is still possible and necessary to reply to Kevin Myers's defence of her position.
Mr Myers just doesn't get it, does he? Probably he never will. In his efforts to defend the lonely dissenting voice of Ms Synon on the subject of travellers (March 22nd), he goes to considerable lengths to represent the overdog as the underdog. For Mr Myers, the enemy to whom the move to, investigate Ms Synon for incitement to hatred must ultimately be attributed, is "the PC lobby". It is unfortunate that the term "politically correct" was ever invented, for though it originated on the Left, it has now become the means by which the Right, especially in the US, has come to be able to represent itself as oppressed and embattled by a cabal of Zhdanovites, when it comes to social and cultural issues. Thus, Ms Synon becomes a heroine for speaking in derogatory terms about a community and a culture, from within the security of the Sunday Independent. Meanwhile, travelling communities continue to be, de facto, legitimate targets of public abuse, without much in the way of political or physical shelter.
Mr Myers conducts a small "thought experiment", whereby he writes of stockbrokers in the same manner as Ms Synon wrote of travellers. There are at least two points to be made about this. Firstly, Mr Myers notably lacks the courage (or is it because he is afraid of a libel case?) not to tell us that these sentiments were "invented for the purpose of this argument". That would be truly radical. But, unsurprisingly, Mr Myers does not really believe that stockbrokers are "merely predators", and thus must expose his rhetorical position. Secondly, Mr Myers should try substituting "Jews" or "immigrants" or "Northern Protestants" for "stockbrokers", and see how clever he feels then. If Ms Synon had written about such groups in the same terms, I reckon Mr Myers would rightly condemn her for doing so.
For the point surely is that travellers are an exposed, vulnerable, identifiable minority. This means that to describe a traveller encampment as a sewer is, firstly, not a brave piece of journalism, but rather simply beating up on a socially and politically weak group of people. Secondly, it is to tarnish an entire subculture. Stockbrokers, to take Mr Myers's example, are not easily identified in the street by their appearance, by their accents, by where they come from, by their lifestyle. Stockbrokers are not identifiable, and hence vilifiable, as a social group. To be a stockbroker is a career choice, not a cultural or ethnic identity. No one, least of all Kevin Myers or Mary Ellen Synon, would think of describing stockbrokers in such essentialising terms, for stockbrokers are comparatively diffused throughout society. Travellers are not. Therefore, the point is that for Ms Synon to describe a travellers' encampment as a sewer is merely to lend the authority of her column (a privileged position, surely) and, implicitly, of her newspaper, to the body of dubious thinking that circulates in Irish society on the subject.
Mr Myers concludes by suggesting that charging Ms Synon with incitement will not help us to understand the issue of travelling people, but the point would be more aptly made about her remarks. Yours, etc.,
Cambria,
De Vesci Court,
Dun Laoghare,
Co Dublin.